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BLACK HATRED OF WHITES STEMS FROM RAGE
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- BALDWIN WAS INCONSISTENT IN HIS OPINIONS
- BALDWIN WAS PAROCHIAL IN HIS VIEWS OF RACE ISSUES
- MURRAY BOOKCHIN
BLACK HATRED OF WHITES STEMS FROM RAGE1. BLACK HATRED OF WHITES STEMS FROM RAGE James Baldwin, Essayist, THE DEVIL FINDS WORK, 1976, p. 61-2. This is, perhaps, a very subtle argument, but black men do not have the same reason to hate white men as white men have to hate blacks. The root of the white man’s hatred is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind. but the root of the black man’s hatred is rage, and he does not so much bate white men as simply want them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children’s way.
James Baldwin, Essayist, THE DEVIL FINDS WORK, 1976, p. 62. When the white man begins to have in the black man’s mind the weight that the black man has in the white man’s mind, that black man is going mad. And when he goes under, he does not go under screaming in terror: he goes under howling with rage.
1. BALDWIN WAS INCONSISTENT IN CLAIMING HIS RACIAL IDENTITY C.W.E. Bigsby, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 103-4. For it was Baldwin’s assumption that the question of colour, crucially important on a moral level, concealed a more fundamental problem, the problem of self. And it is in that sense that he felt most American. But he negotiates a privileged position for himself by claiming an American identity (while naturally disavowing the guilt for a prejudice which he did not originate and for a history which he played no part us determining), and simultaneously embracing a Negro identity (while declining the cultural temporizing and disabling pathology which he otherwise identifies as the natural inheritance of the black American.).
C.W.E. Bigsby, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 110. His [Baldwin’s] desire to establish his belief that individuals are responsible moral creatures is simultaneously undermined by his conviction that their crime is ineradicable and human beings ineluctably wicked. The problem does not reside in language alone, but in his own terrible ambivalences which lead him to accuse and defend, condemn and rescue with equal conviction. The deficiency is an intellectual one.
C.W.E. Bigsby, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 110. Even now, in one mood, he sees a solution in some kind of symbolic union of black and white for which he can find no historical justification and for which he can establish no social mechanism. When asked, some twenty-five years after his first essay, how he meant to go about securing his solution to the problem, his reply was simply, * don’t know yet,” And then, slipping into the opposite mood, which has always been the other side to this sentimental vision, he offered the only solution which he could see: “Blow it up. BALDWIN WAS PAROCHIAL IN HIS VIEWS OF RACE ISSUES1. BALDWIN EXCLUDED NON-AMERICAN BLACKS FROM RACIAL DEBATE Stephen Spender, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 229. One suspects that for Mr. Baldwin it is sacrilege to suggest that there are Negroes outside America; and from this there follows the implication that the Negro problem is his problem that can only be discussed on his terms. Hence too his contempt for most people who, in the main, agree with him, especially for poor despised American Liberals. He has, as a Negro, a right, of course, to despise liberals, but he exploits his moral advantage too much. 2. BALDWIN WAS BIASED TOWARD ONLY AMERICAN BLACKS AS OPPRESSED PEOPLE Stephen Spender, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 231. Mr. Baldwin’s bias towards discussing the American Negro as though he had no characteristics in common with Negroes elsewhere or other oppressed people and classes contributes to his tendency to think that the problem can only be met by all Negroes and all white Americans being seized at the same moment by the same wave of love. My argument is that the relationship of Negro to white exists within a situation comparable to other situations. It is partly a situation of color, partly one of class. 3. OPPRESSION OF BLACKS MUST BE COMPARED WITH NON-AMERICAN BLACKS Stephen Spender, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 229. Sometimes by Negro Mr. Baldwin means people with black skins originating in Africa, but sometimes he defines them by the situation—that of being oppressed. And indeed if the Negro problem is resolvable, the only useful way of discussing it is to consider American Negroes in a situation which is comparable with that of workers and of Negroes elsewhere. To write as though Negroes do no exist anywhere except in America is to induce despair, to suggest that in American white and black cannot become integrated to the (rather limited) extent to which they have been, for example, in Brazil. MURRAY BOOKCHINSOCIAL ECOLOGY (b. 1921)Life And Work Murray Bookchin is an important social anarchist thinker with an intriguing background. Bookchin was born in New York City on January 14, 1921. His parents, who were immigrants, had been involved in the Russian revolutionary movement. In the first part of the 1930s, Murray entered the Communist youth movement at the age of nine. When the end of the decade rolled around, though, he had become disillusioned with the movement. The reason, which was to become a theme in Bookchin’s critiques of socialism, was that communism was authoritarian in nature and had a lack of respect for individual rights. Though Bookchin has called himself an anarchist since the I 950s, he has said that his beliefs were anarchist much earlier. Following the Stalin-Hitler pact in September 1939 he became active in labor. He helped organize unions in northern New Jersey, where he worked as a foundryman. Oddly enough, Bookchin served in the U.S. Army during the 1940s. After discharge, he was an autoworker and became deeply involved in the United Auto Workers (UAW). Following the great General Motors strike of 1948, he started to wonder whether the labor movement would ever be able to make the fundamental changes the system required. He worried that labor advances were mere reforms, with workers being assimilated into the capitalist system of exploitation. Concerned with individual rights, he called himself a “libertarian socialist,” and began working with others who had forsaken Marxist orthodoxy, many of them German exiles. At the time he was writing under pen names including M. S. Shiloh, Lewis Herber (under which name he would publish his first American book), Robert Keller, and Harry Ludd. Bookchin’s largest contribution to the anarchist intellectual tradition is probably his theory of social ecology. Involved with the New Left movement of the 1 960s, he wrote many books which helped develop these ideas, Including Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Crisis In Our Cities (1965), and Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971). Drawing on these ideas, he co-founded and became director of the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont in 1974. Bookchin, in addition to teaching at the Institute, also taught at the Alternative University in New York, at City University of New York, and at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where he was full professor of social theory before he retired in 1983. He still teaches two courses at the Institute for Social Ecology--though his health problems preclude much of his previous activities. However, he is still on the editorial advisory boards of Anarchist Studies and Society And Nature and Cassell has just published his new book, Reenchanting Humanity. Basic Philosophies Bookchin has sought to integrate a wide variety of progressive philosophies into one cohesive whole. Still staunchly against oppression of all forms, Bookchin’s social ecology might best be generalized as left-libertarian. However, he incorporates many other ideas into his critique of modem capitalism, such as his favor of decentralized, local structures, and his concern with human inequity (racial, sexual, and class-based) and, of course, his ecological concerns. Bookchin’s theories argue that the reason humans dominate nature primarily generates from the domination of human by human--such as men-over-women (patriarchy), white-over-black (racism), and rich-over-poor (classism). Bookchin wishes to challenge all hierarchical dominant structures through his left-libertarian critique. Bookchin also criticizes biocentric notions advanced by such deep ecologist groups as Earth First! He argues that biocentric ideas distract us from capitalism as the primary source of problems, promote misanthropic philosophies that are counterproductive, and wholeheartedly reject even ecologically beneficial technologies. All these things, Bookchin argues, prevent a cohesive strategy that will defend the environment as well as people: the strategy of social ecology. Bookchin’s dialogue with Dave Foreman in Defending The Earth helps illustrate many of these criticisms. Bookchins fully-developed arguments against the biocentric, pantheistic eco-spiritualists can be found in Which Way For The Ecology Movement? Bookchin also diverges from many radical environmentalists, like Kirkpatrick Sale and Jerry Mander, in his refusal to wholly condemn technology. He believes that eco-technologies can and should be developed. In fact, the Institute for social ecology has been developing eco-technology since 1974. While he admits to the risk associated with technological advances, he notes that they can give us tools like solar collectors, efficient windmills, and ecologically designed buildings. like most radical populists, Bookchin believes that democratic decision making and local initiatives are key for a truly Green politics. Unlike most, however, he has a blueprint for a green revolution. He has called for a “new politics” of participatory democracy, or “libertarian municipalism.” Bookchins brand of politics is based on popular assemblies at municipal, neighborhood, and town levels: a form of direct-democratic participation. He has acknowledged the danger that small communities can become isolationist and parochialist, so to avoid the risk of this, he advocates a civic confederalism, by which a decentralized society confederates in an alliance. The group of localities counters the influence of the centralized nation-state and its market forces. As an alternative to the unbridled market of capitalists, or the nationalized economy promulgated by Marxian socialists, or to the workers’ ownership and self- management of industry advocated by syndicalists, Bookchin’s view calls for a municipalized economy. He feels that co-operatives, though positive, are not sufficient enough to challenge the intimidating powers of the state and the market, but a mutually supporting confederated structure could present such a challenge. The politics of confederation stand in stark opposition to other radical and mainstream social theories. Another place Bookchin takes a different path than many radical ecologists is in his criticism of populationist ideology. Though he admits that a bourgeoning population can cause environmental woes, he feels that populationist dogma--that population problems are the most pervasive, most insidious threat to the ecology--is counterproductive. He argues that the Nazis used populationist imagery to justify their ethnic cleansing. He reminds us that United States populationists often speak of the growing population in terms of Third World population, and alerts us to the racist overtones these arguments have. He argues that focusing on population distracts us from the true, social causes of ecological woes--thus blurring our critique of capitalism and preventing us from addressing problems in a social-ecological manner. He points to history as an illustration that population warnings are often overstated, and is skeptical of the populationists anti-immigrant, neo-Malthusian character. Despite his awareness of overwhelming social problems, Bookchin, now in his seventies, takes an optimistic view of social transformation. He not only feels that humans can mobilize to change society, but also argues in many places that it is inevitable. His rationale is that, since humans have an innate desire for freedom as well as revolutionary impulses, these urges can only be suppressed with the “annihilation of man himself.” These “Eros-derived impulses” can be delayed, “but they can never be eliminated.” He also argues that, looking historically, the statist structure should have become obsolete long ago, and that “due to its ripeness and decay” the structure must fall. The mechanism by which Bookchin argues the transformation will occur is this: in the face of a profound crisis, such as the one capitalism faces right now, people will mobilize against the evils of the statist, capitalist structure. As we confront the growing problems, Bookchin says, our desire to change will also grow, and, in fact, “[un the face of such a crisis, efforts for change are inevitable.” The problem comes when we accept small, token gains from the statist structure and allow dissent to me moved into the “institutional bounds of Treasonable dissent.” Bookchin argues that reforms just mask the oppressive, hierarchical structures that capitalism’s nature makes inevitable. He warns against co-optation, saying that reforms are just those in power throwing a bone to those who have no power. He argues that if the ecology movement “does not ultimately direct its main efforts toward a revolution in all areas of life” that the movement will simply “degenerate into a safety valve for the existing order.”
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