The organizers of I-93 blockade seem to think that disrupting traffic along a highway is a way to confront our nation’s racist power structure.<\/p>\n
Were they trying to make the inconvenienced commuters on their way to work feel guilty for being white?<\/p>\n
I doubt many of the corporate \u00c3\u00a9lite are driving along Rt 93 during the morning rush hour, when the protest was going on. Those commuters were ordinary working people.<\/p>\n
One of the I-93 commuters was quoted in a Boston Globe article as saying\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153As a white man, I know I benefit and am protected by a racist society.”<\/p>\n That’s probably a pretty typical reaction. The trouble is, it’s wrong! That commuter has internalized the myth of white privilege.<\/p>\n Do you remember, Jeff Perry explained to us at this very podium that white privilege was invented in Virginia in 1676, as a means of social control, specifically because the ruling class feared a revolution if Black and white plantation workers continued struggling together in solidarity against their oppressors. Ever since then, the rich and powerful in this country have tried successfully to keep the working class majority (which is a hugely greater majority in the 21st Century than in the 17th Century!) from banding together against their common enemy.<\/p>\n “White privilege” makes ordinary white people willing to accept\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>more severe exploitation, secure in the knowledge that at least they are better off than Blacks. And it makes ordinary Blacks resentful against whites. It is a mistake to think that white people benefit from racism, when it was deliberately instituted by the ruling \u00c3\u00a9lite to divide working people by race as a means of social control over ordinary people of all colors.<\/p>\n The commuter who said\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153As a white man, I know I benefit and am protected by a racist society” has been tricked, and the organizers of the I-93 blockade protest have played right into the hands of the ruling class.<\/p>\n The last thing we ordinary people need is for other ordinary people to make us feel guilty for what we are. There is no shame is being born white, or Hispanic, or Asian, or Black, or queer or anything else.<\/p>\n I heard someone (who was white) say <\/span>he agreed that the police treatment of Blacks was wrong, but wasn’t sure the blockade was a good idea and that if he<\/b> had been blocked he would have been pissed. — He was struggling with the moral conundrum of how to support a cause that he agreed with, when its activists treated him like the enemy.<\/p>\n It is wrong, and HARMFUL, for activists to think of ordinary people as the enemy. To do so distracts us from recognizing who, or what, the real enemy is.<\/p>\n It is the ruling class who use racial discrimination and racist police oppression as a tool to “divide and conquer” the working class majority. They use it to create fear and mistrust and resentment between those who are specifically targeted by racial discrimination and those who are not. They use it to destroy solidarity among ordinary people of different races.<\/p>\n Blocking I-93 in the name of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anti-racism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d treated commuters as if they were exactly what the ruling class wants them to think they are\u00e2\u20ac\u201dpeople who benefit from racial discrimination and oppression. But ordinary white people don’t<\/b> benefit from racial discrimination and racist police oppression; on the contrary, they are harmed by it, precisely because it undermines working class solidarity.<\/p>\n The blame for the problem of racism in our society does not lie in ordinary people, or even in the rich. It lies in the class structure of society itself.<\/b><\/p>\n So, should we support the I-93 blockade, or should we criticize it? How we answer this question hinges on the view we take of ordinary people in society: the Left, as exemplified by the I-93 blockaders, views ordinary people as the problem.<\/b><\/p>\n But what if we see them as the solution<\/b>?<\/span><\/p>\n If we ordinary people, who comprise the working class, can ever unite in solidarity against the capitalist system, we can be the solution<\/b> to the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n Notice that I didn’t say: unite against the ruling class, but against the capitalist system itself<\/b>. Individual capitalists are not the enemy, the system is.<\/p>\n In the end, if an Egalitarian Socialist Revolution ever comes about, there will have to be an overwhelming majority of the population supporting it. Because ordinary people are so many, they will be the largest part of that majority, but there are sure to be some capitalists in it, too.<\/p>\n And if there is a minority opposed to the Revolution, it will also probably be made up mostly of\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>ordinary people, with a few rich capitalists. It won’t be class that matters in the end, just common sense understanding that the capitalist system means disaster for the planet and all of humanity.<\/p>\n When enough people understand that, there will be no losers. We will all win.<\/p>\n Karla Rab, 2\/8\/2015<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Few Thoughts on the Jan. 15 Blockade of Rt I\u00c2\u00ad-93 The organizers of I-93 blockade seem to think that disrupting traffic along a highway is a way to confront […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1543,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}