Nelson Peery: The American People Are for Unity Fri, 4 Feb 2000 01:08:22 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit ****************************************************************** source: People's Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo (Online Edition) Vol. 27 No. 2/ February, 2000 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 http://www.lrna.org The American people are for unity Interview with Nelson Peery [Editor's note: In celebration of African American History Month 2000, Laura Garcia from the People's Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo interviewed Nelson Peery, author of "Black Fire" and co-author of "Moving Onward."] PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: Nelson, you stated in your recent interview with Channel 5 (in Chicago) that the American people are not racist. Can you talk to us about this? NELSON PEERY: First of all, the very idea that a whole people have got the same idea, that in itself is racism. That's ridiculous. How can a whole mass of people -- about 260 million -- all have the same idea? They are from various classes, various backgrounds, various religions. And yet, we come up with the idea that they all have the same idea? That in itself is racism. I want to approach the question of racism from a different point of view. There's a lot of different definitions of racism out here that conform to whatever political, ideological ideas [or] to whatever point of view people want to put forth. To me to be a racist is to take a conscious position, to think something out and come to the conclusion that I'm better than that person because my eyes are blue, or I'm better than that person because my skin is this color, or because I came from this country and so forth. It's only after taking such a position that a person becomes a racist. Now, I don't want to be misunderstood. When you speak against the way this question is being handled, you're immediately accused of covering over the problem. Well there's a serious problem of racism in America. There's plenty of racism and there's plenty of racists. But to identify the American people with this violent and dangerous minority, it is wrong. Our purpose is to win the American people to an active position, that is to say, win them over to an active, thought-out class position. The way to achieve it is not to identify them with the worst criminal elements in their midst. The other part I want to say in regard to the African Americans: Like the [Negro National] anthem [or "Lift Every Voice and Sing"] says, "stony the road we've trod." Well, along that road there were whites marching with the blacks, every step of the way. Over every stone, there were whites with us. From John Brown to Viola Liuzzo, who was killed by the Klan in Selma, Alabama in 1965 during the voting-rights struggle. But we hear less and less of people who sacrificed their lives, who went to prison, who stood their ground, alongside their brothers and sisters. We hear less and less of them and more and more of the vicious, murderous, fascist white supremacists and racists in our midst. PT: Why do you think that happens? NP: There are a number of reasons, but the main reason is that the people that are both, the racists and the anti-racists, they have a common ground, and that common ground is that they have to keep this thing going. They don't want to solve it, because they just want to keep saying, "racism, racism, racism" without any program on how to solve it. Because the struggle against racism and the struggle for racism today in America is a very profitable, very lucrative industry. So they keep it going. If we were to publicize the daily acts of friendship and equality that whites and blacks participate in, to publicize the good things as much as they publicize the bad things, this would be an entirely different fight. But they don't want to do that, because they don't want to solve the problem. Because they get good money. Because their fortune is in carrying out but never ending the struggle against racism. Another point that I want to bring up that is kind of helpful to get a balance on this whole question is to look at other forms of racism that have dominated history in my lifetime. I'm 76 years old, so I'm talking about that period of time of the rise of fascism. If we look carefully, we'll see that inner-color racism, i.e. racism among the whites, racism among the Asians, racism among the blacks, has been much more deadly than racism between black and white. For example, Hitler's racist war against the Slavic people, the butchering of 30, 40 million human beings in a period of six years. His savage racist war against the Jews. The other example is the racist wars that were carried out by the Japanese against all the other Asian peoples. The war of the Japanese against the Chinese was an outright racist war. They declared themselves superior to the Chinese. The Chinese had no rights that they had to respect and they went in and slaughtered them like animals. So racism in my lifetime hasn't been just between blacks and whites; inner-color racism has killed more people than inter-color racism. And people don't even think about it. We can't also exclude the slaughter that's going on in Africa between such groups as the Hutus and Tutsis. PT: What are the roots of racism in America? NP: This is the point that we're leading up to. When we see that racism continues in different forms, in different historical epochs, then I think we need to look further and ask ourselves, what is it, what's behind it, what gives it its strength, its life? I think we have to agree that it's the capitalist system itself. Then if we say that racism is an integral part of the capitalist system, then you're not going to get rid of racism without getting rid of the capitalist system. Then we have the problem that the leaders of the racist camp and the leaders of the anti-racist camp are both multimillionaires. They have a great stake in the system. And they're not about to rock this boat. What they want to do is keep baiting people with "racism" and not make any effort to solve it because solving it will do away with their money. So they have no interest in solving it. PT: As revolutionaries how do we fight against racism? NP: We have to conduct this war against racism like we conduct any war, and the first thing is knowing who your enemy is. Let's take World War II for example. If the Allies identified as their enemy the German, the Italian and the Japanese people, we would still be fighting. They identified as their enemy this little clique that wanted to control the state in Germany, Italy and Japan. They identified clearly who their enemies were and made an effort to some degree to win over everyone else to their side. So, the first thing is to identify your enemy; the second thing is to do everything possible to isolate that enemy to the extreme and organize the maximum force. So, let's look at it. Our enemy isn't white people, because we've shown that inter-white racism is as violent as racism between blacks and whites. The problem is the system. So, we've identified the system and not the people as the problem. Our next step is to go after that system. We then show the identity of interest between the whites and the blacks in the same economic category. This way, there'll be a basis for them to come together and stick together to organize the maximum number of people against the system. You see, the false idea that the American people are racist -- i.e. they have taken a conscious position -- is planted to prevent the maximum amount of force to organize against capitalism and, therefore, against racism. This is intentional. This is not happening accidentally. Because as long as the people can identify the problem as "white people" and "black people," there's no way to resolve it. PT: Do the conditions exist today to do away with racism? NP: As the continuation of capitalism is called into question by this development of computerized, electronic production, that means that in order to survive, the workers are constantly going to fight for unity. One of the things you're faced with, in periods of transition such as the one we're getting into now, is that you can unconsciously or subconsciously be thrown into disunity or even into racism. But you can't be thrown unconsciously or subconsciously into unity. The support for unity is a conscious thing. So, we have to understand that the fight for unity depends on education of the masses of people which demands an organization that is dedicated to doing this. It'll take an organization of revolutionaries to bring this kind of consciousness to the American people. But the point of it is that as long as capitalism was stable, expanding, dominant, the war against racism could be fought -- and it had to be fought -- but it couldn't be won. Now we have a situation in which not only does it have to be fought, but it can be won. To win this war, the first thing we need to do is identify the enemy, isolate that enemy, then mobilize the maximum force to attack it. And then we'll overcome this thing. Because the destruction of capitalism and the destruction of racism will be simultaneous. [To join the fight for unity today, write to the League of Revolutionaries for a New America at Box 477113, Chicago, Illinois 60647, visit our Web site at www.lrna.org or call the People's Tribune Speakers Bureau at 800-691-6888] +----------------------------------------------------------------+ NOW IN PAPERBACK: Moving Onward: From Racial Division to Class Unity By Brooke V. 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