Response to Rahul Mahajan's "Redeeming the Promissory Note"

Below is a response to the September 2, 2008 post by left-wing writer and activist Rahul Mahajan on his Empire Notes blog. I really didn't intend for this blog to become an outlet for diss-tracks in cyberspace, but Mahajan referenced me in his blog and I felt compelled to respond publicly. You can read his post here: http://www.empirenotes.org/september08.html#01sep081

Rahul

I very rarely read your blog, but a friend tipped me off that I might want to check out your September 2 entry. It deserves a response. Since you chose to publicly misconstrue my words and denigrate my organization, I figured that my response should be public too, which is why I posted it to my blog.

For the benefit of those who are reading this and who have not read your original piece, I’ll quote the part where you refer to a conversation with me in an effort to prove a point about the left. After citing the fact that the U.S. leads the world in incarceration, and saying (rather vaguely) that this has something to do with racism, you write:

“It’s tempting to use this to say things haven’t changed, except in form. The left always wants to get beneath the surface. Once, while leaving Baghdad, I talked to a kid from a sectarian leftist organization who refused to concede that the end of apartheid was a historic accomplishment. He was black.”

First things first: don’t ever call me a “kid” again. You were referring to me as such when I was a twenty-one year old adult, and you did so for no reason other than to be condescending. This patronizing tone is typical in your attacks and rebuttals, at least in those that you have directed toward me. Your condescension, by the way, acts to deflect attention from the weaknesses of your arguments. Whatever its practical purpose, that needs to stop right now.

Regarding the main argument of your piece, it was typically equivocal and contradictory, and I therefore admittedly had a hard time following the point that you were trying to make. I will try to restate it though. It seems like you are saying that though some vestiges of racism may persist, Obama’s ascension to probable winner of this year’s presidential election marks a turning point in US history. You say that Martin Luther King, were he alive today, would declare victory at Obama’s rise, saying that had he heard Obama’s speech last week, “King would have thought that the promissory note he spoke of in 1963 had finally been redeemed in significant measure in 2008.” I will not speculate on what the late King would say regarding the Obama campaign, (and I think that it is absurd that since King’s death, such speculation regarding his thoughts on this or that matter has become an often used device to try to win an argument). I will however reference what King actually said when he gave the speech that you selectively quoted:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, Black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.”

Anyone who takes an honest look at racism in the US today would have a hard time defending the notion that the US government has made good on its obligation to guarantee the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for Black people. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Black people have the lowest life-expectancy and highest mortality and infant mortality rates of any racial demographic in the country. Thus even on the most basic unalienable right that King refers to, that of life, Black people have no guarantee.

Without a doubt, we have made progress in the struggle against racism since King’s day. The destruction of legal racial discrimination ended American apartheid and was a blow to racism. We won Affirmative Action. Certainly, people’s attitudes toward race and racism are drastically different from those in the pre-Civil Rights Era, with polls showing that far fewer white people would move out of their neighborhoods if a Black family moved in today than in the 1950s. These legacies of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements are just a few of the important victories in the fight against racism that are worth celebrating. And indeed, we should take note of the historic significance of the fact that many people are enthusiastic about the candidacy and likely presidency of a liberal, Black man. But one can take note of such significance without ignoring the actual content of what Obama is promising, (which is well within the framework of the Washington establishment), and while maintaining a comprehensive grasp of racism as an institution and the struggle necessary to overcome it. In the same way, one can recognize that the downfall of South African apartheid was an event of tremendous historic significance, (which I have never minimized), while not blinding one’s self to the fact that the condition and treatment of Black South Africans today is atrocious and that racism continues to shape their lives.

We have very different standards for our appraisal of world events. The root of this difference lies in the fact that while you take action to resist oppression and war, and seek the betterment of the condition of oppressed and occupied peoples, I seek liberation—the overcoming of the institutions that drive this oppression. You have given up on such a goal if you ever believed in it (“justice for the crimes of the past…unfortunately, never comes”). That’s unfortunate, but fine with me. What is unacceptable though is when you caricature an effort to understand the nature of oppression and the fight to uproot it as “constantly point[ing] out that things are much worse than others think they are.”

For those of us who face the brutality of racism each and every day in this country, and those who stand in solidarity with us, we don’t need the left to “constantly point out” how bad things are. That is self-evident. Nor do we need to sit back, “celebrate the moment” of a likely Obama presidency and hope for the amelioration of our condition from on high. The question is what are we doing to fight racism, both in the struggle against it today and for a future without racism. On this question, I am proud to say that my organization, the International Socialist Organization, is at the center of some of the most significant struggles against racism in the country, among other crucial struggles against oppression, exploitation, and American empire. The term “sectarian,” which you use to describe the ISO, refers to leftists who are so purist in their principles that they abstain from working together in common struggle against injustice with important allies who they may not agree with on everything. The record of the ISO couldn’t be further from that description. Among work with all kinds of groups and individuals in the anti-war, immigrant rights, anti-death penalty and other movements, we have hosted—well, you, actually—at our conferences. I am proud of our contributions in building a strong and principled left.

There’s something tragic about your work, Rahul. On the same car ride that we shared in the Iraqi desert that you referred to, after you obnoxiously ridiculed my beliefs, I said to you, “alright—how do you think change takes place?”

“That’s a stupid question,” you snapped back, defensively. “Change happens in lots of ways! From below, from above…” You cited the example of the transformation of Turkey led by Attaturk as evidence that socialists “oversimplify” things by looking to the class struggle as the motor force of history.

“Ok then,” I said. “How do you think we can get the troops out of Iraq?”

You paused.

“I don’t think they can come out,” you responded.

I was amazed. You and I had just completed a week-long investigation of the US occupation of Iraq, witnessing what is, without a doubt, one of the greatest crimes against humanity in world history. At the end of the day though, you saw the continued US occupation as a lesser and more preferable evil than what would ensue following a US withdrawal. Nearly five years later, the US has destroyed Iraq beyond recognition.

It is deeply unfortunate to me that an activist who has dedicated himself to resisting American empire, who possesses a sharp and thoughtful mind—a valuable weapon in our fight—is unable to find the solution to the injustices that so outrage you. But that doesn’t give you the right to disparage those who fight for that solution.

I also find hope in the rise of Obama’s campaign, though not because of illusions in what the campaign itself can deliver or the prospects of an Obama presidency. Rather, the success of the campaign does indicate the progress made in the struggle against racism in the US, and it is inspiring millions of people, Black and otherwise, to believe that we deserve better. Such raised expectations are the precondition to the movements necessary to actually fight for what we deserve.