[Peace-discuss] Race & class

[C. G. Estabrook]

TARIQ ALI WROTE 40 YEARS AGO—

"C.L.R. James (1901-89) is now, by any standards, an old man. He appears somewhat frail, but this impression evaporates when he begins to talk. It is almost as if one is being transported back to the polemical debates and arguments of the Thirties.

"James was born in the West Indies some 80 years ago. He came to Britain in the Thirties and soon developed a reputation as a sports writer and historian.

"I had last heard him speak at the ‘Dialectics of Liberation’ conference in the Roundhouse in 1967. On that occasion he had clashed fiercely with the black American leader Stokely Carmichael. ‘Race is decisive’, Carmichael had thundered. ‘No’, James had replied with quiet dignity, ‘it is class.’”

—CGE