[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Street / Campaign and Debate Reflections

[Phil Stinard]

I'm going to call Carl on the carpet for a rather careless, racist comment.  
Carl makes a parenthetical reference to "a 'leftist' who says 'gonna' and 
'ain't' -- undoubtedly a sign that s/he's down with the people".  As someone 
who grew up in southwest Iowa, in a school system where NONE of the students 
and teachers were "down with the people," I find the linking of the words 
"ain't" and "gonna" to "the people," by which I assume that Carl means 
African-Americans, to be simply racist.  All of my classmates as I was 
growing up were as white as they come, and vast numbers of them used the 
words "gonna" and "ain't," especially in spoken conversation.  It was one of 
the banes of our teacher's existence.  She was always trying to improve the 
students' English grammar, with little success.  Even in my case, I still 
say "gonna," although I've purged "ain't" from my spoken vocabulary.  My 
brother, a well-educated man with a Ph.D. in education, still says "ain't" 
sometimes.  And if you go down to a local bar, you'll see plenty of white 
people saying "gonna" and "ain't."  So, to carelessly and gratuitously imply 
that people who use "gonna" and "ain't" are "down with the people" (thinly 
veiled reference to  African-Americans, or perhaps to someone who panders to 
African-Americans--another stupid assumption), is racist.  You could make 
the rather weak argument that the person is illiterate (see above reference 
to brother with Ph.D. in education), but to imply that he or she MUST be 
African-American because he or she uses what you consider to be defective 
language is racist.  So-called intellectuals often use these kinds of 
off-handed comments to make themselves feel superior, but it adds nothing to 
their argument, and just makes them look foolish.  I'm guilty of it too, 
sometimes, but I make heroic efforts to catch myself.  Language is often 
used as a weapon to belittle, hurt, and minimize others.  Don't fall into 
that trap.

--Phil




>Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 11:13:53 -0500
>From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Street / Campaign and Debate
>	Reflections	/ Oct 17
>To: Peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com
>Message-ID:
>	<Pine.SGI.4.10.10410181044100.85018-100000 at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
>Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
>[A generally good commentary, I think, Mort -- it starts strong, and it's
>certainly correct that the differences between the Bonesmen, such as they
>are, lie in domestic, not foreign policy.  But the paragraph I've
>excerpted below could come from those Alexander Cockburn describes as "The
>older crowd [who] hate Bush ... but they hate Nader more." Attributing a
>"racial problem" to Nader (quoting a "leftist" who says "gonna" and
>"ain't" -- undoubtedly a sign that s/he's down with the people), which the
>liberal Kerry is supposedly free of, is simply McCarthyism.  --CGE]
>
>Alex Cockburn, writing of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, 40 years
>ago:
>
>...Flowers of the sixties, now gone sadly to seed, have been coursing
>round the nation's courthouses, challenging Nader's efforts to get on
>state ballots. The older crowd hate Bush, that's for sure. But they hate
>Nader more. So here was the great irony. Most of those mistily honoring
>the FSM don't much care for free speech when it looks as though it might
>be risky, might inconvenience their favored candidate, even though the
>favored candidate, John Kerry, wants to fight a better war than Bush in
>Iraq and then march on to Teheran.
>
>In fact the original FSM movement was a much bigger tent than people now
>recall. My old friend Conn Hallinan, who was an FSM militant and arrested
>in Sproul Hall in the largest mass university arrests (800) in the history
>of the US, has just reminded me of this. Hallinan says, "We had right
>wingers, libertarians, conservatives and of course weirdos. There was an
>FSM activist, who went on to successfully challenge the law forbidding
>women to hang off the side of cable cars in San Francisco. She was a
>right-wing libertarian."
>
>These days the left and PC crowd would find that the woman was opposed to
>affirmative action, or some such, and would have driven her out with oaths
>and curses. They have no idea of tactical coalitions. So much for the
>heritage of Sixties radicalism. Not everyone's gone to seed, to be sure.
>There's Lenni, who finally got me off the chair and actually there are
>many, many more who understand the importance of the third word that comes
>after Free Speech, namely "Movement". Without a movement you have nothing,
>and you've built nothing. That's what the ABB "leftists" don't understand
>now. November 3 will be a bit late in the day to start looking for one.
>
>It's the long-term movements that count, the ones that don't sell out
>every four years, to support someone like Kerry who wants to widen the war
>in Iraq and then go and burn down Teheran. These days many communities
>campuses have pro Palestinian groups on them. There were almost none
>thirty years ago. That's a real Free Speech Movement, and one that has
>made a difference and will make a difference long after this campaign is
>over.
>
>
>On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Morton K.Brussel wrote:
>
> > We're all by now weary of long commentaries repeating common themes,
> > but I particularly admired this one by the clear headed, passionate and
> > compassionate Paul Street. It appears on ZNET, which can use your
> > support (http://www.zmag.org) as a subscriber.
> > MKB
> > > ...
> > > And the notion of some people on the left not caring if he returns is
> > > beneath contempt. I recently read one my fellow radicals saying that
> > > "things will be bad under Kerry and things will be bad under Bush."
> > > Ho-hum.  Oh well. Whatever.  I know what the radical means, of course:
> > > capitalism sucks but take that message to the black community and see
> > > what kind of response you get, comrade.   An African-American leftist
> > > recently wrote me to mention the "calllous indifference" of some of
> > > "the Nader crowd"  to "a significant constituency that they hope to
> > > appeal to:" Blacks.  This cold disregard, this leftist feels,
> > > "denote[s] a racial problem that these people are gonna have to deal
> > > with at some point. Non-leftist black, brown, asian, etc. folk ain't
> > > impressed with such disregard."  Good point...