"Read Settlers" is a meme, but it's also a true meme. You should read it, or read other things about this thesis regarding the white working class in the US (I've heard other Marxists have since improved on Sakai's thesis but I don't know who they are).

White Americans are doubling down on the racism. As white settler colonialism is starting to face just a little bit of opposition (like teaching kids that maybe the US isn't a perfect, God-blessed country), they are losing their minds over the idea of losing even a tiny bit of their privileges. This is still a perfectly material explanation. White folks have enjoyed an incredible level of privilege since the beginning of this country and they will fight viciously to keep all of it.

IMO the bulk of white Americans are a lost cause. Not to say white folks can't be revolutionary (I'm white), but I think we probably should be spending our very limited time and resources on folks outside the imperial core break from western imperialism, and focus on the oppressed within the core. Any white Americans who want to join in are welcome but any concession to white supremacy is unacceptable.

Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying the Dems lost because racism or whatever. I don't care if the Dems win or lose, it doesn't matter. My point is much more about using electoral results and the campaigns that precede them to see where winds are blowing. It seems that "CRT" and fear-mongering about crime (and thus the need to fund even more cops) was a very effective message in appealing to large segments of the population - particularly the white population.

  • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Sunmary, but it’s more than this: From the moment the first settlers landed in Amerika, they constructed a system of enslavement built on a European definition of race. Many of the first slaves were the indigenous people of the continent.

    This system of exploitation and “cheap” labor was the foundation that the white class system was built on. Amerikan capitalism (really all capitalism) is dependent on forms of slavery. Even a poor/ working class white person participates in and benefits from the exploitation of minorities.

    Sakai argues that the true proletariat of Amerika are these minorities. Their labor is exploited and used to fund economic benefits for the white ruling class. The New Deal, for instance, was largely racially segregated.

    It is not impossible to be an ally, but it is very much like how a wealthy person can become a class traitor. It is not in their material interest and because of this it will be pretty rare. Liberation from capitalism is most likely to come from and be lead by the workers exploited by racial apartheid.

    Unsurprisingly, this theory/concept greatly upset the white man for a similar reason someone born into wealth instinctually rejects class analysis. “I worked hard”, “I’m not racist”, etc. That betrays a liberal outlook of individualism instead of a systemic understanding.

    Sakai doesn’t pull any punches. He uses clear, loaded language and his writing should be loaded. Amerika is unjust and evil. There are clains he’s a fed and “dividing workers”. To me that reeks of white cope and gosh damn is it ever stinky.

    The closest Amerika came to socialism was moderate social democracy with FDR and even then it was still dependent on apartheid. You cannot make any real progress on a socialist project in Amerika without accepting this, otherwise you will just be trying to build a socialist state on top of that actual proletariat.

    Someone please correct me if I missed a spot, I’m responding based off memory and still chugging coffee. I tried to use as little jargon as possible.

      • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I haven’t had a chance to read much Fanon yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a sobering analysis that realistically could only come from someone who is affected by that system.

          • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Why does that matter? He’s written other works if that’s what you’re asking.

            Regardless, this analysis was largely based on conversations and thought within the remnants of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and Sakai articulated it within Settlers.

            Settlers was written as an underground document for the surviving members of the BLA in prison trying to re-assess their strategy and the historical reason why the white Left abandoned them and other Black Liberation groups seems to be lost on a lot of people as well.

            To quote Dan Berger's "Subjugated Knowledges: Activism, Scholarship, and Ethnic Studies Ways of Knowing":

            Sakai is the child of Japanese immigrants and a former autoworker. Butch Lee is a transfeminist who published the 1980s feminist zine Bottomfish Blues. Both were politicized through their involvement with the black freedom struggle, from the civil rights phase through its revolutionary nationalist incarnations that described itself as part of a black liberation movement. These books were written and circulated within a semiclandestine network shaped by revolutionaries close to or part of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), the military offshoot of the Black Panther Party. Sakai and Lee have been key nodes in the circuits of intellectual discourse among imprisoned radicals, especially from the BLA. Their political biographies, like the books they produced, are tied to the fascinating but little known history of revolutionary nationalism based in Chicago from the 1960s to the 1990s. It was a political environment shaped by the racial geography of Chicago, which included a heady mixture of black liberationists, Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalists, Iranian Marxists, Palestinian militants, and white anti-imperialists. As a result the history of these books hints at the hidden history of Chicago’s late twentieth-century revolutionaries.

            If you also accept his claim that False Nationalism, False Internationalism was written by the group, which included Sakai, which was the "Red Rover" of Night Vision, then you might be able to tell at least which organizations, etc., that he was in contact with given the things that they were interested in at the times they were interested in them with the level of sophistication they had in their analyses. These people and those that worked with them are still out there but they probably have little interest in talking to you.

            That being said, even if we discount False Nationalism, False Internationalism and Night Vision as being at least co-authored by Sakai, there are a number of additional works published under that name, most of which are collected here: https://readsettlers.org/extras.html (The "Cash & Genocide" piece included as an appendix in Kersplebedeb's 4th printing of Settlers is for instance not included.)

            • ChairmanBao [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I have to read Fanon first, I think I can personally trust him more. I sincerely think Sakai sounds like a post-left version of Wretched of the Earth, but I've barely gotten into the text.

              I still refuse to believe this guy is real. Regardless of how right they are, his theories havent accomplished anything so far and I cant measure the progress. If people want to use this theory to organize, be my guest but please tell me there is a plan.

              • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Why does there need to be a plan involved for a piece that’s focused on a structural analysis? Sakai is a Maoist in the style of the Black Panthers, if I remember correctly.

                Can’t speak to how much its directly informed organizing. The book is useful for understanding racial apartheid and highlights why intersectionality is necessary.

          • layla
            ·
            3 years ago

            Does it matter? The analysis is correct.