"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.

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    From a historiography standpoint I actually really dislike Settlers. The historical tradition pioneered by Du Bois and culminated in Theodore Allen's two part Invention of the White Race is much more robust as an explainer for a) how whiteness operates in the United States and b) what to do about it. Sakai puts forward the thesis that white folks are essentially a lost cause, part of the labor aristocracy, and betrayed the revolutionary movement for their privileges. While mostly true, he ignores the historical context that led to this development, and doesn't really examine the "wages of whiteness" and how poor whites got hoodwinked into this non-material wage to support a ruling class that views them with nothing but contempt. I would encourage you to read Du Bois' Black Reconstruction alongside the aforementioned Allen books, or peruse this and this for a more nuanced critique of Settlers that I don't want to get into here.

    • LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Invention of the White Race has been on my list for like a year but my book addiction keeps fucking me

      • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        It's one of the most important texts I've ever read, and so well written to boot. Cannot recommend it enough, you should really prioritize this one. It makes the construction of whiteness so so clear and a lot of things about the United States click into place after reading.

        • LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Alright, you convinced me. I'm still trying to finish Monsters of the Market and The Half Has Never Been Told, but that'll be my next

        • LilComrade [comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          How does it compare to ibram x kendi’s explanation of the structural creation of whiteness in colonial America? Is it the same?

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Rashid of the NABPP-PC has some good quotes from Mao.

      “If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary party, without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.”

      And

      Furthermore, Lenin said those who flee the real revolutionary movement for fear of repression are to be pitied and counseled, but as for those who try to blame the workers and portray their flight as politically principled, he denounced them as “apostates” and “disgusting renegades,” stating “[t]hese runaways then becomes the worst advisors for the working class movement and therefore its dangerous enemies.”

      It makes me wonder how many people here bemoaning the democrat party's loss as the sign of the Oracle of Settler-Delphi to divide the working class and write off the majority to fetishize the minority from their theater boxes like petty bougeoise onlookers

      • Vncredleader
        ·
        3 years ago

        It makes me wonder how many people here bemoaning the democrat party’s loss as the sign of the Oracle of Settler-Delphi to divide the working class and write off the majority to fetishize the minority from their theater boxes like petty bougeoise onlookers

        See I think I have fallen into that myself, and really think a lot of us here have a tendency to do just that. It's why the "read settlers" meme, while accurate, has always put a bad taste in my mouth. What people want as a take-away is not necessarily productive, or conscious. We had revolutionary moments in the past here, and even with serious problems racially within them; we did show revolutionary tendencies. If the original sin of settlers is true, then why have people broken through labor aristocracy? How did CPUSA see massive gains even when the dems where at their best ever?

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Oh sure, Settlers is certainly incomplete IMO. I've had Allen's books on my list for a while.