Black, Brown & white: one nation, one class

By Gus Hall

This article was reprinted from the February 21, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The following is an excerpt from a report to the Communist Party USA's national committee Jan. 17. Excerpts have appeared in previous editions.

Our land is becoming increasingly multiracial and multinational. The work of the Communist Party must more reflect this reality.

Our "Communist plus" concept, "one nation, one class, Black, Brown and white," can be effective in fighting for working class unity.

One club leader wrote that his club works in a neighborhood that includes African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Greeks and Italians and a growing number of Russian and Cuban exiles. This reality should be reflected in the work of the club, in the questions it takes up, in its involvement in struggle. It should be reflected in mass meetings and cultural events.

In all this, the struggle against racism is strategic because in job discrimination, housing, education, welfare and police brutality the sharpest attacks are against African Americans.

The ideology of racism is most directly aimed against African Americans. The racist discrimination against African Americans affects and influences the policies and practices of chauvinism and discrimination against Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asian Americans, American Indians and all nationally oppressed people in the United States.

The vicious, stepped-up campaigns against immigrants, including deportations, raids and roundups, as well as the new anti-immigrant laws that deny families welfare, food stamps and Medicaid, directed against immigrants with and without documents, calls for greater involvement of our party, but especially our clubs in these struggles.

Overall, the polls and last election results showed a heightened rejection of racism and chauvinism by white working people.

The AFL-CIO's new policies and campaigns and against child labor and to organize low-wage, sweatshop, immigrant and women workers, who are disproportionately racially and nationally oppressed, is another advance in building the anti-racist majority in our country.

Also, the AFL-CIO is actively building strategic alliances with civil and human rights organizations and movements, as well as diversifying its own leadership. The anti-racist sentiments and actions are part of the radicalization process and trend toward class unity in struggle.

In every region and state, we have to be part of the debate and struggle to preserve, reinstitute and expand affirmative action in every area of life as the only way to adequately compensate for centuries of inequality.

Yes, quotas are the only way to achieve real affirmative action. We have to show that wherever affirmative action programs are given a fair shot, they benefit not only minorities, but also all working people.

Affirmative action programs and policies are being attacked mainly by the right-wing's legal, educational and corporate structures.

We have to be part of all these fights wherever they arise, in whatever form.

All opposition to affirmative action is objectively in the interests of perpetuating racism and inequality.

With the growing impact of the welfare crisis, the failure of workfare, the increase in police brutality, the deepening housing, education and unemployment crises, together with President Clinton's "ending affirmative action as we know it" campaign, his focus on a national "dialogue on race" is totally inadequate.

In the coming period the effects of the elimination of welfare benefits will be much more sharply felt. The ruling class cleverly staggered the cuts so that the effects would not take effect at once, or all at the same time.

Although thousands, especially immigrant families, have already been victimized, most states have adopted measures that will push people off assistance in anywhere from 20 to 36 months.

Already over a year has gone by. Time is running out to organize a people's fightback.

The lack of funds and policies to alleviate the multiple effects of the crises in minority communities calls for a militant protest and mass-action-oriented Communist program. The Party's African-American Equality Commission is now preparing such a program.

It is possible that the emergence of the Black Radical Congress (BRC) on the national scene could well mean that the political leadership vacuum in the African American community will be filled by an organized force that is able to mobilize and unite the African American people with their natural ally, labor and the working class.

Labor-African American unity is needed to build a mass movement that can put forward a pro-working class, anti- racist agenda that has jobs and affirmative action up front.

Our Party's contribution must be to raise to a new level the struggle against racism and chauvinism. It is our unique responsibility to point out their relationship to the capitalist system, to class exploitation and class struggle.

Because of our history and ideology, we are in the best position to show the absolute necessity for unity of all oppressed people and for unity of all racially and nationally oppressed with the working class.

The struggle against the ideology and practices of racism and for equality and class unity is perhaps our most important contribution to the class struggle and working class of our nation.

Based on the fact that many of the new members who joined in the past year are African American and Latino, including important forces and personalities in these movements, our party is fast becoming a microcosm of our nation, our class - one class, Black, Brown and white.

Given all the new elements in our party, class and country, and based on the recruiting of the past year, it is possible to bring even larger numbers of racially and nationally oppressed people into our party and leadership.

We are meeting as our country officially celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. We should be very proud that King came to embrace within his dream the fight for working class, Black, Brown and white unity in struggle.

King was gunned down by the system as he was leading workers - men and women, Black, Brown and white - against exploitation and for workers' rights. His is a flame we must help to keep burning in the memories and hearts of our whole nation.

One of the greatest freedom fighters in our country's history, King was an African American hero who fought fearlessly and tirelessly for his people's freedom.

But he was also an American hero who gave his all, his very life, for the basic human rights and freedom of all working and poor people in our land.