[The Cushite]

I think that with the white-supremacist, capitalist society that we live in, any attempt at true social change has to address the class divide. Pres. Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty based on the premise that no one in America could really be free if they were poor. Because of capitalism, choices are constrained by resources. The capitalist class understands this all too well. The problem is that there are things in the mainstream conscience that serve to distract us from this reality, things like arguments about morality (Carl Rove manufactered the Gay Marriage debate in 2003 to literally get Bush re-elected, it worked like a charm) and other symbolic ideologies that serve to do little to begin to address vast economic inequalities. Bro. TonyB06 is correct that the only thing the two parties truly respect is economic power. Notice that with all of the symbolic breakthroughs of the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, Dr. King was not assassinated until he himself launched his campaign against poverty. Dr. King noted that the true fight begins when we address the issues of economic equality, because then we have to start talking about the redistribution of wealth, meaning that the capitalist class must give up capital, which will not happen. We see many poor people of color today dying in Iraq to preserve a "way of life" in America predicated on greed, check Bush's speeches after 9-11 and as they invaded Iraq.

The need to develop class consciousness has to begin with honest dialogue about our collective condition, across those racial and class lines, that characterizes that condition in collective economic terms. But , the smokescreen of prejudice disguised as racism always poison's these kinds of discussions. Ultimately, the discussion gets away from the economic realities that so characterize our condition and get focused on questions of "do we like each other?", and "can we all get along?", etc. This is a difficult dialogue to have because even though poor people across racial lines do share in the oppression that comes with being poor in a capitalist society, they don't share in the experience of being black in a white supremacist society. Whites do carry a psychological benefit of merely being white in this country that serves to give them the "benefit of the doubt" in individual incidents as well as a sense of entitlement that comes with being white in America. This clouds how many will see poverty and the collective plight of poor blacks. What this does is fracture any solidarity there could be with poor blacks, unless the "wage of whiteness" is freely acknowledged and accepted by the whites. In order to do this, whiteness must be marked as an advantage, which many poor whites wouldn't accept because they simply see themselves as poor. Race doesn't matter to them because being white gave them no percieved economic advantage. But, race was the basis for the economic oppression of black people upon entering into this country. So, for black people, racial justice is inextricably linked to economic justice. This is not so for poor whites. They (poor whites) see no reason to engage in a collective struggle to overcome poverty, but an individual one. Class consciousness is about collective thinking, which is antithetical to a strictly economic movement in a capitalist society. In capitalist societies, the economic empowerment of one is seen as the disempowerment of another, so somebody has got to loose in order for someone to win (zero-sum gain competition is the chief motivator in capitalistic societies).

If all of this sounds too socialistic for most people, that is because I think we need to have a voice in our community that is critical of capitalism. In the civil rights era, I think we were able to raise the conscience of so many black people because there was more open criticism of capitalism (Dr. King, the Panthers, etc.). Capitalism takes for granted the notion of poverty, that "the poor will always be among us" so to speak. So the motivation is not to end poverty collectively, because that's impossible. You just need to make sure that you are not one of the poor, which fractures any collective movement against poverty. When you have a disproportionate number of black folk who are poor, then a message that questions the necessity and justice of poverty would serve to give people hope. Enigma_AKA talks about motivating people, but if people believe that poverty is justified, deserved and ain't never gonna change, what's the point of trying to change it? When more of the underclass becomes critical of the percieved status quo of poverty and questions the very nature of the widening gap between the haves and the have nots, then we will see people having hope that things can and must get better. But, if our message is simply "how to become better capitalists", then I believe the very nature of capitalist enterprise and competition represents more splintering of our community, and in turn ensures the continued oppression of the underclass and other oppressed peoples in this country.

Blackwatch!!!!!!