Sat, 15 Mar 1997 23:38:40 -0500 COCKROACH! #45 ( Haikus and Racism) A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to Subscribtions are free at Now online at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ How often this zine will appear depends on you! -------------------------------------------------------- 1. Haikus and Racism... 2. Ebonics! -------------------------------------------------------- Haikus and Racism Tony writes; >Bob! What the hell is *this* load of *bullshit*?! You really had to be >hopped up on some good shit to come up with this stuff. I mean, c'mon. >You have much more sense than this. (<=disapproving look=>) > >>Since when is black racism just as bad as white rascism? > >Since we all crawled out of the primordial stew or whatever the hell it >was. That's since when. All cleared up? **Thanks to Justin for >pointing this issue out and putting it to rest** Oh really! Well, I disagree with you! Despite your sour looks- white rascism has been the OPPRESSOR-Black rascism has been the OPPRESSED! Now to me that is a BIG difference.. And if Justin agrees with you he is full of shit also. Communists are not democrats on this stuff. We look at it the WHYS,the WHERES and the WHO,S to determine a position on a question like Ebonics. But for you this question is posed as all liberals pose the question. You hit me and i hit you back thus you are both wrong. This is just another reason for me to say; malecki wrote; >>...interested in the ways in which discussion of it seems to bring out >>(or not bring out) certain actual or potential succumbings to liberal >>racism (which seems to be the case both with Tony and TimWetc). Tony replied; >Oh yes, of course. Thank you, O Great and Mighty Dr. Diety Cox, to whose >"infinite wisdom" we should all look to in these times of not being able >to think for ourselves. You know, Comrade, you seem to have a real >underlying problem with people, a sort of "social ineptness" if you will. > (I'm sure, for arguments sake, you WON'T.) No, no problem at all. I only read what you write. Let go around a bit in the old brain and then I spit out exactly what i thing about in reply. > >>One point is, I believe, certain: there is no such thing as an >"inferior" dialect or >language, nor is there any dialect or language in >any way superior or inferior to any >other dialect or language in its >capability of expressing (or thinking in) abstractions. Oh yes their is! And it is based on economic power! In this case it is also based on historical repression of black people. A good example is the Swedes. before and at the beginning of the second world war German was the second language after the end of the war it became English. In the case of Ebonics this language is inferior in the sense that it is a product of historical repression. It was in fact forced on the people because of a racist system in the United States. And in fact is spoken by a minority of people who in the long run have never had a pot to piss in thanks to the system. It is historically a language of despair! But I defend it to the hilt just because it is inferior and is and issue which the ruling class and facists use as a tool to mobilise the middle class in their campaign of so called "reverse racism" just as they did and are doing on the issue of affirmative action. So the only abstraction around here for me is your at best liberal view of the whole subject of Ebonics! > >SEE, THAT'S THE THING...NOBODY (and I challenge you to prove otherwise) >TO MY KNOWLEDGE, HAS SAID EBONICS WAS "INFERIOR." I ORIGINALLY POSED THE >QUESTION OF ITS DIVIDING THE RACES BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT ANY FURTHER >RACE DIVISION MIGHT DEFEAT THE PURPOSES OF MARXISM. I WASN'T SURE AND I >WANTED FEEDBACK, BUT YOU, INSIST ON PICKING APART MY WORDS AND TWISTED >THEM UP. I REST MY CASE. THANK YOU, DEAR CARROL, FOR OBSTRUCTING MY >LEARNING ONCE AGAIN. GOOD DAY SIR!! Well the above is halfassed confusion. The confusion is wholely on your opart Tony. I did not nor ever will say that Ebonics has a tendency to split along racist lines.Because it certainly does! Well this also goes for the National Question but it does not mean that Communists do not fight for the right of peoples to self determination - including the right to succeed and build their own state. This naturally does not mean that Communists raise this to a PRINCIPLE everywhere but we do try to have a Marxist approach to this stuff. And I am sorry to hear that Carrol who has said a lot of good things on Ebonics and myself have "obstructed" your learning. The reason I write this stuff is because I hope you learn something! I in fact have enormous amount of patience for the youth and workers and poor people Tony. And in fact allow a lot of time and patience to explain stuff like this. So keep your chin up! We might make you a Communist yet:) > >--pause for effect-- Don,t choke on your coffee Tony! > >>So the real sick logic of this is clear: blacks genetically >inferior=>hardwired to speak >a less sophisticated Ebonic language >(though as I noted many kids speak in the >same damn way)=>black kids >can't therefore understand complicated sentences >and algebra=>black kids >fail at a high rate and must therefore be removed from >integrated >classes so as not to bring the rest of the student body down=>first >>separate Ebonics classes, probably to be supervised by incompetent >Afrocentrics >(has anyone ever heard the melanin queen Frances Cress >Welsing for whose >evening lecture there was a *massive* turnout when I >was teaching) and Muslims, >and then separate high tech Indian >reservations for the black underclass, as >recommended by Murray and >Herrnstein and to be supervised by the thugs from the >Nation of Islam. Is the above a description of the middle-class nightmare of America. It sort of reminds me of Harrisburg. All of a sudden the middle class who for years have been living in a dream world find the hard reality creeping in on their turf. The two car garage-clipped grass--kiddies playing on the front lawn--the product of an exceptional short period in history that gave a lot of the post war generations a life style on the backs of not only the millions upon millions of dead from the war--but colonialism and keeping the third world near the brink of mass starvation and catastopy. The success story is over and now the price has to be paid one way or another. > >WHOA...stop the train. Where do you people come up with this? Is it >something in your water supply or something? The one thing that some >people here (myself included at times) have shown to me is the total lack >of **common sense** People like Louis G. and Lou P. and others have been >strictly intellectual and adult about it all and have put up with it, but >yet I repeatedly succumb to this malady and get caught up in and start >stuff like this Ebonics debate. I thought we could all handle this like >adults and Marxists, but yet I and others have proven to myself that this >is not possible. We bicker like children and call names. Well, you >people CAN'T BREAK ME. I'm sorry, but if you want to continue arguing, >you'll have to pay for another 5 minutes!! I SAID GOOD DAY SIR!! Kouis G. is trying to write of the working class--and Louis P--well stick around awhile and you will surely experience the New York Librarians adult worl.. > >--smile to self quietly-- Don,t smile yet. Because by the time you have read this-I bet you are not smiling anymore. Tony trys to be cute in ending up this stuff. So I will give him something cute in return to chew on. Warm Regards Bob Malecki In ending up this stuff on morals and intellectual snobbery I would like to quote the words of a very old and wonderful blackman Willy! Willy used to sit on the steps with us kids in the neighbourhood. Willy was always there. This very old black man. And I remember to this very day the words he often said to us kids on the hot, humid summer nights of New York City. Willie would say: "Watchit boy, this nigger ain,t got nothin never from rich whiteman!" Oh Willie, you wonderful old man--how right you were... All these years we sat with you on the steps and that was what you were trying to hammer into our heads. Willie how fucking right you were. I think Willie deserves a statue right next old Abe Lincoln. Because this man new what the bottom line in the fight between the have,s and the has not,s as Willie use to put. Willie with those few words new more about class struggle then all the fucking liberals alive today. Hats off to Willie a great black old man! AND COCKROACHES! When I was a kid growing up in New York City, I met my first cockroach. In fact I met millions of them. If I were to get up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom the cockroaches were there. For example, arriving at the bathroom to take a leak. I would turn on the light and thousands of cockroaches on the ceiling and walls would run for cover. Even here in Sweden their is a word for cockroach, (Kackeläcka), so obviously the cockroach is and international bug! However I have not seen one cockroach in my 23 years of exile here. However, in New York City, the struggle to exterminate the cockroach has been going on for a very long time. I remember so well the struggle. In our apartment we would spray poison two or three times a year. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of cockroaches would die in these attacks. Some would survive and move up into the apartment over our heads. Then the people in that apartment would try and exterminate them. The same thing would happen. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands would die. Then the cockroaches would move up to the next apartment. When the cockroaches got to the apartment nearest the roof of the apartment house. The same procedure described above would take place. Then the cockroaches started their long trip down again and end up in our apartment! Then this stuff would start all over again. The struggle to exterminate the cockroach has probably been going on for centuries.It is probably still going on today. Perhaps the only difference being that the cockroaches have gotten a little smarter and have become more resistant to the pesticides used against them. Today when I am soon to be 53 years old and understand this stuff a whole lot better, I,m beginning to understand that I perhaps have a lot in common with the cockroach! I mean the treatment these bugs have been getting sort of reminds me of what poor and working class people have been getting for centuries. Of course the ruling class both in America and internationally have had much more refined methods of extermination of poor and working class people. But the millions and millions of dead poor and working class people are still a fact. The dead can not carry on the struggle. It is only the survivors, people like me and you, who can do anything about the ruling class trying to wipe us out. Perhaps we can learn something from the cockroaches struggle to survive extermination. If the cockroach was smart, it would of did something about their situation a long time ago. I mean just think if the cockroaches had begun to organise themselves into trade unions or started a newspaper called "Cockroach" claiming that they were going to put and end to people who historically trying to exterminate them.That might have saved a whole lot of lives and suffering for the cockroaches. Well poor and working class people have been trying to organise themselves for a fairly long time now. Unfortunately, just like the cockroaches poor and working class people are devided about the question of : What should be done? Some say I ain,t going to do a god dam thing! Others say, that I am going to make the best of it and fuck everybody else. Some even join the side of the exterminators, while others just want to reform the ruling class into being nice guys or girls! The author of these lines thinks that the struggle against the ruling class (exterminators), is a struggle of poor and working class people against the ruling class.Only one side or the other can win.Because if poor and working class people don't win, they lose! Perhaps poor and working class people can build and alliance with the cockroaches to fight for political power. The cockroaches understand historically what the struggle is about. In America and Sweden, as elsewhere there is a dire need for a new political party. A party which can fight for political power for poor and working class people in their own name. Perhaps we could call it "The cockroach party". Because I think that even the cockroaches understand by this time that it is either them or us! I mean if we want that apple pie dream. Poor and working class people are going to have to organise themselves in order to take the apple pie from those who have got it! Because there isn't anyway else the rich and powerful are going to give it up without a fight. Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- Ebonics! Neil wries; > > Bob Malecki and a couple others say that criticizing the (strikebreaking) >Oakland , Ca. schoolboard and others for pandering to the >patois of "ebonics" as some panacea to cover up these bourgeois >politicians caving in to the gutting out of funding for english language, > ESL, Head start and other moderately successful programs >is racism or the politics of the 'white middle class'. I love Neil! I love Neil because he is always consistent! On EVERY question whether it be the former Soviet Union--the Trade Unions--and now Ebonics he always takes the historical ULTRA-LEFT position of throwing out the baby with the bath water. And Ultimately winds up on the side of the class enemy. Too bad because I think Neil *really* hates the bougeoisie! The last time around with Neil was on the LP list and the trades unions and now that even the LP is getting interested in this question i shall send this + some other material to it. Neil was trying to tell us that the Trade Unions are at best counter-revolutionary and that Malecki, who thinks that Communist will be in trade unions and fight for the leadership of the working class was at best a asskisser to the trade union bureaucracy. Because Neil as usual can not see the difference, nor the historical role that trade unions play for the proletariat. His line is to go out in the desert and build something rrrrrr-volutionary with his little state cap ultra-left group. Now Neil has turned his attention to the question of Ebonics with basically the same methodology that he has on the trade unions. The only difference is that now Malecki is kissing ass for the "strikebreaking" Oakland scoollboard who at best are just trying to wrip off the state for money. In fact he says i am caving in to the board who does not want to fund english classes. Well he is wrong on all three counts as usual. In fact Communists nor have i said one word in support of the Oakland schoolboard. And in fact Communists are for free education for children and in this case Ebonics as a tool in helping these children to find a way they can communicate in a language that they feel comfortable in. It does not mean that i am for not teaching english or anything else but it does mean that i support the demands for teaching Ebonics to these children. And in fact i have a question to Neil. Don't you think that this debate that is going on has very racist overtones. Not in the least the so called reverse racism shit that is becoming very popular. I recently said in another letter the following; Oh really! Well, I disagree with you! Despite your sour looks- white rascism has been the OPPRESSOR-Black rascism has been the OPPRESSED! Now to me that is a BIG difference.. And if Justin agrees with you he is full of shit also. Communists are not democrats on this stuff. We look at it the WHYS,the WHERES and the WHO,S to determine a position on a question like Ebonics. But for you this question is posed as all liberals pose the question. You hit me and i hit you back thus you are both wrong. and I did not nor ever will say that Ebonics has a tendency to split along racist lines.Because it certainly does! Well this also goes for the National Question but it does not mean that Communists do not fight for the right of peoples to self determination - including the right to succeed and build their own state. This naturally does not mean that Communists raise this to a PRINCIPLE everywhere but we do try to have a Marxist approach to this stuff. among other things. > >Bullshit Bob! Try Preaching your liberal platitudes and panderings >to black students in LA or Oakland Schools who are sick and tired >of being dissed( whoops !!) by the upper middle class forces who >sit on these school boards and who go along with 90% of >of Pete Wilson's and the Calif. Legislatures cutting hundreds >of millions of dollars out of school budgets over the last 6 years. You should have been and algebra teacher. Because your arguement is OB+BO= B. Oakland Board + black oppression = Betrayal! But it has nothing to to with dialectics nor contradictions, nor combined and uneven development, nor having any kind of tactics to intervene in poor and working class struggle other then screaming. Bullshit Bob as uyou once again wonder off into the desert! > >Along with the bourgeois programme of making the workers >paying for more 'public' monies tranferred to the rich. >Many black , white, latin and other working class students >are facing a dummying-down of public education into previously >latent but now more blatant 3 or 4 tiered public education based >directly not just on race, but class as well. OK! I can buy this stuff. At least from a distamce. I mean the same thing is going on in Scandinavia including a form of the Ebonics debate. I recently said that we have here in Sweden a garantee for first and seconf generation foreign nationals to send their children to state funded home language courses. Because these children feelin secure in their home language first can learn to communicate in a secure and comfortable envionment. Going on later to be able to learn other languages instead of winding up in a dead end of having NO language at all! > >In LA as well as Oakland here in Calif, many black public school students >and parents themselves have denounced the use of "ebonics" as part >of this dummying- down process for working class students . >With all the budget cuts and class over crowding. >(Typical HS English classes pushing 40 students in LA and Oakland > public schools!) >Use of Ebonics will more likely just use up more precious class time >and in this education for the capitalist market system , leave many >working class black youth falling even further behind the higher tiers >of the "separate and unequal" "schools" in the phony >"bourgeois " equality of the present public education system. >Educators like Jonathon Kozol (Savage Inequalities) have shown have >tiered the education funding and training structure to serve the needs >of the bourgeois corporations, who as they need LESS skilled ghetto labor, >and LESS educated black workers who are a key potential volcano >of workers rebellion of past and future, are truly ghettoizing the level >of "education' for workers to correspond to THEIR profit needs and >the needs of social control as well. Well, everything that is done in society the bougeoisie certainly fight for their interests. But this does not mean that you take out a stick and beat Ebonics asnd black kids on the head. It meansd that Communists defend free school and education in any language which their appears to be a need for amongst poor and working class people. So in fact you are just supporting the parents who trash ebonics I defend both these parents and the parents of those children who want to use Ebonics! > >If "ebonics' use by teachers can combat elitism and bring the >teachers , TAs, classified employees, students and working class > parents together to fight for quality education in the inner cities, then > that would would be a big step forward for the black and other working > class forces, who have taken defeat after defeat from the rich and their state >here in Cali f .and other states over th past 5 years.. Good. Sounds like a fairly decent partial goal for teachers. I think that we have to go much futher and build a poor and working class republic in the United States as elsewhere being the only *real* garantee that our children have a future at all! > >But to promote the use of "ebonics" (patois) as a second language and make >pseudo scientific defenses of it, e.g "Ebonics is genetically based >language in African Americans with origins in Africa" ( Arguments so absurd that >even the board members are retracting them now!!) is to fall into >a real trap of reactionary "eugenics" thinking . This is however , >where so many nationalist supporters of separatism/segregation, usually >mainly white racist exploiters but now with a coterie of black nationalists >sucking up for a bigger piece of capitalist pie, are taking us. Ah Neil are you a board member? I mean you always appear to know what those in power are trying to do. The problem is that you always throw out the baby with the bathwater! Once again! As you have done on the question of the Soviet Union--the trade unions--and now Ebonics! Never any contradictions, no tactics, and in the final analisis desertion into the desert in the face of the ruling classes attacks on poor and working class people! In Defense of Ebonics! In Defense of all children to free education! For a workers government which is the only garantee of justice and equality! For a Multi-racial Workers Party in the United States! Bob Malecki ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! Or Get The Latest Issue of COCKROACH a zine for poor and working-class people http://www.algonet.se/~malecki Back issues of Cockroach and the book can also be found at; http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ --------------------------------------------------------