02-21-06,9:36am
Excerpts from the 28th National Convention Keynote Report(2005), Sam Webb
THE FIGHT AGAINST RACISM
Racism is not a static phenomenon. It changes and has to be constantly studied.
We do this in order to become more effective fighters against racism and for equality. We can?t rest on our history, although we should draw inspiration and understanding from it as we go forward.
Racism is not a given of human existence. It is neither above history nor a completely autonomous structure of oppression. If it were, then we might as well give up now.
Rather, racism is a product of history and struggle. As a set of practices and as a developed ideology it arose in the course of capitalist development.
Racism is fluid and adaptable. It doesn?t live alone, but mingles with backward anti-working class, anti-people, and pro-imperialist ideologies and practices. They come as a package.
Racism is not simply one group of people thinking badly about another. Or, to say it differently, racism is not just an attitude, not just a feeling or a prejudice.
Instead, racism is materially rooted in the institutional structures of our society. The material conditions and social relations of racial exploitation, subordination and dependence are not relics of the past (slavery and Jim Crow), but rather, they are constantly reproduced in contemporary life.
Racism mobilizes white people in a reactionary direction and facilitated the ultra right's ascendancy to power. In conferring relative advantages on white workers and people, it makes it more difficult for them to see that they have material as well as non-material interests in fighting racism. And, finally, it locks tens of millions of people of color into grossly inferior conditions of life. (full text,CPUSA Education Commission)
