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[–] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What I believe the author was trying to address in this framing was how the Black workers were pushed out later by (in his words) the company and the union.

I shared this except upstream in this thread but I'll use it again:

When most coal mining jobs were brutal hand-loading of the coal while working in two foot high tunnels, there were many jobs for Afrikan labor. But as unionization and mechanization raised the wages and improved the work, it became “too good” for Afrikans, and the companies and the UMW started pushing Afrikans out.

I really like the way D61 put it but I wonder if we shift it a little bit to be more specific that they could not be relied upon to have solidarity with their racialized union siblings.

It isn't relevant if they viewed themselves as proletariat, the union (and by extension the union members) allowed this to happen.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)

    What I believe the author was trying to address in this framing was how the Black workers were pushed out later by (in his words) the company and the union.

    That's fair! But I still think that framing a bit of a misnomer, as the workings of a capitalist entity, in this instance mining companies, is pinned on the workers as a failure of solidarity. Of course the capitalist sees value in delineating and forcing the separation of racial classes. Same with the unions, as the leadership became reactionary and saw material worth in excluding the Black workers; despite the solidarity that the workers themselves exhibited across racial lines.

    I really like the way D61 put it but I wonder if we shift it a little bit to be more specific that they could not be relied upon to have solidarity with their racialized union siblings.

    To this point, I'm not sure that the history of the proletarian movements truly supports that notion. Even returning to the Antebellum South, slaves and early "white" proles found such solidarity that slave states scampered to institute a myriad of laws prohibiting any contact. A reaction betraying capital's need to artificially reinforce racial lines. While a more modern example in comparison to Blair Mountain, the Young Patriots, descendants of the same mining workers, also readily found solidarity with the Black Panther and larger socialist movement.

    This feels a problem where neither side attempts earnest cross-racial solidarity, so each side writes off the other as a lost cause or rival. Ultimately playing into the hands of capital. How can one expect instant solidarity if no connection is maintained?

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  • But I still think that framing a bit of a misnomer, as the workings of a capitalist entity, in this instance mining companies, is pinned on the workers as a failure of solidarity.

    (Small disclaimer: I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions based on these exerpts alone. I don't have the capacity to expand on my general understanding of the text with specific examples, as much as I'd love the excuse to deep dive again. )

    I'm struggling to see where you are coming from. It's possible that I am simply unaware of actions the workers took to protect the jobs of the Black workers. I didn't do any sort of investigation before presenting this response.

    But like, these workers literally shot someone for their right to unionize and 10 or so years later they just let their Black coworkers get pushed out like that? One might say, "maybe they didn't notice" and to that I'd respond probably not, because they also started excluding Black delegates literally a month after the Battle of Blair Mountain. I shared this elsewhere in the post:

    While UMW welcomed Afrikan workers as unpaid organizers and militants, when a mining community in the North became organized very often the Afrikan “union brothers” were told to get out. At the 1921 UMW Pittsburgh District Convention an experienced Afrikan delegate, recalling how he and hundreds of other Afrikan miners had taken up rifles to join the union’s “Armed Marches” in West Virginia, complained bitterly:

    Those colored men from the state of West Virginia put their shoulders to the shoulders of white brothers, and our newspapers tell us that they have sacrificed their lives for this great movement.

    I think it looks very embarrassing when a man would sacrifice his life for this movement, and after the victory is won then his brother would say: ‘We need you no longer.’ A livelihood belongs to every man and when you deprive me of it… you have almost committed murder to the whole entire race.

    I want to think my union today, as toothless as it is, would do something. I'm finding hard to believe that when the gains they made were so fresh, they couldn't do more.

    To this point, I'm not sure that the history of the proletarian movements truly supports that notion.

    I'm going to be real and say I'm not 100% sure I finished reading Black Reconstruction in America but I think W. E. B. Du Bois would say otherwise. I'm going to take the easy out and quote Wikipedia:

    Du Bois noted that the Southern working class, i.e. black freedmen and poor whites, were divided after the Civil War along the lines of race, and did not unite against the white propertied class, i.e. the former planters. He believed this failure enabled the white Democrats to regain control of state legislatures, pass Jim Crow laws, and disfranchise most blacks and many poor whites in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

    The rainbow coalition was a very encouraging show of solidarity. But it was unusual. I don't think Sakai is saying it's literally impossible, but that there is a hurdle.

    This feels a problem where neither side attempts earnest cross-racial solidarity, so each side writes off the other as a lost cause or rival. Ultimately playing into the hands of capital. How can one expect instant solidarity if no connection is maintained?

    There has got to be some social or cultural norms that we are reading differently. Not you as an individual but those in this thread who are saying "it's hopeless, give up."

    I don't know that I've witnessed a lack of solidarity between racialized and white leftists that came from the racialized folks side. People say all sorts of wild shit on line, but I've not seen it IRL. Where I am at, the current divide is citizens/ PR throwing temporary foreign workers under the bus.

    It's possible our individual experiences in the different places we live are playing a very strong role in influencing our interpretation.

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