Juneteenth has been pushed on the working class as a progressive holiday, perpetuating myths of democracy in is a holiday that’s been celebrated in Texas since 1867. The holiday grew from the fact that slaves in Texas were not told they had been emancipated until 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
This holiday echoes the elevation of Lincoln by Obama, who was sworn into office on the Lincoln Bible, in an effort to declare his election victory the antiracist culmination of a struggle to realize American “democracy” that began with the “great emancipator” and victor of the Civil War.
The push for Juneteenth serves to perpetuate two myths:
First, that U.S. capitalism and “democracy” has a history of continuous progress to eliminate racism, and,
Second, the U.S. government and U.S. presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Obama have been the true representatives of anti-racism in world history.
The goal of both of these myths is to convince the working class, especially Black workers, to support U.S. imperialism. With the U.S. fighting multiple oil wars and in the midst of an economic depression, the ruling class has continued to explain its wars of empire as efforts to spread human rights and liberties around the world. As in earlier wars of empire, the U.S. ruling class hopes to hide the reality of racism behind the image of a false hero such as Lincoln or Obama.
But we in the working class need to understand that racism is a fundamental part of capitalism. The capitalists and their politicians are the promoters and beneficiaries of racism, reaping profits, preventing rebellions with divide-and-conquer tactics, and mobilizing soldiers to fight the capitalist battles by demonizing the enemy.
Communist revolution is the only way to end racism and smash the capitalist system that invented it and promotes it.
Racism Born in The U.S.A
The first myth can be exploded by looking at the origins and reality of racism in the contemporary United States. Racism is the product of U.S. agrarian capitalism, codified in the laws of colonial Virginia, where European and African indentured laborers had a rich history of multiracial resistance to exploitation. In order to control their rebellious workforce, landowners began imposing differential punishments on Black and white servants, enacted laws to criminalize Black and white unity, and defined slave status as passing from mother to child.
By 1705, these laws defined slaves as real estate and decriminalized the killing of a slave by an owner. Black landowners were denied the right to employ white servants, and by 1722 were denied the right to vote. This was a decision justified by the governor of Virginia as necessary to “fix a perpetual Brand on Negroes” in order to secure the institution of slavery. After independence, the U.S. Constitution protected slavery as a “domestic institution” of the member states. The fugitive slave clause and the fugitive slave acts of 1793 and 1850 required the federal government and all citizens to chase down and return runaway slaves, a law defied by the many white and Black abolitionists who participated in the Underground Railroad.
acism had been born as a material source of super-exploitation and as the key ideology of capitalism. It would spread around the world from this point as each capitalist country defined some group—Black, Latin, immigrant—and developed new racial theories to justify super-exploitation and to divide and conquer the working class. Despite all the hype about a Black president, racist super-exploitation is the name of the game around the world. All workers are exploited, paid only enough to reproduce themselves as a labor force, but Black and Latin workers are exploited even more viciously.
The material reality of racism is manifest in unemployment figures. Official unemployment in the U.S. is 15 million people, which doesn’t include another 15 million who can’t find a full-time job or have given up looking. In April 2010, the official unemployment rate was 8.8percent for white, 16.5 percent for Black, and 12.6 percent for Latin. This itself doesn’t tell the whole truth, since the unemployment rate for Black men in many cities like Detroit is nearly 50 percent. And racism is getting worse. In 1974 median Black incomes were 73 percent of those of white families. In 2004, a typical Black family had an income of 54 percent of a white family.
Racism Hurts ALL Workers
Racism drags down the wages of all workers, and this is clearest in the former slave states where wages for Black, white and Latin workers continue to be the lowest in the nation. For example, Boeing opened a new plant in South Carolina with hopes to lure even more Boeing production by offering low wages, no unions, and more importantly a low level of labor militancy.
Ultimately, domestic exploitation will only take capitalism so far. The bosses understand that the top-dog capitalists will be determined on the global stage, through inter-imperialist war. In the past two decades, anti-Muslim racism has been a key component of the bosses’ war strategy from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Pakistan to Yemen. This enables them to kill and maim millions throughout the Middle East with little to no protest. U.S. soldiers are fueled by the anti-Muslim racism promoted by military officers and carry out racist laws passed on the floor of Congress that target Arabs and other immigrant groups specifically and workers in general.
Presidents from Lincoln to Obama understand the necessity of racism to maximize profits and to prevent workers from uniting against capitalism. They also understand that workers must be convinced to rally around the nation’s flag for capitalist and imperialist war. History becomes an important weapon in how the bosses convince workers to fight for capitalism instead of in their own class interests.
Juneteenth Hides Truth of Lincoln’s Racist Union ‘Victory’
So how do they convince us to put up with this? Part of the story is to convince us that the politicians and the government are the key forces for change, and that other workers are the enemy or powerless. Here Juneteenth and similar holidays play a role by hiding the true history of the end of slavery: that it came as a result of the struggles of Black and white workers, not through the actions of the racist Abraham Lincoln.
When the Civil War began, Lincoln’s goal was to maintain the Union for the capitalist class, not to abolish slavery or to eliminate racism. Lincoln was an open racist who declared, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about the social and political equality of the white and Black races.” As the Civil War began in 1861, Lincoln advocated “colonizing” Black people in Africa and Central America; supported a constitutional amendment protecting slavery where it already existed; refused to enlist them into the army; and ordered continued enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act which required all citizens to return runaway slaves to their masters.
But as more enslaved Black workers fled to Union lines, many Union soldiers refused to return them to their owners, and some generals attempted to abolish slavery in the occupied slave territories. Over Lincoln’s objections, Congress passed laws that confiscated slaves (property) of Confederate owners and used them as Union soldiers, but still in bondage. In September 1862, Lincoln adopted partial emancipation as a diplomatic and military tactic. In the Emancipation Proclamation, he requested that Congress appropriate funds for the deportation of freed slaves and announced that slaves in any states that continued to rebel would be freed on January 1, 1863.
This proclamation by itself freed no one. Slaves in Maryland, Delaware, Missouri or Kentucky, slave states that were loyal to the union, were not covered. Slavery was not abolished there until the ratification of the 13th amendment in December 1865, six months after Juneteenth. The proclamation could be enforced in the eleven rebellious Confederate states only if and when the Union Army arrived.
The real Liberators of Slaves
The real fight against slavery came from hundreds of slave revolts that had destabilized the system from the inside. The most famous of these are:
The Haitian rebellions that eliminated slavery and drove the French from the island in 1804
The rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831
The 1859 John Brown and Harriet Tubman attack on the Marine armory at Harper’s Ferry, a military effort by Black and white abolitionists, which forced millions to realize that pacifism would not end slavery. Dring the Civil War, 180,000 slaves took up arms and joined the fight against their masters whenever the Union army neared. And in the Mississippi Valley, two-thirds of the Union army was Black, half of whom were former slaves. Others took over abandoned plantations, and divided the land among themselves. All of this worried capitalist politicians, including Lincoln, who in April 1865 was scheming to remove former Black soldiers from the nation because he feared that these disciplined men would mount a “guerilla war” against their former owners.
Fighting Racism
There is a third story hidden within the myths of U.S. anti-racism: the story of multiracial unity and fight-back, and the fact that racism has to be constantly reinvented to prevent the potential power of a unified working class. Many CHALLENGE readers are familiar with the multiracial unity of antiracist fighters like John Brown and the Black-white unity of the 1892 New Orleans general strike. This kind of action was a constant undercurrent.
o example, in Galveston, TX, in the 1840s-60s the common everyday experience of poor white dockworkers and enslaved Black workers overshadowed their racial “differences.” Despite the efforts of the city government to prevent mixing of Black and white workers, many rejected the bosses’ racism and saw themselves as part of the same exploited class.
Other examples suggest that rather than celebrating the bosses’ Juneteenth holiday, workers should celebrate our own Juneteenth. On June 14, 1919 nearly one hundred white lumber workers in Bogalusa, LA armed themselves to defend Black workers from company threats against unionizing. In unity, armed white workers safely escorted the Black workers from their homes to a union meeting. Several white workers were killed defending a Black worker and union activist who was on the run from company thugs trying to kill him.
These stories highlight the potential for multiracial unity among workers once we realize our common class interest. We must take inspiration from these examples but also recognize the limits. These battles focused mainly on efforts to unite workers across racial lines, but lacking a communist analysis, failed to attack the capitalist system that perpetuates and enforces racism.
The bosses keep racism alive in the 21st century, using holidays such as Juneteenth to keep workers divided, while hiding the story of working-class unity and fight-back. Antiracist unity poses one of the greatest threats to the bosses. Both Lincoln and Obama and every president in between understood this fact. Fighting racism is a key task for communists and the working class today. We must seize upon the history of our predecessors and build a multiracial fighting party, the PLP, to smash the racist system of capitalism once and for all.
Hillary Clinton is the presumed Democratic nominee, has won the final primary in D.C, and has been officially endorsed by Obama, signaling dominant finance capitalists’ current choice for the next imperialist-in-chief. President Obama has also made it clear to the immobilized candidate Bernie Sanders of his role to bring more young people into the electoral process and build inner party unity for coming war and fascism.
CHALLENGE has been exposing each candidate’s ruling-class ties. For the past several months, PLP has been reporting on this political circus, pointing to the question “how can the bosses fool the working class into supporting the racist, sexist, imperialist system?” The answer: preparing the working class to vote for a candidate like Hillary Clinton. There is no such thing as a good choice for the working class among these candidates—every last one of them will do everything to keep capitalism alive and well, and the workers need communism to lead a world run by and for our class.
Bern Capitalist Illusions
Sanders plays an important role of the “hopeful” candidate who could shine some light on all the oppression we feel through our daily lives. He is someone who talks about mass unemployment, someone who gives the appearance of wanting to protect the working class. He tapped into the mass disgruntlement of the working class, and leading us into the voting booths and out of the streets. His campaign feeds workers the illusion of progress and democracy, a centuries-old myth of U.S. capitalism (see article on page 6). Without communist politics and fightback, any anti-racist, anti-sexist, egalitarian-based ideas will be funneled to sustain capitalism.
Make no mistake—Sanders bowing out of the race is not a loss for the working class. Sanders is as much of an imperialist as Obama. He backed every action Obama made during the war in Syria and Afghanistan that killed thousands, and has an even longer history of supporting U.S. imperialist wars. Thanks to Sanders, many otherwise disillusioned people are buying into reform, and eventually fascism. Sanders and Clinton strive to build all-class unity, something they desperately need to challenge arch imperialist rivals like China and Russia.
Then there is Trump—a candidate who uses workers’ anger about the lack of jobs and poor economy to win them to a dangerous and anti-working class racist, sexist line, and is a beacon for racists to rally behind. He will cause millions of other workers to vote for Clinton, to make sure Trump doesn’t win.
We’re With the Working Class
Clinton—not the most openly gutter racist but her policies have done nothing but kill, starve, imprison, and deport Black and Latin workers in the U.S. and overseas. As fear of Trump continues to build, many workers will be misled into believing that the “better” choice is warmonger Clinton. Many pledge to be “with her,” Clinton’s campaign catchphrase that aims to exploit the working class’s anti-sexist instincts.
No matter the candidate, each it selling its own brand of patriotism. Progressive Labor Party rejects this war-fervor tactic. We are not with her, or him. We are with the international working class.
But there is only one choice for the working class that will smash this exploitative capitalist system for good. Masses of workers must unite—Asian, Latin, Black, white, men, women, young, and old—to fight for a communist revolution!
Greetings to Unitarian Universalists gathered at the 2016 General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio.
Unitarian Universalists congregants, including the communist Progressive Labor Party members, in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, CA, and Brooklyn, NY, among others, have joined some mass, militant, and multiracial fightbacks to protest the kkkop murders of Black and Latin workers. The upsurge in participation in these movements is partly the result communists and CHALLENGE urging UU congregants to be beacons of antiracism and proponents of a communist world under the leadership of PLP.
Fighting Back in CALI
In Santa Monica, CA. our Peace & Social Justice Committee organized marches in August, September, and October to demand justice for three men murdered in Venice, CA. Brendon Glenn and Jason Davis were killed by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) kkkops; Jamal Lee Warren by a beachfront hotel owner and his security guard. After Glenn was killed May 5, 2015, hundreds of people voiced their anger at a town hall meeting, but nothing followed. We reached out to local anti-racist organizations and advocacy groups for homeless people, as well as to our friends at First UU LA, to join our protest marches on Venice Beach.
At the marches, we demanded the police release a security-camera video showing how Glenn was killed. LAPD police chief Beck says the video shows that Glenn, who was unarmed, was shot in the back by kkkop Clifford Proctor while lying on in the street. In an effort to pacify protestors Beck recommended that LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey prosecute Clifford Proctor, the LAPD cop that killed Glenn. Unsurprisingly Lacey claims she is “still investigating.” We can’t get justice under capitalism, but we are determined to not let Glenn and others die in vain. We have initiated a petition campaign to demand that Lacey prosecute Proctor, and we plan to demonstrate at her office.
In addition to participating in the marches in Venice, our People’s Liberation Unitarian Universalist Group held a march that included UUs from Santa Monica in November through our church’s neighborhood, Koreatown. This march was held a few days after the one-year anniversary of the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, MO kkkop who killed Michael Brown. Our chants were militant, echoing our will to keep on fighting in the face of capitalist oppression against our brothers and sisters. One of our chants was, “Mike Brown means...Fight back! Omar Abrego means...Fight back! Kyam Livingston means... Fight back!” And fight back we will!
At a potluck dinner after the march we discussed how to further the movement against racist actions by police. A forum at First Church on the history of policing in the U.S. grew out of that discussion. This forum was a step in the right direction in understanding how policing has and will always benefited the capitalist class.
Combined action by Santa Monica and LA UUs was one impetus toward the founding of a countywide UU social justice group, jUUstice LA. We are pushing for jUUstice LA to make the fight to indict Brendon Glenn a focus for all 12 UU congregations in LA County. At the First UU, we’ve agreed to make the struggle around Brendon Glenn a key part of our work; we are making weekly speeches with our candle-of-hope ritual.
The Struggle Continues in Brooklyn
In Brooklyn, we are fighting back as well. The murder of Kyam Livingston, Shantel Davis, Kiki Gray, and Akai Gurley has spurred the working class and the communist PLP of Brooklyn into action.
In particular, members of our social justice committee has joined Kyam’s mother, Anita Neal, in monthly rallies since Kyam’s death in July 2013. These rallies have united the family, church members, and members of the West Indian community near where Kyam lived to press for release of the video and the names of the custody officers who abused Kyam and refused her medical treatment.
We are also fighting back by leading discussions, including “The Language of Oppression, How it Hurts Us All,” and sponsoring yearly Juneteenth (a holiday to commemorate the abolishment of slavery in Texas, see page 6) celebrations. This year’s celebration, “Tapestry of Justice in Blues and Poetry,” included a song about people killed by the NYPD. Since 2001, we’ve held an annual joint dinner in solidarity with the local Muslim community. Following that example, First UU LA and Santa Monica UU joined an interfaith march in March in solidarity with the LA Muslim community.
Multiracial Unity Against Racism
The marches and rallies in LA and Brooklyn were multiracial in participation. These were visual representations of our desire to unite all members of the working class in the fight against racism. Speakers, for example, affirmed that the racist oppression and super-exploitation of non-white working people hurts and divides white workers as well. The depression of wages and social welfare for Black, Latin, indigenous, and Asian, and immigrant workers pave the way to depress the wages and fightback of the whole working class—this includes white workers. U.S. wages that average 30 percent higher for white males than Black males are still inadequate to live on. And the millions of white workers with low-paying jobs, including many college graduates, live in poverty—not privilege.
The theory of “white skin privilege” is one communists refute, though it is a prevalent belief in the UUA. This ruling-class theory does a poor job in explaining racist divisions and oppression, but a very good job in turning people of the same class into enemies. Our main enemy is the ruling class.
At the rallies and marches, we stressed white privilege theory reinforces the capitalist drive to divide working people based on so-called “race.” A concrete example is police murder and of white men and women, such as Jason Davis. Since slavery, cops have been getting away with the murder of and brutality toward Black working people; they’ve learned they can do the same to white working people. We must unite and fight racism; not segregate and talk about racism.
The outpouring of open racism that has coalesced around U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump campaign intensifies this challenge. We must mobilize our congregations to fight back against all racism, especially the systematic racism presided over by liberals such as Obama, Clinton, and Sanders.
For the GA two years ago, we wrote a pamphlet showing why the Seven UU Principals cannot be achieved without communist revolution. You can request a copy from
While helping lead these anti-racist struggles, communists in PLP have the task of showing why racist police and racism in general are inherent to capitalism, and why defeating racism therefore requires communist revolution. Communism will a global system without borders run by workers and in the interests of workers. The source of racism, capitalism and profit, will be eradicated. Ask us all about it! We urge all UU members and everyone belonging to the working class to join PLP in fighting racism building a better world for the working class!
President Barack Obama’s lifting of the arms embargo in Vietnam signifies another step toward war, particularly in the South China Sea against the Chinese bosses, one of two major threats to the U.S. imperialists.
For the working class, this strategic move by the U.S. rulers reflects the longstanding sellout politics of the Vietnamese national bosses. It also underscores the need for a worldwide revolutionary movement fighting directly for communism.
The China Factor
Lifting the embargo allows Vietnam to acquire lethal weapons from the biggest arms merchant in the world. The murderous U.S. imperialists quickly set aside their phony concerns over their new client’s “disregard for human rights.” On the one hand, halting the embargo will wean Vietnam away from its arms dependence on Russia, the other main imperialist rival to the U.S. On the other, the new flow of weapons will fortify Vietnam as a regional counterweight to China: “The increasingly tense situation in the South China Sea, and Vietnam’s growing strategic and economic importance, outweigh U.S. concerns about Hanoi’s admittedly terrible human rights record” (Council on Foreign Relations, 5/24).
For U.S. and Chinese bosses, the South China Sea represents a typical capitalist flashpoint. Both sides are attempting to justify their imperialist aggression with treaties that favor their respective empires. China’s ambitious development strategy, “One Belt, One Road,” seeks to expand sea and land military installations throughout Asia and the Middle East. Vietnam, a regional power and target since the Chinese first conquered it in the 1st century BC, represents a potential impediment to some of China’s grand plans.
Both China and Vietnam, for example, lay claim to the Paracel Islands. In 2014, when China temporarily deployed an oil rig (a structure to drill and service oil wells) in the South China Sea, it led to multiple collisions between the two countries’ ships.
Deep-Water Ports and Choke Points
The lifting of the embargo is the latest U.S. action to exploit historic tensions between Vietnam and China for its own benefit: “Above all, Washington wants greater access to Cam Ranh Bay and other strategic ports on the South China Sea” (Stratfor, 5/27). The Vietnamese port, considered the best deep-water shelter in all of Southeast Asia, has well-established strategic importance. In 1975, it was a U.S. military base during the Vietnam War. In 1979, it was an important Cold War naval base for the Russian fleet. Today, the U.S. hopes Cam Ranh Bay will provide reliable access to the South China Sea, countering China and opening the door for more military coordination with Vietnam.
In fact, Vietnam is one of several smaller countries caught up in the region’s big-power conflict. Through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (a regional trade agreement excluding China), along with a recent military buildup, the U.S. is challenging China in Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia and Brunei.
Indonesia, by proxy of the United States military, controls the Malacca Strait between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra—the transit choke point for 80 percent of China’s oil imports (Business Insider, 2/6). All imperialists understand that whoever controls the oil transit choke points controls the world.
The ‘Final Normalization’ of Imperialism
The lifting of the U.S. arms embargo represents the “final normalization” of relations between two groups of capitalist bosses that began decades ago. It’s also the latest betrayal of the millions of Vietnamese workers who fought and died, in the jungles and the streets, against U.S. imperialists in the 1960s and ‘70s. Vietnam has pursued a capitalist market economy since 1987, when its rulers opened the country to foreign investment. In 1994, the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam was lifted. Since 1995, when President Bill Clinton restored diplomatic relations, rulers in the two countries have grown steadily closer, with a series of trade agreements and, more recently, a nuclear fuel and technology pact. In 2014, Obama began to relax the arms embargo, a move completed last month. As U.S. companies—from Chevron and Coca-Cola to Intel and Microsoft—pour money into Vietnamese factories and sweatshops, and McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts franchises sprout like weeds in Ho Chi Minh City, business is booming. In 1975, the U.S. ruling class lost the battle in Vietnam and had to beat a humiliating retreat. But today it appears to have won the imperialist war there, at least for now.
The American War
The imperialists knew they weren’t fighting any ordinary enemy. A working class that arms itself with revolutionary politics and guns, with mass backing from the international masses, is more dangerous to the bosses than any imperialist rival. The U.S. bosses responded with genocide: “By the end of the war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—more than twice the amount of bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II” (Howard Zinn).
The Vietnam War (or what Vietnamese workers call “the American War”) was an example of how a committed, communist-led army can defeat the largest, technology-driven imperialist army. For all of the Vietnamese communists’ political weaknesses, reflecting the decay of the Soviet Union and, later, the defeat of the Cultural Revolution in China, Vietnam represented a revolutionary class war.
The leadership shown by the working class in Vietnam over decades of resistance to French, Japanese, and U.S. imperialism, inspired millions worldwide. Black soldiers shot and fragged their commanders; some joined the workers’ army in Vietnam.
Back in the U.S., inner-city rebellions by Black workers were challenging the capitalists. Muhammad Ali, heavyweight boxing champion of the world, said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me n-----.” In 1964, a fledging group called Progressive Labor Movement, later to develop into the international Progressive Labor Party, initiated and gave leadership to what became the anti-racist movement against the Vietnam War. On May 2, thousands of workers and students marched and rallied in cities nationwide. In New York City, more than a thousand people heard PL speeches about the necessity to smash capitalism. They broke a police ban on demonstrations in midtown Manhattan, winding their way through Times Square to the United Nations, demanding: “U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!” It was the first national demonstration against the U.S. imperialist invasion and the forerunner of countless protests in the years ahead.
The result was the Vietnam Syndrome, the working masses’ anti-imperialist sentiment resulting from fightback and anger over working-class casualties in a failed ground war. U.S. bosses have yet to recover. To this day, they’ve been unable to reestablish the military draft they need for the next big ground war.
The bosses are learning that military might doesn’t win wars. Class commitment wins wars. If the U.S. rulers expect to counter China in the South China Sea, a possible step toward a global conflict, they must overcome the Vietnam Syndrome by feeding nationalist, racist propaganda to prepare the working class for perpetual war.
In 1968, after Ho Chi Minh and his forces first agreed to negotiations with the imperialists, the three-year-old PLP made an intensely unpopular criticism of the Vietnamese communist leaders. We said they had taken the reformist, nationalist route, selling out the international working class and any potential for communist revolution.
Nearly five decades later, history has handed down its verdict. Our Party was correct. Fighting imperialism is not enough; we must smash capitalism for all time. No longer a young organization, PLP is now an international party spanning five continents and 27 countries. We still hold high the red flag where the Vietnamese communist leadership dropped it. Soldiers, let’s turn the guns around and join the fight for communism!
BROOKLYN, June 1—Hundreds of students — female and male, Black and white — are uniting to build a movement to fight the racist and sexist dress code at Brooklyn Technical High School. The dress code singles out female students for wearing clothes that are “too revealing.” On May 25, to protest this policy, hundreds of students decided to break the dress code. Some coordinated online using #SkinOutSpeakOut to organize male-female and multiracial twin outfits and highlight the administration’s racist and sexist enforcement of the code. Hundreds of students wore Progressive Labor Party’s anti-sexism buttons to support the struggle.
Sexist, Racist Administration Exposed
When Principal Randy Asher heard about the protest and couldn’t persuade students to shut it down, he called in the superintendent and sent six deans to carefully inspect all 5,500 students on their way in. Unsurprisingly, the administrators cited Black and Latin female students most for violating the dress code. (Only 16 percent of Brooklyn Tech students are Black or Latin, as compared to 69 percent in New York City public schools overall.) As a dean wrote up two female students, a male student passed them several times in short shorts and a tank top that revealed his stomach. The dean did nothing, even though the boy’s clothes showed more skin than the girls’. This scene was caught on video and forced some students to open their eyes. (Later the boy was threatened with suspension for “causing a riot.”)
Sexism and racism are so blatant at the elite Brooklyn Tech that one dean wrote up a Black female student and explained, “If you were an 80-pound Asian girl, this would be a different story.” Dress codes teach youth that different standards prevail for men and women. They sexualize women and make female body parts “taboo.” Within capitalist culture, Black and Latin women are especially sexualized and targeted.
A Principal With No Principles
Principal Asher’s sexist hypocrisy has been exposed by the case of his friend Sean Shaynak, the math and physics teacher the school hired during Asher’s tenure. Several years ago, according to Federal Court documents, Shaynak showed up at a school dance in drag, lifted his skirt at female students, and made “lewd and sexually suggestive gestures.” Asher was present but took no disciplinary action against the teacher, who ran a prestigious aerospace program that brought significant donations to Tech (DNAinfo, 1/12/15).
For Shaynak, this was not an isolated incident. According to the federal suit brought by four former female Tech students, an assistant principal “informed principal Asher of the sexually harassing and inappropriate behavior by Shaynak,” but Asher still took no action (DNAinfo). In August 2014, Shaynak was arrested after sending a female student a Snapchat photograph of his genitals. In January 2015, he was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree kidnapping, disseminating indecent material to a minor, endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct.
When it comes to protecting his students from the dangers of sleeveless shirts, Principal Asher is a model of tough enforcement. When it comes to protecting them from sexual predators on his own turf, he’s been a lot less interested and effective.
Smash Capitalism to Smash Sexism
Although sexism targets women, they cannot be the only ones to fight it. Men must join in the struggle, too; communists must explain how it is in men’s best interests. Like racism, sexism is created by capitalists to steal more profit from the working class. It allows them to pay women workers less and keep men and women divided, lowering everyone’s wages and blocking effective fightback. In addition, the capitalist bosses save billions of dollars in unpaid childcare and housework by women who are raising the next generation of workers. Whenever we allow sexist ideology to poison the working class, the capitalists win.
The anti-dress code struggle at Brooklyn Tech is an important battleground in our fight against capitalism. The school’s students — male, female, Black, white, Latin, Asian — are uniting. They are beginning to understand the connections between racism, sexism and the profit system. When students reject these anti-worker ideologies, we move one step closer to smashing capitalism worldwide.
Overpowered Administration
Responds with False Promises
The day after the dress code protest, Black female leaders organized a speakout, much like the one they organized in last winter’s #blackinbrooklyntech campaign (See CHALLENGE 2/10). Students spoke about getting dress-coded and targeted by the administration, and how they were routinely objectified and sexualized. Male students attacked the dress code for targeting women. The speakers pointed to the recent shift away from student passivity, and to the future of this new activism at Brooklyn Tech. Students are beginning to see sexism and racism as oppressions that stem from the capitalist profit system. Most important, the power of multiracial and male-female unity has grown stronger. That’s the biggest lesson of this school year, and it has been learned by hundreds, if not thousands, of students.
Asher’s administration is trying to intimidate this courageous movement by monitoring and disciplining student leaders. At the same time, the principal is attempting to pacify students with a reform “action plan.” But the administrators refuse to release the action plan or do anything of substance. They’re counting on the activist students graduating or losing their fighting spirit over the summer.
The Fight Continues
Seeds of resistance at Brooklyn Tech are just taking root. Since last winter, when the #blackinbrooklyntech campaign began to raise anti-racist consciousness, students have grown bolder and more confident. They are grappling with how to overcome the losing idea that fighting racism is a problem best left to Black students alone. Students who insist on expressing anti-Black racism have been marginalized. In many classrooms, teachers have taken a firm anti-racist stand. Dozens used their unassigned periods to implement plans supporting anti-racist education. Now the fight is expanding to tackle sexism and involve more of the school community. Students are already planning how to keep the struggle going next year.
There is still more work to do. More teachers and students need to be won to the fight so that it can continue for years to come. Sexism and racism must be understood as integral parts of capitalism. PL’ers are already selling CHALLENGE at Tech (see letter). Some students have come to Party study groups and May Day. As the struggle continues, we can sharpen our discussions to talk about communist revolution. The true power of student unity is felt not in struggle for reforms, but in the fight for revolution to overthrow the capitalist class. The bosses’ system seeks to win over today’s youth—tomorrow’s workers—to accept a future of growing inequality, fascist repression and imperialist war. When young people are won to the struggle for a communist future, where there is no need for racism and sexism, larger victories lie ahead. Join the fight!
