Especially when the problems facing "Black America" have come about IN RELATION to the world (and predominantly the white paradigm) that they live in? How is seperation possible when we must all interact with each other in multi-cultural Amerikkka. If the ROOT of the problem is not addressed, then the problems will persist. The ROOT is not the FACT that black and white share a common geography ... its that white people can't stop being racist in the face of all this diversity. It's that we all haven't made the sincere effort to learn each other's languages, to be versed in each other's histories, to see the world through each other's eyes.

Basically seperatism depends on one's ability to isolate onesself from others deemed "outside" ones' group. It's a nationalist move, and to be nationalist is to create community through exclusions. But how are these exclusions determined? So often, nationalist/seperatist politics hold a very narrow definition of "blackness" that is often exclusionary of non-heterosexual people, biracial people, and occasionaly people of African decent that live outside of the U.S. So the quesiton becomes: who do you want to seperate? Who gets to determine this? What about seperations within ethnic groups? What about two-tiered "class" systems based on gender, religion, and sexual preference? And if you decide to "work out" these differences within a given group, why not envision the possibility of working them out within a larger social group?

Just food for thought.

I also gotta say that I'm all for seperatist politics in some situations over others: S. Africa, for example. I just think within a country like the US, it's not at all practical to enact seperatist politics without reinforcing the larger social/political/economic/ethnic problems within the larger context (multicultural America).

love and respect,
El Rey


http://www.mumia2000.org
http://www.mumia.org

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