George Walford: Red and Black

Having failed to elicit the expected support from the workers, the left now show an increasing tendency to turn to minority ethnic groups, in America especially the blacks. This appeal has met with no better response than the first; in a recent Washington Post survey some 35% of blacks described themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative.” Opinion polls show right-wing practices – powerful armaments, prayer in schools and the death penalty – enjoying majority support among blacks, and although the polls have to be taken with more than a single grain of salt these results find confirmation in the absence of any strong black left-wing movement. Recently a “new black right” has begun to appear, challenging the civil rights movement, claiming that government attempts to improve the conditions of blacks have had the contrary effect, stifling their enterprise and creating a new black underclass. Combating these tendencies, the right-wing blacks seek to advance themselves by competing as individuals. The number of black urban professionals has increased and Clarence Thomas, a right-wing black lawyer, enjoys the support of President Bush in his attempt to win a place in the Supreme Court. [1]

Now that the blacks, thanks to the Civil Rights movement, have wider opportunities, they respond by acting in much the same way as the whites, a majority accepting or supporting the mores of current society. Should we expect anything different? [1] Sunday Times 7 July 91

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‘HARD’ science derives from the ideology of Precision, but as it emerges the preceding ideology, that of Principle and Domination persists, supporting it and providing its raw material. Or, in Popper’s words: “dogmatic thinking, which I regarded as prescientific, was a stage that was needed if critical thinking was to be possible. Critical thinking must have before it something to criticize, and this, I thought, must be the result of dogmatic thinking.”

from Ideological Commentary 53, Autumn 1991.