The Obama presidency was lauded as the moment that would usher in a new era of color blindness. An African American man had become president of the United States for the first time in its long history. Before Obama climbed to this height, it was long considered something that was an impossible dream for an African American man to meet. Yet despite this great achievement, and the fact that African Americans throughout American society have progressed greatly in many areas such as entertainment, business, and government, there still exists great racism within the United States. Contrary to what mainstream history and society teaches us, segregation did not end with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to historian Michelle Alexander in her new book titled, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In the Age Of Colorblindness”,Jim Crow has been recreated in the United States through the country’s prison industrial complex.

Today, just like under Jim Crow, African Americans are disproportionately being put into a lower class system compared to mainstream Americans as a result of the Prison Industrial complex. According to Michelle Alexander, three fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been African American or Latino (Alexander 97).  In 2000, she mentions that Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90% of all drug offenders sent to prison (Alexander 96). Fifteen states had blacks being admitted to prison at a rate that was 20 to 57 times the rate of whites. While African Americans and Latinos’ are small minorities of the population, they are more represented in the prison system than whites.

What is alarming about this is the fact that African Americans are not using drugs at higher rates than whites. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse in 2000, whites were actually reported to use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students. Whites also used crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students and heroin at seven times the rate of black students (Alexander 96). Marijuana was used at similar rates between the two different populations. The National Household Survey On Drug Abuse also reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12-17 was more likely to sell drugs than African American youth of the same age. Whites were more than a third more likely to sell drugs. While African Americans were being arrested significantly more than whites in 2000, whites really engaged in a higher rate of illegal drug activity, according to Michelle Alexander’s book.

This racial disparity is similar to what existed under the Jim Crow system in the south through the late 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th century. African Americans were disproportionately represented in the prison system during this time period. The PBS documentary, “Slavery By Another Name”, mentioned that roughly 90% or more of the prisoners in the convict leasing system were African American (Slavery By Another Name). Whites only represented 10% of the population. Most the time, that population was even less.

The documentary mentioned that both groups of people committed crimes that could have been punished by a sentence in the convict leasing system. However, while whites were doing the same crimes African Americans were, such as debt, public drunkenness, and stealing small things such as a piece of a fence, African Americans were predominantly going to prison for it. Such laws as vagrancy laws, which were written in a colorblind fashion, were disproportionately enforced on African Americans who did not have a job. According to the numbers, this is not all that different compared to what is going on now.

The book mentions that once labeled a felon, an individual loses many rights that many other Americans get to enjoy. The right to vote is stripped away. One cannot serve on a jury (Alexander 2). Public assistance in areas such as housing is denied. Employers, who have access to the criminal records of job applicants, become legally eligible to deny someone a job on the mere basis of a drug conviction. Only 40% of employers have said that they would consider hiring someone with a drug felony on their record (Alexander 92). Those who do get jobs are often relegated to low paying jobs that do not provide enough to raise a family or even oneself.  In the past, ex felons had a chance of getting a good paying job in fields that often did not discriminate against them too much, such as construction and manufacturing  (Alexander 147). Due to the effects of deindustrialization and the growth of the suburbs, these opportunities have largely left the cities where the majority of these felons who are predominantly African American return to. As a result, there exists very little opportunity for economic growth.

Under the era of Jim Crow in the south, many African Americans had their right to vote denied to them through practices such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfathers clauses. Many were excluded from government aid programs such as Social Security, which originally excluded agricultural workers and domestic workers, which were professions the majority of African Americans had at the time. Housing loans were often not given to African Americans by banks who wished to keep them out of the white suburbs. Employers also significantly discriminated against African Americans. Often, they were forced to take low paying jobs, such as sharecropping and domestic housework, because the better paying jobs discriminated against them. Many unions had no blacks allowed policies through the first half of the 20^th century. The discrimination they face now as a result of the drug war is very similar to the discrimination they faced back then.

Through limiting the African American vote today, like under Jim Crow, the cities across America where African Americans tend to live have lost valuable representation in state legislatures. Many inner communities have been stripped of their real political voice. Meanwhile, the rural locations of many prisons in areas where whites typically are the majority of the population has seen their representation in state legislatures increase. Because prisoners are counted towards representation, all the African Americans behind bars are helping strengthen the political power of white communities while their very own communities are losing it (Alexander 188). As a result of this, many cities do not have the means to get the aid that they deserve, such as education aid for struggling inner city schools. Like under old Jim Crow America, white people are enjoying immense privilege at the expense of African Americans, despite the fact that African Americans do drugs at the same or less rate depending on the drug than whites do.

Another similarity Alexander brings up is the issue of debtor’s prison. Under Jim Crow, African Americans could go to jail for owing a debt. Today, many African Americans can also go to prison for owing a debt. Upon release from prison, ex offenders are saddled with debts (Alexander 150). They are forced to pay for the costs they accrued through legal fees, their stay in prison, and the drug rehab they have to undergo when they were released. Many have their paychecks garnished (Alexander 151).  If they do not pay back these debts and refuse, they can be thrown back in prison, just like under Jim Crow.

Like the convict leasing system that existed under Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex today is making an obscene amount of money off of predominantly exploiting African Americans through the drug war. According to Alexander, each city or county receives about roughly $153 in state and federal funding for each drug arrest (Alexander 77). Crimes that are not drug related, such as rape and child molestation, receive no federal dollars. The Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance program provides millions of dollars to states and local enforcement agencies willing to fight the war (Alexander 92). The Pentagon also gives millions of dollars in money and equipment to state and local agencies willing to fight the war.

Due to the great amount of money that is going into the system since the early 1980s, prison populations have exploded across the country with drug offenders. 2/3s of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000 was due to the drug war. An estimated 31 million people were arrested for drug offenses during that time period, which resulted in a great amount of wealth for local and state governments (Alexander 59).

Because prisoners have to be taken care of, industries have sprung up around the prisons geared towards taking care of them. Clothing, food, and prison guard industries have expanded due to this, creating much wealth for the people who run the businesses and the prison guards. To help support these industries, prisoners, like under the convict leasing system, are often forced to work. Many inmates work for these industries in prison earning less than $3 per hour (Alexander 152). Sometimes, they are paid as low as 25 cents an hour. Paying these people less than minimum wage is legal because the 13^th amendment does allow slavery as punishment for a crime. The pay just is there to make what is slavery look less like slavery for aesthetic purposes. Thanks to prisoners being forced to pay back the costs of their imprisonment that are racked up with these industries upon their release, these industries are not really losing money taking care of the prisoners. If they cannot pay, they are simple put back into the system to be exploited as cheap labor, just like what happened with debtors under the Jim Crow convict leasing system.

The violence inflicted upon African Americans today by the power establishment, according to Alexander, is also akin to that practiced in the south years ago. Police agencies have free reign to pretty much stop and frisk anyone at will, which is not a pleasant experience (Alexander 65). African Americans are constantly frisked in their communities for drugs as they walk down the street or sit on a bus. According to Atwater vs City of Lago Vista, if someone commits a minor traffic violation, such as failure to use a turn signal or not stopping long enough at a stop sign, the police have free reign to be search the offender. If they refuse, they are legally allowed to arrest the individual (Alexander 68). Because everyone commits minor traffic violations, this has given police forces the power necessary to target African Americans for just about anything in order to get them into prison and ensure their own job security and the wealth of their city, state, or county. As a result, police cars can constantly be seen just about every few blocks or so in many urban communities, as if the communities are under siege.

This idea of being under siege manifests itself truly in the way swat teams act in the inner city. Swat teams have the authority, with a warrant usually given by a judge who works for the state who has an incentive to lock people up, to search the homes of people suspected of drug crime. Because people are human, often, this has led to many innocent people having their homes raided by by overzealous swat teams who from time to time, end up killing a family pet or innocent human being. Those who are innocent of any drug crime are sometimes the victims of planted evidence, as stated by people like Stephen Anderson, an ex NYPD cop, who admitted that the agency planted evidence to frame innocent people in order to reach quotas (Stephen Anderson Admits To Issuing Fake Drug Charges To meet Quotas).

Under Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan acted as a sort of arm of the state to enforce the will of the power establishment. The KKK used violence to suppress the economic, and political power of many African Americans. Many African Americans were lynched for something as small as flirting with a white woman or being rude to a white man. Many, who were completely innocent of any crime, were lynched. The police forces today, like the KKK under Jim Crow, which often were police officers in disguise, has acted as a violent force to predominantly hurt African Americans. The drug war has lynched many African Americans, in a symbolic sense, silencing them permanently.

Michelle Alexander’s main argument that the prison system has recreated Jim Crow is a very plausible argument to make considering all the evidence presented in it and the nations history. The United States has a long history of being a very racist society. Racism has long embedded itself in United States government policy. To think that the United States government would not be taking part in such a system would be similar to thinking that a man who was cheated on by his wife who has a long past of violence towards her did not murder her. Common sense dictates that when someone or something has a long history of taking part in something, that behavior will not just simply go away. The United States has long acted as a racist entity so what Alexander argues is fairly believable.

The only issue present with her argument is the fact that economic class is much more interwoven today than it was under Jim Crow. According to Michelle Alexander, 2/3s of the people detained report annual incomes under $12,000 (Alexander 151). She also brings up the point that many defendants in drug cases are typically denied meaningful legal representation. Tens of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer. In Wisconsin, more than 11,000 poor people with an income of $3,000 or more go to jail every year because they are considered able to afford a lawyer (Alexander 84). They, while being unable to scarcely afford to pay rent, are forced to pay for a lawyer themselves. Alexander also makes the point that many publically appointed lawyers do not have the time, resources, or sometimes the inclination to give poor people effective legal representation. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, the public defenders office has only 2 investigators for the 2,500 new felony cases, and 4,000 new misdemeanor cases it handles each year. She makes it quite clear that poor people across America, particularly in inner cities where poverty is often the greatest, are not getting adequate and fair legal representation.

Because states and cities receive more money for each person they arrest, there is a profit motive for them to target people who cannot put up a good legal defense. They are not looking so much at inner city African Americans criminals simply as being black criminals as a reason to arrest them but as an easy way to make money. African Americans who do live in the suburbs have a far less likely chance of being searched by police officers because police agencies tend to target those areas less partially due to the fact that the people there have the means to put up a more effective legal defense. It would cost the states and cities a ton of money fighting thousands of middle class citizens from the suburbs in court battles who have the ability to afford good lawyers. It is simply more cost efficient to target the poor people within the cities. Because blacks are predominantly poor, they get targeted more on the basis of that and not there race so much, like under Jim Crow.

When one looks at the prison system today, the numbers are more equal than they were under Jim Crow. According to a report from the Bureau Of Justice Statistics in the first half of 2007, black men represented 35.4% of the prison population and white men 32.9% (US Prison Population Hits All-Time High: 2.3 Million Incarcerated). Under Jim Crow, the numbers were less equal. African American men were roughly 90% of the prison population or more and white men 10% or less. If a true Jim Crow system were being recreated, white men would not be in prison to that extent. This shows that class is playing a little bit more of a role than it did under Jim Crow.

African Americans who are wealthy can afford to get off for crimes today that they would not have gotten off for under Jim Crow. African Americans such as OJ Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Marshawn Lynch, and many others, have been able to get off for things that they would have been arrested for much more easily and probably lynched for under Jim Crow. Kobe Bryant was accused of sexual assault. If the prison system was truly recreating Jim Crow, he would have probably never made it to a trial. He would have been lynched for the mere accusation of doing it. Marshawn Lynch ran a woman over with his car, which would have also probably led to him getting lynched if it happened in 1930s Alabama by a KKK member who was probably also a cop. Emmett Till was killed simply for flirting with a white woman in a Jim Crow society. The prison industrial complex today is not fully recreating Jim Crow.

Besides the class issue present more today and cases like Kobe Bryant’s, Michelle Alexander’s argument is very sound. The statistics she has brought up and the similarities she has exposed between both time periods hold up and show that there is a definite correlation. She has used reliable statistics from a variety of sources, such as the United States government. The information she has provided one can reasonably conclude to be accurate. So with that said, one can honestly say that for the most part, our prison system today is recreating the Jim Crow society that existed before in the United States. The similarities Alexander brings up are simply too great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

1,) Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New, 2010. Print.

2.) Slavery By Another Name. Dir. Sam Pollard. PBS. February 21^st, 2012.

3.) Thomas, Pierre. “US Prison Population Hits All-Time High: 2.3 Million Incarcerated.” Abcnews.go.com. June 6^th, 2008. ABC news. June 6^th, 2008. April 4^th, 2012. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5009270&page=1

4.) No one author. “Stephe Anderson Admits To Issuing Fake Drug Charges To Meet Quotas.” Huffingtonpost.com. October 13^th, 2011. Huffingtonpost. October 13^th, 2011. April 8^th, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/stephen-anderson-admits-t_n_1008831.html

 

                A Brief History of the African American Experience in the Soviet Union

 Harry Haywood

                                                                                                                       

Harry Haywood was one of the first African Americans to come to the Soviet Union when he arrived in Leningrad, formerly known as Petrograd, in April 1926 (Haywood 151). Haywood was a member of the US Communist Party, known as the CPUSA, and like the blacks before him and after him, wanted to see what the communist experiment in the Soviet Union was all about. Haywood had heard that the Soviet Union promised a vast amount of opportunities for people like him who had suffered under Jim Crow in the United States and he wished to see how true this was. With the Soviets offering free education and room and board to study, something that was pretty much not available to a black man living in the United States at the time, he could not refuse the offer.

When Haywood arrived, he enrolled in the University of the Toilers of the East for Stalin, which was also known as KUTVA. KUTVA was a school founded by the Bolsheviks to train cadre from the various national and ethnic groups with the Soviet Union and colonies and nations outside the Soviet Union. Over 70 nationalities and ethnic groups enrolled there where they read the classic works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin (Haywood 154-157). One famous individual who studied at the school was Ho Chi Minh, who was enrolled there in 1923 and 1924.

When Haywood first arrived at the school, he was immediately impressed. At the school, there was a black woman by the name of Jane Golden who was loved by the entire school. When she died, there was a huge funeral in her honor in which the entire school up showed to pay their respects. Upon the initial memorial, the students carried her casket for 7 miles to a local cemetery where an honorable speech was given about her (Haywood 154-155). This made a significant impact on Haywood to see the Soviet citizens treating a black woman with such respect. It was something he was not used to seeing back home in the United States.

In May, 1925, Joseph Stalin spoke at the school. During his speech, Haywood was introduced to the Marxist national question. According to the theory, a nation is a historically constituted stable community of people based upon 4 characteristics:

1.)           A common territory

2.)           A common economic life

3.)           A common language

4.)           A common psychological principle (Haywood 157)

This theory would be important to the development of the Negro Question later on.

The Bolsheviks upheld the principle of proletarian in content and national in form. Under the Bolsheviks, a national culture was allowed to be expressed as long as it had a socialist content. Under the Czarist system the Bolsheviks had replaced, this right had not been available to the many ethnic groups within the Russian empire. Under the czars, only the Russian language was taught and used in the schools. Many different ethnic groups were not able to use their cultural languages. With the Bolsheviks taking power, this changed. In the Crimea and the Caucuses during the summers of 1927 and 1928, Haywood would notice that the native languages of groups such as the Crimean people, the Turko Tartar language, had been implemented in the schools (Haywood 158-160). In terms of racial equality, this was rather revolutionary for the time and it impressed Haywood greatly.

What also impressed Haywood greatly was the fact that in the Soviet Union, remnants of national and racial prejudices were attacked through both education, such as previously mentioned, and law through legislation like the Soviet Unions constitution:

“  Article 34. Citizens of the USSR are equal before the law, without distinction of origin, social or property status, race or nationality, sex, education, language, attitude to religion, type and nature of occupation, domicile, or other status.

The equal rights of citizens of the USSR are guaranteed in all fields of economic, political, social, and cultural life.

 

Article 35. Women and men have equal rights in the USSR.

Exercise of these rights is ensured by according women equal access with men to education and vocational and professional training, equal opportunities in employment, remuneration, and promotion, and in social and political, and cultural activity, and by special labour and health protection measures for women; by providing conditions enabling mothers to work; by legal protection, and material and moral support for mothers and children, including paid leaves and other benefits for expectant mothers and mothers, and gradual reduction of working time for mothers with small children.

 

Article 36. Citizens of the USSR of different races and nationalities have equal rights.

Exercise of these rights is ensured by a policy of all-round development and drawing together of all the nations and nationalities of the USSR, by educating citizens in the spirit of Soviet patriotism and socialist internationalism, and by the possibility to use their native language and the languages of other peoples in the USSR.

Any direct or indirect limitation of the rights of citizens or establishment of direct or indirect privileges on grounds of race or nationality, and any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness, hostility, or contempt, are punishable by law” (Constitution (Fundamental Law)).

According to Soviet law, it was considered a crime to give or receive direct or indirect privileges or exercise discrimination based on race or nationality (Haywood 170). Anyone who acted in a racist manner could theoretically be punished for it through legislation like this. Soviet government policy was rather progressive for its time.

During his entire stay in the Soviet Union, Haywood only encountered one example of racial hostility. One day, while he was riding on a Russian street car, he heard a drunk Russian mutter, “Black devils in our country”. Upon hearing that, a group of outraged Russian passengers performed a citizen’s arrest on the man, as racism was illegal. The man would end up receiving a night in jail for the remark, which was powerful for Haywood to see (Haywood 170).

This example of the common Soviet people acting in such a fashion towards an incident of racism shows that there was a great deal of racial tolerance within the Soviet Union. Unlike in Germany, racism was more readily dealt with by Soviet authorities during this time period. The fact a man spent a night in prison for one racist comment is significant to understanding Soviet policy towards racism. Nothing like that would have happened in the United States where Haywood came from.

Another benefit Haywood would find in the Soviet Union would be romance. In the fall of 1927, he married a white Russian woman by the name of Ina who was a ballet student (Haywood 174-175). This interracial union between a black man and a white woman would have been taboo in both Germany during this time period, as seen with Haucks story, and later with the Nazis, and in the United States. In the United States during this time period, there were many laws on the books in many states, particularly in the south, that prohibited interracial marriage and punished it when it happened. This marriage between the two lovers would end up becoming complicated when he tried to bring Ina back to the United States with him. The Immigration Office on Ellis Island did not allow him to receive a visa for his wife because she was a communist in their eyes, even though she said she was just a Soviet citizen. The Immigration Department denied her entrance to the country, which Haywood believed had to do more with the fact that he was in an interracial marriage than it had to do with the idea of her supposedly being a communist (Haywood 388). The fact the US government could not allow two people in love to stay together in a union due to racial prejudice sheds some positive light onto the Soviet System for the tolerance it did allow during this time period.

In the fall of 1927, Haywood enrolled in the Lenin School in Moscow, where he also had the costs of his education completely covered by the Soviet government. Haywood was the first black to be assigned to a school which was designed to train 60-70 qualified students in communist political ideology (Haywood 198).

While Haywood was enrolled in the Lenin School, there was a fractional war going on within the Soviet communist party that had continued from the Trotsky-Stalin feud. Communist members, such as Nikolai Bukharin, led a rightist opposition that had its base among the capitalists, the landlords, and the kulaks. They pushed the development of industry along consumer lines. Haywood opposed this rightist opposition and sided with Stalin (Haywood 200-201).

Haywood would first meet Stalin at a party in the Kremlin during the World Congress of the Friends of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1927 during the same time of the tenth anniversary celebrations of the Soviet Union. At this Congress, there were over 1,000 delegates from 6 continents. During this Congress, an evening of National Culture event was held. This event featured an elaborate pageant of folk dances dancing in their traditional uniforms from the various Soviet Republics. It was a significant celebration of the various cultures of the Soviet Union. Haywood would shake hands with Stalin here, and his brother, Otto, would supposedly end up dancing with Stalin (Haywood 214-216). This opportunity to receive such an honor from such a high ranking government leader would have been a rare opportunity for a black man living within the United States.

What significantly sold Haywood to some of the communist leaders was their stances on black civil rights within the United States. In his writings, Lenin had regarded American blacks as an oppressed nation within the United States. In his work published in 1915, Lenin saw similarities between the serfs in Russia and blacks in the black belt in the US, which was where blacks were oppressed the most. This idea of blacks constituting an oppressed nation within the Black Belt was adopted as a resolution during the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920 (Haywood 219-224).

Prior to the 6th Congress, there was a renewed interest in the African American national question. Stalin, like Lenin had, pushed the idea that blacks were an oppressed nation within the US (Haywood 223-227). According to the theory mentioned in Stalin’s “Marxist National Question” essay, the condition of US blacks within the Black Belt meet the necessary criteria to be considered an oppressed nation. Under the conditions of imperialist and racist oppression, blacks in the south had all the attributes of a subject nation. They were:

1.)           A people set apart by a common ethnic origin.

2.)           They were economically interrelated in various classes.

3.)           They were united by a common historical experience reflected in a special culture and psychological makeup.

4.)           There was a large concentration of blacks in the Black Belt.

Because blacks in the Black Belt contained these traits, they could be considered an oppressed nation within the US (Haywood 232).

At the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, which was held in Moscow in July and August of 1928, the Negro commission was created as a subcommittee of the Colonial Commission. This commission was a multicultural and multinational commission which featured delegates from 18 countries, including the US, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Germany, India, Turkey, and Palestine. This commission took up the problem of US blacks and the South African Question. At this Congress, the communist party pushed its support for the Black National Question. Haywood, who was the first US communist to support that blacks were an oppressed nation, took a lead role in the work here (Haywood 245-260). This revolutionary stance for black self-determination by the communist party was revolutionary for its time and provides a strong example of the Soviets support for black civil rights.

  It was experiences like this that led Haywood to believe that with communism, racial progress could be made. In Haywood’s eyes, the Soviet Union was at the forefront of this progress, and its society made a significant impact upon him.

    Langston Hughes

                  “ Put one more “s” in the USA

     To make it Soviets.

                          Put one more “s” in the USA

                      Oh! We’ll live to see it yet!

                                             When the land belongs to the farmers

                                           And the factories to the working men

                             The USA when we get control

                                                                                   Will be the USSA then!”  – Langston Hughes (Haywood 342)

 

Langston Hughes was an African American poet and intellectual who traveled to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1932. Hughes was invited to be a writer in a black film group that was scheduled to go to the Soviet Union to produce a film. At the time, Hollywood did not employ black writers so Hughes grabbed the opportunity. The salary he received for this was about a hundred times more a week than what he had previously made anywhere else (Hughes 65-75).

When Hughes arrived, the film group he was a part of was lionized as representatives of the great Negro people (Hughes 87).  Russian film director, Sergei Eisenstein, threw a party in their honor (Blacks Reds and Russians 123). It was honor that Hughes and his travelers was not used to receiving.

However, the film itself would end up being a disaster due to a variety of issues. The Soviets thought the people they were getting had working class experiences being black. However, the film group contained people all from the white collar or student classes. No one had a proletarian background. They were also lighter skinned than what the Soviets had wanted. They wanted very dark proletarians for visual authenticity (Blacks Reds and Russians (124).The Soviets also believed that all blacks could naturally sing and dance as they had seen many American films. This also presented a problem when it so happened that none of the blacks in the film group could really sing too well. The plot itself also had some serious credibility issues.

Despite the failure of the film group, Hughes still wished to see the Soviet experiment in action so he took a trip to Soviet Central Asia. While the train ride to Tashkent, the regional capital of Soviet Central Asia was rough, he mentions that the train trips back home under Jim Crow were much worse. Here, he was treated as an equal, as the Soviet Union did not have Jim Crow (Hughes 103).

Under the Czarist system the communists had overthrown, Jim Crow had existed in Soviet Central Asia in regions such as Uzbekistan (Hughes 172). People such as the Uzbeks had been treated under the Czar just as the blacks were treated in Jim Crow Mississippi(Hughes 144). Before the Communists took over, a brown young Uzbek like Tajaio would have had to ride in the back of the streetcars in Tashkent (Hughes 172). His opportunities for education and employment would have been significantly limited.

With the communist takeover of the region, groups such as the Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainian’s, and Tartars were all able to go to the same schools together. They were all able to work together. People such as the Uzbeks finally had the chance to go to school and receive a quality education, which led to the schools in Central Asia overflowing with new students (Hughes 170). Consequently, this factored into the literacy rates across the Soviet Union increasing dramatically.

In regions like Samarkand, the Soviets built the first medical school for the people there (Hughes 105). The Soviets trained health care specialists for free who would then work for a period of three years in an area where the Soviet government needed them. The investment in medical infrastructure in an area severely lacking it played a significant role in the socioeconomic wellbeing of the people in Soviet Central Asia (Hughes 128).

Along with these projects, the Soviet government built infrastructure projects in Soviet Central Asia. Projects like the Chirchikstroy dam in Soviet Central Asia brought electric power to a region that before, under the Tsars, did not have it. These public works projects were loved by the locals (Hughes 171-172).

Asiatic Women in Soviet Central Asia also benefited thanks to the communists taking of power. When Hughes was in Bokhara, he wandered through the palace of the former Emir who had lived there. The Emir had owned a harem where he had many wives. He was known to be one of the most despotic monarchs anywhere. Emir was known to accept young girls as harems instead of money as tax payment from the locals he ruled over. The czar protected this practice. When the communists took power, people like him were systematically eliminated (Hughes 133-134).

With the communists taking of power in the region, the buying and selling of women into marriages was made illegal (Hughes 175). Women were also able to remove the veil for the first time. They were also allowed to pursue legalized divorces. Employment and educational opportunities increased for them dramatically.

When Hughes reflected on this and how he was treated in the United States, he was thrilled by the Soviet System and its push for equality. He was thrilled that the people in this region no longer had to go through the pains associated with a Jim Crow system that categorized people as inferior due solely to the color of their skin.

Hughes mentions that the prisons in the area were overflowing with political prisoners. He mentions that many of the people who had opposed the changes were liquidated (Hughes 172). When one takes in his words and understands how much positive change was brought through wiping out opposition to these investments in racial and gender equality and well-being such as the Emir, it sheds another light onto the role of a strong armed government in pushing through change. It is a valuable perspective to the role of political violence in achieving a political agenda.

As evident in the poem at the beginning of this chapter, Hughes was thrilled by his experience in the Soviet Union. The communist governments progressive actions was significantly influential in his life. It was a society that, like with Hughes, allowed him to feel more equal than he had ever felt elsewhere in his life.

 

Robert Robinson

                                                                                                                      

 

 

 

Robert Robinson was an African American Ford worker who arrived in the Soviet Union in 1930. Robinson was making $140 a month working at Ford when he heard about the offer to take up work in the Soviet Union. The Soviets offered him $250 a month, rent free quarters, a maid, thirty days paid vacation a year, a car, and other perks if he took up their offer to help them on their journey towards industrialization. Robinson, realizing that America was in the midst of the Great Depression and that his situation as a black man was very delicate, grabbed the job offer to be a specialist at a tractor factory in Stalingrad. Like Haywood and Dubois, the Soviet system offered him more than the American system did (Gleason 71).

When he was in the Soviet Union, he became involved with an event known as the Stalingrad Incident. On the way home from work one evening, he was jumped by white Americans working at the factory who did not like the fact that they had to work and live with a black man. Robinson reacted to the threat on his well-being, and the resulting fight was not broken up until the Soviet authorities stepped in. However, unlike what would have probably happened in the US, the Soviet investigators took the side of Robinson as did the court and the public at large. Consequently, the men received some prison time for their action. Most were expelled out of the country immediately (Gleason 72-73). Like with the incident Haywood went through, the Soviet government simply would not allow racist actions like this to take place under their rule. It is another example of how the Soviets government took a strong armed approach to racism.

This incident was later publicized throughout the nations newspapers. The Soviets demonized the racist attack as an example of American racism that was trying to infect the “righteous” Soviet society. It was an effective event for propaganda purposes (Gleason 73).

Sometime after this event, Robinson would become nominated to the Moscow Soviet by his fellow workers. This gave him the job of inspecting factories and reporting on their progress. City legislators would vote on his recommendations on whether or not to adopt them. No one in the plants could appeal his findings. People could be fired based on his reports. He was visually publicized and propagandized for this and received many awards (Gleason 76). It was a position of privilege that would have been hard for him to receive back in the United States and in Nazi Germany.

Not everything was so nice for Robinson though. Despite the benefits he did receive which would have been very difficult if not impossible to receive in the United States, he saw a side of Soviet policy that undetermined the Soviets stance on racial equality.

Following the assassination of Sergey Kirov on December 1st, 1934, heightened paranoia gripped the Soviet Union. Communist party members like Stalin became increasingly untrustworthy of foreigners during what would become the purge years of the mid-late 1930s. Anyone who was foreign was viewed with increasing suspicion, which led to individuals like Robinson received increasing police scrutiny. Two American idealists, Dr and Mrs. Rosenblitz, were sent to labor camps in the far north by Yezhov’s NKVD where they never returned (Robinson 119). They were just two of the thousands, perhaps millions of individuals from various national groups, who fell victims to the purges going on during this time period. If someone’s loyalty could not be completely insured to the Soviet state in the minds of the NKVD and Stalin, they were usually taken out.

As the Soviet Union prepared for war by the end of the 1930s, Russian nationalism became increasingly powerful. Russian culture was pushed more heavily (Robinson 138-139). People like Robinson were pushed to show strong Russian patriotism in order to remove some of the suspicion upon them.  When Robinson later tried to leave the country following World War II, this would be problematic, as he had become a Soviet citizen (Robinson 112). Being a Soviet citizen, the Soviet government was able to block his attempts to leave many times (Robinson 263). The Soviet government did not want him to report to the United States about some of the ills with the Soviet Union.

This experience of Robinson during this purge years reflects a troubling aspect of the Soviet government and provides a valuable insight into the Soviets stance on racial equality. While the Soviet government did provide many benefits to people from a variety of ethnic and racial groups, the Soviets did expect people to become loyal communists completely faithful to the regime. While people of different cultures were able to keep aspects of their culture like their language, they had to adopt communist ideas into their culture. If their loyalty was in doubt, deportations and internment followed.

Because the Soviets were increasingly paranoid during the purge years of foreigners, the Soviets in a way acted in a racist fashion in making various ethnic groups out to be one of the main targets of the purges. What this can be considered is paternalistic racism. Paternalistic racism is basically the idea that we will integrate someone into our “superior” society, this society being communism, and give one all the benefits of becoming integrated into it. However, once one joins, he has to become a loyal communist and subordinate other identities under the Communism ideology. If this primary loyalty cannot be completely assured, persecution will happen.

While this can be seen as an example of paternalistic racism because various ethnic groups were targeted heavily and because Communist culture was pushed heavily upon them, one can also make the argument that they were being treated in many ways just like any other Soviet citizen at this time. Many other Soviet citizens, primarily in positions of political power, such as Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, and Grigory Zinoviev, and capitalists such as the kulaks, lost their lives caught up in the purges because their loyalty to Stalin could not be guaranteed. The fact that various ethnic groups were caught up in it to who’s loyalty could not be guaranteed is in a way, no different than what the average Soviet citizen went through. In a way, they are equal to every other Soviet caught up in the terror of the time.

 

 

Sources Cited:

 

Hughes, Langston. I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964. Print.

Haywood, Harry. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Chicago: Liberator, 1978. Print.

Robinson, Robert, and Jonathan Slevin. Black on Red: My 44 Years inside the Soviet Union : An Autobiography. Washington, D.C.: Acropolis, 1988. Print.

Carew, Joy Gleason. Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2008. Print.

“CONSTITUTION(FUNDAMENTAL LAW).” 1936 Constitution of the USSR, Part I. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.html

Claudia Jones

 

Claudia Jones was born in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1915. In 1924, she migrated to Harlem, New York with her parents. Her family was part of the first wave of Caribbean Migration to the United States that happened up until 1924. In 1924, the United States government passed an Immigration Act, which placed strict immigration quotas on Caribbean countries. This Immigration Act was an attempt by the government to try to limit the influx of people into America who were classified racially and politically “undesirable”. Between 1900 and 1930, various regions of the United States received a great influx of immigrants such as Harlem which received 40,000 new immigrants (Davies xxvii). The government feared this influx of immigrants and consequently sought to limit it.

Claudia Jones’s family’s life in Harlem featured a life of hardship and poverty. Her mother died at age 37 of spinal meningitis suddenly at her machine in the garment shop where she worked. Jones blamed both the non-unionization and bad working conditions at the machine shop for her mother’s death (Jones 11). At the apartment she lived at in Harlem, open sewage flowed near her room, which led to her contracting tuberculosis at age 17 (Jones 12). After she recovered, she worked many petty jobs. Her first job was at a laundry where she observed considerable overwork in hot summer heat that caused black women to faint frequently (Jones 13). It was her experiences with petty jobs like this and living in a racist society in 1930s America that influenced her greatly.

The most influential event in her life towards her political development though was the Scottsboro Boys trial, which lasted from 1931 to 1937. In this case, 9 black boys in Alabama were tried repeatedly in various combinations and convicted and sentenced to death, threatened with lynching, and accused of gang rape of 2 white women. All of these rape accusations proved to be false in the end (Jones 3). It was the CPUSA’s role in taking the lead in this case which inspired Jones to join the CPUSA.

It was her work with the US communist party that led to her arrest on June 29^th, 1951 with 17 other working class communist leaders such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn under the infamous Smith Act (Jones 14). The Smith Act, also known as the Alien Registration Act of 1940, was a United States federal law that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government and required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government. Anyone who worked for a communist organization was considered to be advocating the overthrow of the United States government, and consequently, were prosecuted under this act.

The excuse the government used to enact this legislation to try to politically silence Claudia Jones was an article she wrote titled, “International Women’s Day and the Struggle For Peace” in 1950. In this article, Claudia Jones urged women in the United States to form coalitions both domestically and internationally with women across the world oppressed by United States capitalist imperialism in countries like Marshalized Italy and fascist Greece and Spain to oppose President Truman’s war policy (Jones 90-91). One of the chief goals was to end the nuclear armament that was going on in the United States. Jones urged women to pressure the government to pursue peaceful negotiations with the Soviet Union. March 8^th, 1950, was to be a day of demonstrative struggle for peace, freedom, and women’s rights towards this goal.

In order to help rally women to this coalition, Jones intelligently addressed the issues of sexism women as a whole were facing in the country during this time period and why it was important to fight it together as a coalition. In the article, she mentioned that women constituted only 27.6% of all workers in 1947, which was a decrease from 36.1% in 1945. Out of the 6 million unemployed workers in the United States, 30% of them were women. Along with employment discrimination, the average woman in the United States was on average, being paid less than the average man for the same job (Jones 94).

Jones also skillfully addressed the war the capitalist government was fighting to weaken labor during this time period. She writes in the essay of how men were being told that the dismissal of married women and the return of women to the kitchen would lead to the end of unemployment along male workers. Through trying to form divisions between workers, the US capitalist power establishment sought to divert attention away from capitalism, which Jones intelligently saw. Jones saw this as part of the governments war on labor alongside other legislation such as the Taft-Hartley employer drive, which sought to depress the wages of the working classes in general, and hurt working conditions and social security benefits (Jones 94-95).

Through highlighting these important pieces of information, Jones hoped to rally women and really men together in one coalition. These sorts of issues were felt by all groups of workers and through addressing them, she hoped to end some of the divisions in the country. This made her a significant threat to the capitalist United States government.

In the article, Jones sheds positive light on the USSR. She mentions that the October Communist Revolution of 1917 in Russia guaranteed for the first time in history, women full equality in every phase of life. She mentions that under the New Soviet Constitution in Article 122 all “women in the USSR are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social, and political life.”  Only under socialism, Jones said, is the complete emancipation of women possible (Jones 99).

It was this praising of the Soviet Union during the time period of the Cold War that played into the red scare fears the United States government had of political activists like Claudia Jones. This led to her being persecuted under legislation like the Smith Act. When she was bailed out for $20,000, a large sum not abnormal for political activists to be impacted with, as later seen in the lives of Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and countless others, she was later rearrested under the Walter- McCarran Law in October, 1951 (Jones 15). The Walter-McCarran act made it a crime to be a non-citizen or permanent resident alien. This legislation was known for being a racist piece of legislation, as it encouraged immigration from Europe but restricted it from the Caribbean to only a 100 people a year. Even though Jones had tried since  the age of 23 to become a US citizen, the fact that she was politically active since 18 led to her applications being denied (Jones 16). Even though she had tried, the US government did not accept that, and prosecuted her under the act, which led to her inhumane internment on Ellis Island in a special Walter-McCarran wing. Her internment strained her health greatly.

On July 4^th, 1953, Claudia Jones suffered heart failure diagnosed as hypertensive cardio vascular disease. Despite having a poor heart, on January 11^th, 1955, she entered prison where she served 9 months and 18 days, which further put strain on her poor health. Upon her release, she was deported from the United States on December 9^th, 1955, after residing in America for 32 years (Jones 15-16). Her deportation was an act of political lynching of a black female political voice in America who was considered to be not American.

When one reads her essay, “Lift Every Voice For Victory” written in 1942, one can see that Jones was someone who did love America deeply. In the essay, she mentions Joe Louis, who was an African American heavyweight boxer, who became champion for knocking out his Nazi opponent, Max Schmeling, on June 22^nd, 1938. Jones mentions that it was a shot heard around the world (Jones 51). After his fight, Joe Louis joined the military and when asked why, said, he was fighting for his country. The fight being that against Nazi Germany.

The United States war against Nazi Germany, Jones wrote, was one that black Americans, and really humanity, had to get behind. While the United States did have its own severe problems, such as Jim Crow, Jones said that fascism would destroy the country’s traditions of constitutional liberty, and democratic rights. Books would be burned and culture and science perverted. There would be a destruction of democracy under Hitler that would bring with it, genocide against African Americans, Jews, and other minority groups across the United States. To Jones, the war was not a white man’s war but a war to stop a country that was the essence of evil (Jones 53-54)

Her support for the United States here shows that Jones was not someone who despised America. While she obviously knew that it had its faults, she loved what the country was at its core and sought to simply correct the illnesses that plagued it. One cannot gain the sense that she did not love America.

Jones, while pushing support for the war effort, also skillfully made the case for African American civil rights in the piece. Drawing upon a tradition of African American men and their service to the country, Jones mentions numerous instances of where African Americans had proven that they were just as patriotic as everybody else in the United States. African Americans such as Crispus Attucks, the first man to fall during the American Revolutionary War, the black soldiers during the Civil War, and heroes such as Dorie Miller, a soldier at Pearl Harbor, all received considerable praise (Jones 54-57). Through highlighting the service of African Americans to their country, Jones made the case that full integration into the war effort for blacks should be achieved in order to defeat the fascist menace of Nazi Germany. Her skillful use of patriotism here to try to push a civil rights issue is clearly seen, and her attackers later, if they had read this piece fully, cannot honestly come to the view that she hated the United States.

Claudia Jones was an incredibly intelligent women who saw that coalitions had to be formed in order to defeat capitalism in the United States. It was the fact that she was such a skillful leader that led the United States government to remove her from the political arena in the United States. The United States political lynching of Claudia Jones highlights the fact that the United State simply did not want communism to exist and gain influence in the United States. Claudia Jones, however, is just one of a series of black female communist and civil rights activists who would be persecuted by the United States………..

 

 

 

Jones, Claudia. “International Women’s Day and the Struggle For Peace.” Beyond Containment. Banbury: Ayebia Clarke, 2010. Print.

Jones, Claudia. “Lift Every Voice For Victory”. Beyond Containment. Banbury: Ayebia Clarke, 2010. Print.

Jones, Claudia. “Autobiographical History.” Beyond Containment. Banbury: Ayebia Clarke, 2010. Print.

Jones, Claudia, and Davies Carole. Boyce. Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment. Banbury: Ayebia Clarke, 2010. Print.

 

 

Revolutionary Che Guevara once had the dream of creating the “New Man” in Cuba. According to Che, a “man truly achieved his full human condition when he produced without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity”. Che had seen firsthand the egotism and selfishness that capitalism fostered in people and how it made people less human. To Che, capitalism was like a drug. Capitalism caused people to worry exclusively about increasing their wealth in order to get their fix, which became harder and harder to meet. Like other drug users, this habit of the capitalist came at the expense of others in society who were exploited by the capitalist in their pursuit of profit. Capitalist societies, according to Che, ran on selfishness and egotism, which basically turned people into mirror representations of those characteristics. In order to restore the humanity of society, capitalism had to be removed through means such as education and socialism implemented in order to create the “New Man”, a fully human individual who would be able to overcome egotism and selfishness. Continue reading →