From: RPlatkin@aol.com
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 02:53:06 -0500
To: bwitanek@igc.apc.org, revs@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: What is Helpful and Is Not Helpful
Whereever in the world there has been ethnic and racial oppression, there has
been resistance and collusion among the oppressed (and for that matter, among
the oppresser).  They usually go on simultaneously, with periods or areas in
which resistance seems dominant, and other times and places in which
collusion seems most common.

What this tells us that all groups have both tendencies and that they can
rapidly change.  The process of determining which aspect is most pronounced
is highly political and has nothing to do with DNA.  To argue that Native
Americans were programmed to be warriors has absolutely no scientific
validity.  Which genes were the warrior genes?  Is it a dominant or recessive
gene?  Did tribes which were not warlike have a different genetic
composition?  Were individuals who were not warriors some type of mutants?
 Were men the warriors because they were genetically programmed to engage in
resistance?  Were there tribes that were genetically programmed to collude
with Europeans and others to resist them?  How could individual tribes go
through cycles of resistance and collusion, sometimes during one generation?

And, what about the great variations among Europeans?  Among all countries
there were and are colonialists and anti-colonialists, imperialists and
anti-imperialists, racists and anti-racists, fascists and anti-fascists
(e.g., the largest group of  anti-fascist foreign volunteers in the Spanish
civil war were from Germany), warriors and pacifists, etc.  Is this to be
explained through genetics or politics?

To even pose these questions reveals that politics is primary in
understanding resistance to oppression.  To ignore this process, which
reveals tremendous class and political differences within both oppressed and
oppressor groups, is in itself a very right-wing view of the world.  It
doesn't become any more correct, or any more helpful in resisting oppression,
to have these reactionary ideas articulated by members of historically
oppressed groups?

So let's get seriously political on this question and stop denigrating Alan
Spector for mildly criticizing some of the comments in the Vermon hunger
strike file.