What's Next for the Anti-Racist Movement?

By T.R. Whitworth

Republished from Independent Socialist Group.

In my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built… And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.

- Malcolm X, 1964

The recent murders by police of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery have reignited the anti-racist movement in the U.S. The current situation is eerily similar to what we saw in 2014, when Michael Brown’s murder by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked protests that quickly spread around the country. Then, as now, the protests were met with fierce repression and violence by highly militarized police forces. Then, as now, the mainstream media smeared—largely peaceful—protesters as rioters and looters in an effort to discredit the movement.

While the 2014 movement under the banner of Black Lives Matter was energetic and inspiring, like many past movements against police racism and brutality, it failed to materialize real systemic changes. The Obama Administration’s Justice Department begrudgingly carried out a few more investigations of corrupt and racist police departments, but even that minor reform was quickly rolled back by the Trump Administration. Body cameras for the police, a central demand of the 2014 movement, have only been implemented in a patchwork fashion, and even where wearing one is official policy, officers frequently turn them off without consequence.

Encouragingly, the current emerging movement is even larger and more energetic than in 2014. Protests have taken place across all 50 states, many protests continuing for days. The protests are characterized by instinctive multi-racial and multi-ethnic solidarity against racism and police violence. And public support for the movement is high. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, “64% of American adults were ‘sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,’ while 27% said they were not and 9% were unsure.” Given the massive support for and participation of youth in the movement, this 64% figure is probably a conservative estimate.

The ruling class has been shaken to its core by this uprising, and the heavy-handed repressive response of police departments and the Trump Administration has so far backfired, adding steam to the protests instead of extinguishing them. We’ve seen a series of concessions in past days, granted under pressure from the protests. All four Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s murder have been fired and indicted. Six Atlanta police officers have been criminally charged for using excessive force on protesters. And institutions across the country, especially universities and colleges, have publicly severed ties with their cities’ police departments.

But the current anti-racist protest movement lacks organization, leadership, and democratic decision-making structures. Without these, it is vulnerable to fizzling out without achieving lasting change, as people succumb to protest fatigue. It is also vulnerable to being co-opted and de-radicalized by self-appointed “leaders” who would rather celebrate cops hugging black protesters than fight for systemic change.

What we need to win

The systemic changes we need include an end to racial profiling, “broken windows” policing, “stop and frisk” policies, the racist War on Drugs, and the criminalization of poverty—which disproportionately affects black communities. All police officers who espouse any form of racist or white supremacist ideas should be fired without question.

The assault on our democratic right to peaceful protest must end. The military, including the National Guard, should be immediately withdrawn from our cities and streets. The use of tear gas, rubber bullets, flash bangs, and riot gear in response to protests should be banned. We should demand the immediate release of all arrested protesters and the dropping of their charges, as well as the release of former Black Panthers and all other imprisoned black liberation activists.

All killer cops, past and present, should be prosecuted. It needs to be easier to fire police officers with excessive force complaints and criminally charge and convict killer cops. District attorneys’ offices have shown that they are not capable of prosecuting the same police officers that they work with on a daily basis and rely on to testify in court. Police departments have proven that they are not capable of investigating themselves.

We need community control of the police through democratically elected committees of workers and community members with hiring and firing power, the ability to review and create policy and budgets, and authority to conduct independent investigations into cases of police misconduct.

Police unions like the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the International Brotherhood of Police Officers should be decertified. Law enforcement unions are not like other unions. The main role of police in the U.S. is to serve the will of the capitalist class, including by enforcing racist and anti-worker policies, repressing strikes and labor activity, and putting down protests. Police unions exist to protect police officers from facing any consequences for their actions (up to and including murder). They make it difficult to discipline or fire bad cops and they oppose any public oversight of the police.

Police departments across the country must be demilitarized and their budgets reduced. Cities must stop wasting public funds on military technology and weaponry and invest the money instead in affordable housing, public transit, schools, and other social programs and services in order to make a dent in the poverty that disproportionately affects black workers. Even many police themselves complain that they are expected to do the job of social workers. Let’s take some of the public money currently spent on police budgets and use it to hire actual social workers instead.

Finally, we need a political party—a workers’ party—that will offer a real alternative to racism and austerity. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties have failed for decades to meaningfully improve the conditions under which we live: widespread poverty, entrenched racism, lack of access to decent education, housing, jobs, and healthcare. Both parties play off of each other and seek to divide workers along racial lines—as well as by nationality, gender, sexual identity, etc. Despite their more “progressive” rhetoric of racial justice, when in office the Democrats have disappointed again and again. Just look at cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis, where decades of Democratic Party rule have not resulted in reforms to policing, and in many cases have actually passed some of the worst police policies, including “stop and frisk.” In fact, Democratic Party controlled major cities have been the epicenters of the majority of the murders of unarmed black people by police for decades.

How to win these demands and more

To achieve these needed systemic changes will require a high level of organization and coordination. The ruling class and their police and military forces are organized and we should be too. We should immediately form neighborhood committees, with elected members—workers, youth, and community members—and democratic structures, to decide future actions and tactics and develop a program with clear demands to direct the movement. These neighborhood committees should elect delegates to city-wide committees, which should in turn build links state- and nation-wide.

These elected neighborhood committees should prepare plans, train volunteers, and collect supplies and equipment for dealing with tear gas, rubber bullets, “kettling,” and other aggressive police tactics at protests and demonstrations. They should be ready to assess situations, make tough calls, and put forward proposals in the heat of the moment for how best to keep protesters and neighborhoods safe from police and right-wing aggression. They could also organize neighborhood patrols to document police interactions with community members.

Labor unions need to get involved and take a strong stand against police brutality and in support of the protests. Issuing public solidarity statements is a good first step, but unions should go further by organizing workplace meetings and discussions on the movement, and mobilizing members to form union contingents at protests. Unions should also use their legal resources to defend protesters. Representing 11.6% of all U.S. workers—and 12.7% of black workers—unions are among the most diverse institutions of the working class. Solidarity against racism and all forms of oppression must be a key point of struggle for the whole workers’ movement.

Protesting can only be one part of our organizing strategy. Protests are effective to the extent that they call attention to the issue, demonstrate public outrage or support, and disrupt “business as usual.” But ultimately the ruling class only cares about actions that affect their bottom line—their ability to make profit. We should begin to organize for 24-hour general strikes of workers in all sectors in cities across the country to win the movement’s demands by putting further economic pressure on the bosses who are already staggering from the blows of the health and economic crisis. They will quickly get the message to their paid-off politicians that it’s time to grant substantive reforms.

Unions should play a key role in calling for and planning any general strikes, but both union and non-union workers should participate. If the union bureaucrats won’t do it, rank-and-file union members and workers should take up the planning themselves (and then elect new union leaders prepared to genuinely represent their class, not suck up to the bosses).

We need to build a truly mass movement to unite workers of all races in the struggle against capitalism and the racist inequality and violence that the system was founded upon. Only a multi-racial working-class movement has the power to win demands like demilitarizing the police, convicting killer cops, ending the War on Drugs, and community control of the police.

Only a movement that unites workers and youth regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, or any other form of oppression, can win guaranteed jobs, housing, healthcare, education, and a living wage for all. These reforms can be paid for by taxing the rich and nationalizing big corporations, as a step toward ultimately ending capitalism and replacing it with a democratic and egalitarian socialist society with power firmly in the hands of the working class. As MLK, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton all came to conclude, the only way to defeat racism is to defeat capitalism.

Fred Perry, Proud Boys, and the Semiotics of Fashion

By Anya Simonian

[Pictured: Traditional style influenced by Jamaicans, Italians, and Ivy League Americans from the 60s.]

Over the past week the Proud Boys, a self-described "Western chauvinist" organization whose members are tired of apologizing for "creating the modern world", have garnered media attention. Along with the disruption of an Aboriginal ceremony in Halifax by Proud Boy servicemen, the group is gaining notoriety for clashes with anti-fascist (Antifa) activists. Additionally, the Proud Boys have been involved with so-called anti-Sharia rallies . In New York, two Proud Boys and one "Proud Boys Girl" recently parted ways with their employers after their involvement with the alt-right group came to light and a social media campaign demanded the businesses take action. Proud Boys have degrees of membership. To become a "Fourth Degree" Proud Boy, aspiring members take part in "a major fight for the cause." Founder Gavin McInnes explained: "You get beat up, kick the crap out of an antifa [anti-fascist activists]," to rise through the ranks.

Much Proud Boy media coverage has mentioned, in passing, the group's "uniform": a black Fred Perry polo shirt with bright yellow trim. The Washington Post's recent article, "The alt-right's Proud Boys love Fred Perry polo shirts. The feeling is not mutual" went further in its attempts to explain why Proud Boys have adopted a shirt that, at first glance, seems best suited for white middle-class dads out for a round of golf or game of tennis, quoting Zoë Beery's piece in The Outline, " How Fred Perry Came to Symbolize Hate ". While both articles offer an overview of the shirt's popularity among Mod and traditional Skinhead subculturists and its eventual cooptation by racist skinheads and neo-Nazis, neither emphasizes the degree to which the brand has long served as a site of political contest between the radical left and the far-right. Since the early 1980s, attempts to associate the brand with right-wing politics have been met with resistance from two main camps: 1.) anti-racist skinheads and 2.) "traditional" (non-racist) skinheads -- both of whom refuse to cede the meaning of the Fred Perry brand to the far-right in the same way that one might fight for the liberation of an occupied space.

The word skinhead most often conjures up images of white hooligans, or a particular aesthetic adopted by neo-Nazis. Yet, what it means to be a skinhead has changed over time. Periodizing skinhead culture is challenging but, broadly speaking, it can be broken down into three eras: the middle to late 1960s period of apolitical, multi-racial working class youth; the 1980s period of White Nationalist cooptation of the skinhead aesthetic and overtly anti-racist and left-wing skinhead political responses to that cooptation; and the period from the late 1980s to the present, in which the meaning of the skinhead culture and aesthetic is continually contested.

Skinhead Origins

1960s skinheads

In the late 1960s, the first skinhead subculturists were born of multiculturalism: the fusion of Jamaican "rude boy" styles and music brought to England by Jamaican immigrants in the post-war years, and the working class culture of the English Mods (short for Modernists) who decked themselves out in fine Italian suits and shoes, listened to American soul, jazz, and R&B, and rode Vespa scooters. Mod women sported miniskirts, flats, and sometimes men's clothing. Skinhead style emerged in Britain in the late 1960s as a simplified version of the Mod aesthetic that placed greater emphasis on projecting working class masculinity and a love of Jamaican reggae and ska.

Interpretations

Social scientists took note of these subcultures and worked to explain their meaning in relation to a changing post-war Britain. The seminal work on subculture studies to which all later studies pay homage, or attempt to refute, is Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. Published in 1976, Resistance Through Rituals, as well as the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) from which the work emerged, understood youth subculture in Marxian terms as a manifestation of social, political, and economic change. The historical context for the CCCS interpretation was the post-war period of the 1950s that saw the rise of commercial television, age specific schools, and extended education that brought youth together for longer, more isolated periods of time. Adding to these challenges were the recent violence of war and more fatherless children as a result of war deaths. These factors contributed to the making of an isolated, and later unique subculture of resistance.

Drawing from Italian Marxist theorist Antionio Gramsci, a driving foundational assumption of Resistance Through Rituals is that one or more dominant groups in society hold "cultural capital" and subordinate groups or classes find ways to express or challenge their subordinate experience in their own culture. This dominant culture, according to the CCCS, exists solely within the framework of capitalism, whereas the struggle for "cultural capital" becomes a struggle between those with capital versus those who labor. The dominant culture acts as a hegemon and attempts to define and contain all other cultures, giving birth to opposition from less dominant cultures against this cultural hegemony. Although the less dominant culture (i.e. the subculture) enters into resistance against the dominant culture, the subculture is in fact derived from the "parent," or hegemonic culture, and will inevitably share many of its attributes. For example, working-class culture is considered by the editors of Resistance Through Rituals to be a "parent culture," yet the youth subcultures that arose from it have their own values, uses of material culture (which are often derived from the parent culture but are re-appropriated and given new meaning), as well as territorial spaces. The Fred Perry represents both an appropriation of the parent culture and a territorial "space" where politics play out.

The editors of Resistance Through Rituals write:

Sub-cultures, then, must first be related to the 'parent cultures' of which they are a sub-set. But, subcultures must also be analysed in terms of their relation to the dominant culture - the overall disposition of cultural power in the society as a whole. Thus, we may distinguish respectable, 'rough', delinquent and the criminal subcultures within working class culture: but we may also say that, though they differ amongst themselves, they all derive in the first instance from a 'working class parent culture': hence, they are all subordinate subcultures, in relation to the dominant middle-class or bourgeois culture. [1]

1960s Mod style from the 1979 film, Quadrophenia

From this angle, Resistance Through Ritual examines the predecessors of the skinheads -- the Mod subculture of the 1960s which, in its most basic terms, consisted of dressing sharp in the latest high fashion (but only wearing particular high fashion brands, often stemming from styles of those involved in organized crime in 1950s and 60s Britain), hairstyles, soul and rock n' roll music, all-night clubs, riding Vespa scooters, and taking amphetamines. The Mod was all about style, and this sharp style, combined with the "uppers" they took, were cast by the CCCS in terms of opposition to the hippie culture of the day that to many Mods seemed to spell a slow, do-nothing death. This seemingly odd combination of interests was explained in terms of working-class resistance by Dick Hebdige in his contribution to Resistance Through Rituals, "The Meaning of Mod":

The importance of style to the mods can never be overstressed - Mod was pure, unadulterated STYLE, the essence of style. In order to project style it became necessary first to appropriate the commodity, then to redefine its use and value and finally to relocate its meaning within a totally different context. This pattern, which amounted to the semantic rearrangement of those components of the objective world which the mod style required, was repeated at every level of the mod experience and served to preserve a part at least of the mod's private dimension against the passive consumer role it seemed in its later phases ready to adopt...

Thus the scooter, a formerly ultra-respectable means of transport was appropriated and converted into a weapon and a symbol of solidarity. Thus pills, medically diagnosed for the treatment of neuroses, were appropriated and used as an end-in-themselves, and the negative evaluations of their capabilities imposed by school and work were substituted by a positive assessment of their personal credentials in the world of play (i.e. the same qualities which were assessed negatively by their daytime controllers - e.g. laziness, arrogance, vanity etc. - were positively defined by themselves and their peers in leisure time). [2]

As mentioned above, the skinheads were born from a combination of Jamaican immigrant "rude boy" culture and Mod subculture. Originating in the middle to late 1960s, the skinheads were of solidly working-class origin and resented authority and social pretensions. The skinhead community developed at a time of worsening conditions for working-class youth, and the CCCS interpreted this subculture as an attempt to recreate a traditional working-class community. Although the skinheads came from the working class, fewer opportunities meant that they almost acted out or performed working-class values rather than lived them. The early skinheads were intensely aware of their self-image and played up their exaggerated working-class style. They wore Doc Marten work boots, suspenders and blue jeans or Levis Sta-Prest jeans as a way to identify with this style and lifestyle in decline. Yet, they coupled this look with Ben Sherman button down dress shirts and Fred Perry tennis shirts -- a scaled down Mod look -- in an appropriation of neat middle-class style that turned middle-class values on their heads. This tennis shirt, worn by working-class skinheads, became a symbol of solidarity and a new kind of "class."

At clubs in the evenings the skinheads would often wear suits like those of the Jamaica "rude boys" and dance alongside Jamaicans to Rock Steady and ska music. Anti-racist and traditional skinheads -- sometimes dubbed Trojan Skinheads for their love of Trojan Records, producers of Jamaican music -- look back on this period as a golden age for their subculture. The phrase "Spirit of 69'" which originated in the 1980s is used by traditional/Trojan skinheads as a reference point for what skinhead culture can and should be about: inclusion, racial harmony, and a multicultural celebration of working class culture. Naturally, the CCCS interpreted skinhead solidarity as an act of resistance to a hegemonic order and its particular characteristics felt by working-class kids coming of age in the post-war years. By the 1970s, however, this variety of the skinhead subculture had largely faded away, but elements of it would be revived, in bastardized form, in the following decade.

Within the early skinhead subculture there had always existed a focus on masculinity, or acting "hard" in order project an "authentic" working-class ethos. This masculinity was expressed in the skinhead interest in soccer and the joining of "firms," or soccer clubs that rooted for their favorite teams and often used violence against opposing firms. The "firm" was also an expression of the desire to protect territory and, most importantly, an expression of collective solidarity. With the introduction and quick commodification of punk rock in the late 1970s, a second wave of skinheads was born. These skinheads, connected to the punk scene rather than the ska, Rock Steady, or reggae scenes of their predecessors, still aped working-class style while sporting the Fred Perry brand, yet their music was Oi -- a more aggressive, simplified version of punk that could never go mainstream. Non-racist bands like Cock Sparrer, The 4-Skins, The Last Resort, Sham69, and The Cockney Rejects led the way.

While this second wave of skinheads was at first largely apolitical, their penchant for soccer hooliganism made them prime recruits for England's far-right National Front. The Young National Front (YNF) began to recruit second wave skinheads at soccer matches, appealing to skinhead working-class sensibilities by scapegoating immigrants for the decline of the white working class. By 1979, the YNF had established Rock Against Communism, a music festival featuring white nationalist bands. In subsequent years neo-Nazi bands like Skrewdriver would bring hundreds of disaffected youth into the National Front. Along with this came the adoption of a new skinhead aesthetic that included the traditional Fred Perry or Ben Sherman shirt and Doc Marten boots, but added to it a paramilitary edge that included flight jackets, larger boots, more closely cropped hair, and symbols of white nationalism. This bastardization of the aesthetic and its coupling with far-right politics made its way to the United States in the 1980s.

Anti-racist and traditionalist responses to the aesthetic and political hijacking of the original "Spirit of 69'" skinhead subculture were swift. As historian Timothy S. Brown put it:

Reacting against this trend-which they considered a bastardization of the original skinhead style-numbers of skins began to stress the cultivation of the "original" look, making fashion, like music, a litmus test for authenticity. Violators of the proper codes were not skinheads, but "bald punks," a category to which racists-who, in the eyes of purists, failed completely to understand what the subculture was about-were likely to belong. The connection between right-wing politics and "inauthentic" modes of dress was personified in the figure of the "bone head," a glue-sniffing, bald-headed supporter of the extreme right, sporting facial tattoos, a union-jack T-shirt, and "the highest boots possible." Although the emphasis on correct style was not explicitly political, it grew-like insistence on the subculture's black musical roots-out of a concern with the authentic sources of skinhead identity. As such, it was heavily associated with the attempts of left-wing and so-called "unpolitical" skins to "take back" the subculture from the radical right in the early 1980s. [3]

In an effort to "take back" the subculture and its symbols from the radical right, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) was founded in New York City in 1987. Although anti-racist skinheads and left-wing anti-racist skinhead bands like England's The Oppressed had challenged the far right through song and protest, SHARP represented the first attempt to organize skinheads as a multiracial movement against racist, right-wing "boneheads." SHARP's logo was, in part, the logo for Trojan Records, producers of the Rock Steady and ska music so beloved by those first wave British skinheads. In fashion, SHARP emphasized a return to the early styles of skinhead dress, and sought to reclaim the Fred Perry brand (among others) as a symbol of multiculturalism, working-class pride, and the early skinhead subculture in general. As SHARP spread throughout Europe its growth, at times, led to violent clashes with white nationalist skinheads. The Oppressed led the charge in Great Britain, performing confrontational Oi music that pitted the group and its followers firmly against their racist opposition. For example, in their simple four chord song "I Don't Wanna," singer Roddy Moreno belts:

I don't need no bigotry

I know where I'm from

I don't need no racial hate

To help me sing my song

I don't wanna make a stand

But what else can I do?

I don't wanna be like you

Don't wanna fight your race war

Don't wanna bang your drum

I don't wanna be like you

Don't wanna live like scum

The Oppressed associated themselves with groups like Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) and wrote anthems like "The AFA Song" meant to inspire the skinhead left in its fight against the right -- a fight that often resulted in street battles between rival skinhead factions in Europe:

We don't carry shotguns

We don't carry chains

We only carry hatchets

To bury in your brains

So come on

Let's go

So come on

Let's go

A.F.A.

In addition to overtly anti-racist organizations like SHARP, "traditional" or "Trojan" skinheads in the 1980s and 1990s avoided the political question altogether and instead simply decided to live the inclusive values found in the first wave skinhead movement while celebrating working-class pride coupled, at times, with an occasional soft patriotism. Other smaller groups like Red and Anarchist Skinheads (RASH) formed alongside SHARP that added a heavier dose of left-wing politics to SHARP's anti-racist stance.

Both groups have worn the Fred Perry and both have incorporated the laurel wreath symbol associated with the brand into album covers and traditional and anti-racist skinhead tattoos. The Fred Perry polo then, for them, is an object reclaimed, re-sanctified, and restored to its original meaning.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, echoes of these conflicts between left, traditional, and right-wing skinheads continued, though never quite reached the fever pitch the conflict had reached in the 1980s.

The Templars (1996), an Oi band from Long Island, NY

As we move further into this period of political and ideological polarization, brought on by capitalist crisis, we are seeing old partisan battles reignite. It is no surprise then that the Proud Boys have adopted such a politically-charged piece of clothing for their unofficial uniform. For those with an insiders' view of this decades-old culture war, the Proud Boys' adoption of the Fred Perry polo makes an unequivocal statement: we identify with the far-right uses of this brand. The adoption of the Fred Perry is not lost on Antifa, the Proud Boys' primary political opponents. Fashion, as one variety of symbol system, projects a clear political orientation for those able to "read" the language of what is signified by the brand. As anthropologist Edward Sapir pointed out: "The chief difficulty of understanding fashion in its apparent vagaries is the lack of exact knowledge of the … symbolisms attaching to forms, colors, textures, postures, and other expressive elements of a given cultures. The difficulty is appreciably increased by the fact that some of the expressive elements tend to have quite different symbolic references in different areas."

For those who have adopted or who understand the skinhead subculture in all its variegated forms, the Fred Perry, viewed in certain contexts, sends one of three messages: that one espouses white nationalist politics, far-left politics, or that one is a traditional skinhead who celebrates multiculturalism. For those in the latter two camps there has been a long-standing contest to wrest the symbols of the "Spirit of 69'" from the hands of those who would corrupt them. While "ownership" of a brand may seem trivial or ill conceived, this "ownership" embodies a struggle for agency, space, and the dominance of an ideology through appropriation of contested material culture.

Notes

[1] John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts, "Subcultures, Class and Culture," inResistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (London: Routledge, 1993), 7.

[2] Ibid, 76.

[3] Timothy S. Brown, "Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinheads and "Nazi Rock" in England and Germany." Journal of Social History 38, no. 1 (2004): 157-78.