The Sojourner Truth Organization: Notes Toward a History

[This is the text of the presentation I gave at the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition Conference last weekend in Vermont.  The discussion afterwards was pretty good, I thought, mostly relating to the various experiences attendees had accumulated over years of working in "multi-racial" or "all-white" or "people of color" projects, organizations, and campaigns, and lessons people had learned as a result.  The session was recorded, and once an audio file appears on the internet, I will offer a link here.]

When I was eighteen, my older brother Peter gave me some essays to read on feminist philosophy.  Those essays contributed to me becoming a philosophy major in college, and they contributed to me identifying radical feminism as one of the most important political influences on me during my college years.  In preparing for this talk, I’ve been re-reading some older feminist writings that speak to questions of privilege.  The work of bell hooks (whose early book Feminist Theory from Margin to Center was the source for my title this morning) and Marilyn Frye have been getting my attention these last few weeks.  Frye in particular is one of my favorite philosophers, and her book The Politics of Reality is one of my all-time favorite books of philosophy.  The sharpness and clarity of her writing, in essays like “Oppression” and “On Being White” hold up quite well 25 years later, and I will come back to these writings periodically during this talk. 

But I’m not a philosopher anymore, now I’m a historian.  And as a historian, I’ve spent much of the past several years researching the history of a small, mostly white revolutionary group based largely in Chicago during the 1970’s and 80’s:  the Sojourner Truth Organization.  STO, as it was often known, was never very large, and it is largely forgotten today, even within the revolutionary left.  During its existence, the group was frankly notorious for its attachment to the white skin privilege analysis.  It was never the only group to adopt this understanding of white supremacy, but it was one of the most vocal.  This talk isn’t strictly speaking about STO, but my research informs the core of my trajectory today. 

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But before we get to the seventies, we have to go a few steps back.  The roots of the white skin privilege analysis lie in the work of WEB DuBois, a black Marxist historian whose most important book was Black Reconstruction in America:  1860-1880 (published in 1935).  Here, DuBois used a provocative phrase “the public and psychological wage” in order to explain the pervasiveness of white racism during the period after the Civil War.  In his words:

“It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage.  They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white.  They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools.  The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent upon their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness.  Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them.”

For three decades, the white left was supremely unconcerned with this idea of the “wages of whiteness” (to use the historian David Roediger’s phrasing).  But in the 1960’s, a handful of white radicals began to explore the broader implications of DuBois’ analysis, expanding its application beyond Reconstruction and turning it into a general theory of US History.  Foremost among this small number were Noel Ignatin (now Ignatiev), who, not coincidentally, helped found STO at the end of 1969, and Ted Allen, later the author of The Invention of the White Race.  (In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Allen and Ignatin met initially through their membership in a small Stalinist sect, and that both men remained attached to a version of Stalinism throughout the 1960’s.  It is a central premise of my talk that the white skin privilege concept can and should be assessed independent of its founders’ Stalinist background.)

According to Ignatin, Allen coined the term “white skin privilege,” in a 1965 speech commemorating John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry.  Throughout the late 60’s and early 70’s, these two men produced a flurry of essays detailing the philosophical, political, and historical aspects of their emerging theory.  Allen and Ignatin never built their argument around moralistic sermonizing of the sort that some radicals now associate with the term “white skin privilege.”  Instead, they made what amounted to a strategic argument concerning the prospects for revolution in the United States, maintaining that white skin privilege kept white people from uniting with people of color in anti-capitalist struggle.  In the earliest elaboration of their theory, the pamphlet “The White Blindspot” (another DuBois reference, naturally), Ignatin argued that:

As the building block for this analysis, it is essential to understand what white skin privileges are, and what they are not. In Ignatin and Allen’s view, the privileges covered a wide terrain, including the opportunity to be first hired and last fired in an employment context, access to preferential treatment at the hands of police and government bureaucrats, and in general the same sort of deference and courtesy that had been described in Black Reconstruction.  These privileges were relative rather than absolute:  first hired and last fired, for instance, meant that whites could expect that they would always get jobs more easily than blacks, not that there were always jobs available for any whites that wanted them. 

While rejecting the notion that racist ideas and attitudes were hardwired into white people, Ignatin and Allen refused to accept the liberal position that racism could be eliminated simply by changing people’s minds.  Further, despite the use of the word “skin” in white skin privilege, Allen, Ignatin, and others, argued strenuously that “whiteness” itself was a political rather than biological category.  This fluidity allowed groups of people, such as various immigrant communities, eventual access to “whiteness” and its privileges, contingent upon their willingness to reject any solidarity with black people.  This was a dynamic historical process, not some abstract permanent feature of genetics.  Thus, according to Ignatin and Allen, what could be done could also be undone.  White skin privileges could be repudiated in struggle, and this created the possibility of a reunified proletariat capable of overthrowing capitalism.  One more passage from “The White Blindspot” can illuminate this point, despite the Leninist overtones of its rhetoric:

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STO was by no means the only group to take the white skin privilege concept seriously.  As early as 1969, the initial statement by the Weather faction of SDS (later the Weather Underground) made extensive use of the idea that white workers were “privileged.”  In contrast to STO, however, this version of the white skin privilege analysis was often interpreted as a basis for writing off the revolutionary potential of the white working class and focusing the efforts of white revolutionaries on solidarity work with revolutionary nationalists both domestically and internationally.  When the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee was initiated in 1974, it also adopted this version of the theory.

Ignatin and Allen both challenged this particular form of the analysis, because both men were strongly committed to organizing within the white working class as a part of a comprehensive strategy for revolution.  But these differences were minor compared to the differences both STO and WUO/PFOC had with the vast bulk of the white left during the first half of the 1970s.  Maoists, Trotskyists, and anarchists were never more united than in their dismissal of the white skin privilege concept.  It was denounced as moralistic, guilt-tripping, counter-productive and impractical.  In retrospect, we can see the kernel of truth in these criticisms when looking at the more extreme articulations of the WUO/PFOC version of the analysis.  But in the form developed by Allen and Ignatin, and by STO organizationally throughout the 1970’s, this criticism seems to miss the point.

Despite the best efforts of its detractors, there was a slow but steady diffusion of the white skin privilege idea over the course of the 1970’s, aided somewhat by the shrill attacks on the theory that were advanced in movement publications like the Guardian newspaper.  A growing number of young radicals were drawn to the analysis, including many white women (and especially lesbians) who saw parallels between their experiences under patriarchy with those of black people under white supremacy.  In fact, one could argue that the adoption of the white skin privilege concept by a segment of the white feminist movement was the catalyst for the general diffusion of the idea within the white left over the course of the 1980’s.  The relative openness to feminism of groups like Prairie Fire, and the often dismissive attitude taken by STO, meant that some versions of the analysis were more widely disseminated than others, much (I would argue) to the long-term detriment of the theory and of the white left.

In the early 1980’s, the emerging feminist and lesbian presence within the academy further contributed to the good fortune of the white skin privilege analysis.  The pioneering work of lesbian philosopher Marilyn Frye (who I mentioned earlier) represents the best elements of this work, grounded in a real-world analysis of oppression and resistance.  For instance, in the essay “Oppression,” she articulates quite clearly the every-day stakes involved in patriarchy, using the framework of (but not the term) privilege:

Too often, however, popular trends in academic theory converged with the jargon potential inherent in a formulation like “white skin privilege” to generate a range of “privilege”-based analyses.  Many of these, such as male privilege, heterosexual privilege, middle class privilege, able-bodied privilege, and others, make sense on an elementary level as a description of reality, but have proven highly problematic when they have been incorporated into elaborate theories, convoluted analysis of popular culture and daily life, or under-examined resistance strategies.

Among anarchists, however, even an enthusiasm for radical feminism during the 1980’s didn’t result in a quick embrace of the white skin privilege analysis.  Most anarchists of the 1980’s adopted a sort of flattened view of oppression, in which all forms of hierarchy were basically interchangeable and only a sort of under-theorized anti-statism really defined what anarchism meant.  There were rumblings of a different approach in magazines like Kick it Over and Open Road, (why are the Canadians always so ahead of the curve like that?) but the sea change really began with the formation of Love and Rage at the end of 1989.  Initially conceived as a continental anarchist newspaper, Love and Rage eventually became a “Revolutionary Anarchist Federation.”  By the time of L&R’s demise nine years later, the anarchist movement in North America had changed dramatically in its assessment of capitalism, of oppression, and of resistance.  Love and Rage consistently challenged the old orthodoxies of anarchism, and in particular focused less attention on “class” as it had previously been understood, and more attention on forms of oppression like white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, among others.  In this context, the adoption of privilege-based theories of oppression was unsurprising. 

In the decade since Love and Rage disbanded, privilege-speak has become commonplace throughout the anarchist milieu.  Publications as divergent as the Northeastern Anarchist and Green Anarchy have run pieces that incorporate the language of privilege.  The most important exceptions to this shift are, naturally, older anarchist publications like the Fifth Estate and Anarchy Magazine, although even these have probably included references on occasion.

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Some of you may have noticed that the published description of this talk used the phrase “for better AND for worse” to describe the impact of the white skin privilege analysis on anarchist politics.  By this point it should be clear that I have mixed feelings about the general category of “privilege” and the current manifestations of the white skin privilege analysis in particular.  In essence, I endorse the basic outline of white skin privilege as a framework for understanding how white supremacy operates on a day-to-day basis.  The same is true, generally speaking, for male privilege, heterosexual privilege, and other conceptualizations built on the same model.  I know that in my personal life I have benefited from these three sets of privilege, among others.

Beyond simple accuracy as a narrative of oppression, the various privilege-based theories have another major advantage over other understandings of oppression:  they provide a helpful challenge to traditional top-down approaches that focus exclusively – sometimes even conspiratorially – on the actions of the ruling class.  By emphasizing the participation of everyday people in the continuing experience of oppression, privilege narratives provide at least the opportunity to place human agency at the center of strategies for revolution.  Once again, what has been done can be undone.  And again, Frye sheds some light on this in her essay “On Being White:  Thinking Toward a Feminist Understanding of Race and Race Supremacy:”

Most of my concerns with regard to the white skin privilege analysis (and with the other theories modeled on it) arise when the analysis is incorporated too easily into particular strategies for social change.  I will close my talk by briefly outlining four different problems that plague present-day versions of the white skin privilege concept.  I will call them:  1) the substitution problem; 2) the voluntarism problem; 3) the liberalism problem; and 4) the avoidance problem.

The substitution problem was one that afflicted STO almost from its inception.  Put simply, the issue was that STO behaved as if the black revolution was the proletarian revolution.  A classic example of this confused logic can be seen in an early STO pamphlet titled “The United Front Against Imperialism?,” where the group argued that

When the black movement increasingly turned toward reformism, entrepreneurship models and electoralism, the flaws inherent in this line of argument became crystal clear.  Nonetheless, many white leftists today use a similar litmus test to assess social movements, believing that the repudiation of white skin privilege can be completed via the knee-jerk endorsement of movements of color.  In some ways this is akin to the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic so common among those who identify as anti-imperialists today.

The idea of “repudiation” is also the core of the voluntarism problem, which too often applies even to those white radicals smart enough to avoid the substitution problem.  Race Traitor, for instance, approaches white skin privileges as if they can single-handedly be cast off by people who have previously been identified as white.  Unfortunately, however, privileges of this sort are granted by others, not affirmatively chosen by individuals.  As Frye noted, it is not possible to volunteer oneself out of the white race, no matter how much we might wish to do so.  Rather, the destruction of white supremacy will necessarily involve an overhaul of society, or it will not come to pass at all.

The nature of this overhaul is at the heart of the liberalism problem, which I have argued previously is exemplified by the work of the Catalyst Project, despite the best intentions of its participants.  To the extent that white skin privilege is understood to be an impediment to “racial justice” and “liberation,” the strategy for ending white supremacy is reduced to a process of ameliorating of social inequality, apparently within the confines of capital and the state.  Revolution is reduced to a transformation in consciousness and what the situationists called “everyday life,” rather than indicating a comprehensive process for re-working all social relations, whether economic, political, or cultural. 

Finally, there’s the avoidance problem, which has been highlighted quite effectively in a thoughtful essay by the Philadelphia based activist Michelle O’Brien, “Whose Ally?  Thinking Critically About Anti-Oppression Ally Organizing.”  O’Brien argues that the rhetoric of white skin privilege provides a convenient way for white radicals to exempt ourselves from the substantive work of combating white supremacy while feeling good about ourselves because we have a sophisticated analysis and speak in a sort of jargon or code that other white radicals will be impressed by.  She offers the following example from her personal experience:

I will admit that as I re-read the text of this talk last night, this description hit dangerously close to home; I will leave it to others to determine whether I am myself engaged in a process of avoidance.  Anecdotes like this don’t necessarily invalidate the conceptual framework provided by the white skin privilege concept, but they do call into question its frequent, sometimes all-purpose usage among white anarchists and other white radicals.  The question then becomes:  does the analysis help us make sense of society and oppression in the new millennium?  And if it does, can it still be saved at this late date from its problems?