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BOOK REVIEW JONES this writing off as a pathetic attempt by the author to satisfy his own ego; but in this crucial period of militant upsurge and intensified search for ideology in the Black community, the ideas developed throughout The Making of Black Revolutionaries must be exposed as a hodge-podge of confusing maxims and slogans which represent anything but a winning strategy for oppressed nationalities in the U.S. Though Forman constantly refers to his deep "understanding" of the nature of capitalist exploitation and the necessity for class unity, his lengthy accounts of the clashes between racist whites and Black people in the South never draw a real distinction between the white working class and the monopoly power structure. In fact, Forman utilizes racist fears and actions of whites in that period to justify his conclusion that armed struggle by Blacks together with other non-white nationally oppressed minorities is the only path to liberation. He attempts to camouflage his narrow nationalism with occasional phrases about the exploitation of "poor whites"; but this attempt is quickly discredited as he poses to whites, in one of the final chapters, what he feels to be one of the fundamental questions, namely: "Will you be willing to take up a gun and shoot a cop who's shooting in Oakland?" This is the extent of the consideration which Forman gives to the white working class. In forwarding his unscientific theories, he unwittingly becomes entrapped in the maze of contradictions which he himself has created. For example, in his final chapters, he has thrown together a collage of vague statements about guarding against a "purely skin analysis" even though "race is intimately involved in the colonizing experience;... The dispossessed united with the dispossessed;...We serve notice on White America and its Christian churches; [!??!]...For a day is fast approaching - a bloody day, a clash of left and right, rich against poor, Black against white racists, Chicano and Puerto Ricans, and Indians and Orientals, all in an uproar, patient no longer with the Bloody [!??! B.J.] Anglo..." and so on, ad nauseam. It is no surprise, therefore, that he finally arrives at the conclusion that Black people must begin to think in terms of "the colonized and the colonizer." Black folk are, in essence, a colony within the United States. This misjudgment flows from his method of not only submerging the class question in, but of completely subordinating it to, the national question. It results essentially from a classless position; and it is dangerous since it leads to the conclusion 163
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-21 17:46:57