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Racism in America’s history and the need for a change in American government were the topics covered at Thursday’s Marxist and Socialist lecture series. This event was the first of two in the series to examine topics relevant to Black History month.
Jarvis Tyner was a founding member of the Black Radical Congress and is the vice president of the Communist Party of the United States.
Tyner said organized group action changed the status of African-American people in American history and struggled against the economic system that exploited them.
“Wealth was accumulated through the labor of the unpaid slaves,” he said, calling the terror and oppression of British and American slave-trading ships kidnapping people from Africa and forcing them into the Trans-Atlantic slave trade “shock and awe.”
He said “The slaves were human beings who had been commoditized” by being forced to work, not given the right to an education, to marry or to have control over their own children. Tyner said slavery under the capitalist system in early America had taken on a “vicious” form because slaves were not given the opportunity to work their way out of oppression. They were given a life sentence of “oppression in a system that was most barbaric.”
Most historians estimate that between nine and 12 million Africans arrived in the Americas, although the number of people kidnapped from Africa was significantly higher because many died en-route from the African continent.
Tyner gave the story of Frederick Douglass who defended himself against an infamous “slave breaker” – or someone who would beat people into submission. After gaining this edge of power, Douglass regained hope and began to think about freedom. He would eventually escape slavery and devote his life to advocating for its abolition.
“The bloodiest war in [American] history was fought around the issue of race,” Tyner said. He also said slavery, with free labor, was interfering with the working class who ran factories in the more industrialized north. “Capitalism was not an innocent bystander in the struggle against slavery, it was not the solution, it was the problem,” he said.
Tyner said that sweeps and struggles throughout history have transformed this country. He said the votes of African Americans were suppressed in the last election because they were voting against the conservative policies being put forward.
“My opinion is, the best thing we can do in 2008 is defeat the Republicans at the ballot box and put somebody in there who can fight for a whole new direction.”
He said the kind of “imperialist, backward, racist thinking” that would keep the United States in Iraq for years to come means “it is time for change in this country and we need to be a part of it.”
He went on to say that although Hillary Clinton would be a good choice, he supports Barack Obama because he has the ability to put the United States on a different path and he represents progressive ideas.
Thursday’s lecture was co-sponsored by Multi-Cultural Programs on campus and the Black Student Union.
