MIM Notes 230                   March 15, 2001

Letters

Reader (erroneously) thinks MIM is racist

Dear MIM:

I just thought I'd let you know something. I'm a college aged 
white person. I'm extremely interested and active in progressive 
causes, and I've read the MIM paper several (10) times. However, I 
won't buy it ever again (or read it).

I understand that your organization is trying to achieve equality 
and fairness in the world, but I don't think that attacking white 
people as a race is the right answer. Racism against white people 
isn't any better than racism against black people. My ancestors 
were German immigrants who weren't slave owners, and didn't really 
benefit from that system, as they came here in the late '20s, and 
were shit on as every immigrant group has been for the last 200 
years. Referring to me ("white") as part of a negative group due 
to my skin color isn't the answer you folks are looking for. 

And even if DuBois was racist (which I doubt he was -- four "."'s 
typically mean to me that things are taken out of context), it 
doesn't mean it was right. He was a great man, but every man is a 
product of their times, black, brown or white.(If I'd have been 
white at his time, I'd probably have been racist against blacks. 
If I'd have been black, I would have hated whites. That doesn't 
make it right 100 years later.)

I hope you folks continue your great work with prisoners (sending 
them books, correspondence, etc.) but I won't be involved with you 
folks, due to your apparent racism against whites.

I hope your (and my) causes win in the end, but that racism dies.

--a former reader in the east, February 2001

MIM responds:

This reader is referring to a flyer we used to advertise for an 
event celebrating DuBois' birthday which included the quote from 
DuBois:

"I do not pretend to 'love' white people. I think that as a race 
they are the most selfish of any on earth. ... I refer to the 
white world as a whole."(1)

There is nothing in this statement that is inherently racist. In 
the sense that it identifies white people of the imperialist 
countries as a social group which benefit from and support 
colonial exploitation and oppression, it is correct. 

The article from which the quote is taken begins with the 
following passage. "A rather curious change of emphasis has caught 
my attention recently. Negroes are being accused of racism, that 
is, of unduly emphasizing racial differences and of advocating 
racial separation. This would be laughable if it did not have so 
serious a side. A shattered and almost fatally divided world, now 
making desperate effort to envision a humanity bound together in 
peace and at least with some approach to brotherhood, is being 
warned that its worst victims are contemplating the resurgence of 
race hate!

"Of the debt which the white world owes Africa, there can be no 
doubt. No black man can recall it without a shudder of disgust and 
hate. ..."(2) Du Bois goes on to list crimes committed by white 
colonialists, slave-traders, and imperialists. (We always include 
cites for quotations in MIM Notes and MIM Theory, so if you think 
we've mis-represented Du Bois, please, look it up.)

This is not to say that Du Bois or MIM believe that white people 
have some biological characteristic that forced them toward 
imperialism. Both Du Bois and MIM explicitly deny that race has 
any scientific meaning in that sense. Rather, the underlying basis 
of racist ideology backing up imperialism is economic.

For example, in "The Souls of White Folk," Du Bois argues that the 
carnage of World War I "had been forshadowed when in Germany and 
America 'international' Socialists had all but read yellow and 
black men out of the kingdom of industrial justice. Subtly had 
they been bribed, but effectively: Were they not lordly whites and 
should they not share in the spoils of rape? High wages in the 
United States and England might be the skillfully manipulated 
result of slavery in Africa and of peonage in Asia."(3)

In fact, both Du Bois and MIM consider white-skinned people 
outside of the imperialist countries to be friends of or part of 
the international proletariat. Du Bois noted in 1893 that the 
peasants of Hungary were more oppressed than Black serfs; he also 
supported the self-determination struggle of the Irish.(4) MIM 
sees the white peoples of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union 
as people with progressive self-interests.

Also, MIM works with any individual regardless of national or race 
background. What one says and does is more important than who one 
is. What is true of a group on average is not true for every 
individual. We encourage oppressor nation people to give up their 
national privileges; even though most will not.

As for never buying or reading the paper again or being involved 
with MIM -- all we can say is, "never say never." We should be 
able to unite on practical issues affecting the oppressed even 
while we struggle over important matters of principle. 
Furthermore, people's ideas are constantly changing. MIM as an 
organization has changed its mind in the past after struggle, and 
certainly Du Bois changed his mind over his long life, as he went 
from promoting the "talented tenth" to founding the NAACP to 
joining the Communist Party. Please read more about both our and 
Du Bois' positions; you may find your own ideas changing.

Notes:

1. Eric J Sundquist ed., The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader (NY: 
Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 669-771.

2. David L Lewis ed. W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader (NY: Henry Holt and 
Company, 1995), p. 685.

3. Ibid, p. 463.

4. David L Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race (NY: Henry 
Holt and Company, 1995), p. 516; W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography 
of W.E.B. Du Bois (NY: International Publishers, 1968), pp. 404, 
25-26.

Prisoner protests censorship

Dear MIM,

I have received both January issues of MIM Notes. Tight! Very 
Tight! I loved the articles on W.E.B. DuBois. Hopefully you will 
continue printing subjects about him. 

I have also included a poem and a carbon copy of that letter to 
the Wisconsin Warden.

I have finished reading and meditating upon MIM Theory #7. I loved 
it

-- a Kansas prisoner, 6 February 2001.

MIM responds: We're printing the carbon copy of this comrades' 
letter protesting the censorship of MIM Notes at the Boscobel 
Supermax in Wisconsin. It provides a good example of what 
prisoners and outsiders can do to participate in our campaign to 
end censorship in Amerikkka's prisons. 

Warden Gerald

Berge Supermax Correctional Institution 

P.O. Box 1000 Boscobel, WI 53805

Re: Censorship of Newspaper

I has recently come to my attention that you are not allowing your 
inmates to receive a publication entitled "MIM Notes". You have 
cited that this newspaper "advocates violence and presents a clear 
and present danger to institutional security."

Well, I am an inmate that is currently at a Supermax facility (for 
the past two years) and I have been allowed to receive this 
publication for quite a while. Before I came to this supermax 
prison, I was a very violent person, but after I started receiving 
MIM Notes and seriously studying them, I have become much more 
respectable and I have learned to deal with problems in an 
intellectual way, no longer resorting to violence first. I believe 
that this publication has been the main cause of my change, and I 
believe you will witness similar changes in your inmates if you 
allowed them this publication.

In fact, your policy of censoring this material and your reasoning 
are not founded in factual evidence or actual happenings. 
Therefore, you cannot say it is a threat to your security when it 
has never been the cause of a problem at your facility.

How can you justify your censorship when not only my Supermax, but 
hundreds of other prisons across the country allow their inmates 
to receive this publication. To my knowledge, there has never been 
a documented case where this publication has even been the cause 
of a major incident, or a real material threat to any prison that 
has allowed this publication to inmates. [This statement is 
verified by MIM.] I believe your reasons for censoring this 
newspaper are unfounded. I personally believe that the only true 
motives of your censorship are based upon your personal dislike 
and disagreement of the political view advocated in this 
publication.

With this said, I hope you will no longer violate these prisoners' 
constitutional rights and hope you allow them to receive MIM 
Notes.