Features

 

• The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To To Abolish It
• Black and White and Dead All Over: The Lucasville Insurrection
• Chiapas and Montana: Tierra Y Libertad
• The Abolition of Whiteness and Black Freedom Movement
• The New Abolitionist Society
• White Blues
• An Open Letter to President Clinton and Governor Keating
• The Huck Finn Symposium

The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To To Abolish It
Now that White Studies has become an academic industry, with its own dissertation mill, conference, publications, and no doubt soon its junior faculty, it is time for the abolitionists to declare where they stand in relation to it. Abolitionism is first of all a political project: the abolitionists study whiteness in order to abolish it. Talk given at the conference "The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness." University of California, Berkeley, California, April 11-13, 1997

Black and White and Dead All Over: The Lucasville Insurrection
In April 1993, an inmate rebellion broke out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in Lucasville, Ohio, near Cincinnati. Nine prisoners and one correctional officer were killed during the 11-day uprising. Five inmates were sentenced to death and are presently on death row. They are: Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Namir Abdul Mateen, Keith Lamar, Jason Robb, and George Skatzes. Hasan, Mateen, and Lamar are black. Hasan and Mateen are Sunni Muslims. Robb and Skatzes are white and are members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
From RACE TRAITOR #8 (Winter 1998)

Chiapas and Montana: Tierra Y Libertad
Since 1993 two chinks have appeared in the armor of the New World Order. On the surface they are disparate, but a closer look reveals similarities that some would rather avoid. We all know of the Indian insurgency in Chiapas, Mexico, that has reaped mixed rewards from a combination of armed propaganda and land appropriation. The Zapatistas have won the hearts and minds of norteamericano Leftists and radicals. These same Leftists and radicals have been quick to deride the homegrown rebels in their own backyard. I am referring to the militia movement, the latest bogeyman for the suburbs.
From RACE TRAITOR #8 (Winter 1998)

The Abolition of Whiteness and Black Freedom Movement
As we face the new millennium and reflect on our country's past, I keep returning to the aftermath of the Civil War, perhaps the world's shining example of what democracy could have become. Imagine what the entire world would look like had the federal government fully empowered ex-slaves, allowed them to keep their guns and the vote, handed over that land on which they worked and allowed them to organize production on their own terms, and dismantled the master class (after all, they were war criminals). Perhaps we would be living in a country that puts working people's needs before corporations. A good-paying, fulfilling job and a strong "safety net" in troubled times might have been a basic right, not a so-called "entitlement." Talk given at the RACE TRAITOR Conference May 2, 1997

The New Abolitionist Society
On May 2nd and 3rd, 1997, a conference was held in New York City called by the editors of RACE TRAITOR: the Journal of the New Abolitionism. About 160 people were present Friday night and about one third that many attended the workshops and small discussion groups the following day. At the conclusion of the conference, the organizers announced the formation of the New Abolitionist Society, a network of groups and individuals wishing to pursue the goal of abolishing the white race as a social category. RACE TRAITOR Conference, May 1997

White Blues
Whites have been playing black music for decades, and the tail-end of a constant source of friction - and interchange - should not be seen as the beginning. But the phenomenon of whites taking up the blues in great numbers is a fairly modern spectacle, indeed, one that finds its beginnings in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. From RACE TRAITOR #4 (Winter 1995)

An Open Letter to President Clinton and Governor Keating
Timothy McVeigh is now a convicted mass murderer. Through an application of his army training and street physics he detonated a large bomb that killed babies and federal employees. McVeigh is personally responsible for the most deadly terrorist attack in American history. He broke the Heartland. And now he has been sentenced in an open court to die for his crime. But a crime of such horror and magnitude demands more than death for the Guilty if Justice is to be served. Such a crime demands the Ultimate Penalty if closure is to be reached by the victims... And for Justice to be served it is not enough to kill McVeigh, he must be eaten, preferably by the Victims of his crime. Only this will repair the broken Heartland. Reprinted from PAPER TIGERS (Fall 1997)

The Huck Finn Symposium
"All modern American literature," wrote Hemingway, "comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Yes, but what does Huckleberry Finn come from? The answer is -- the slave narrative. Collection of three essays on the American classic. Summer 1993.

Other Races
From the start it is necessary to distinguish between race and ethnicity. They do not occupy the same analytic space and do not exist on a continuum. Ethnicity deals, at least symbolically, with culture; race is an assigned status. From RACE TRAITOR #6 (Winter 1996)

Abolish the white race - by any means necessary
The white race is a historically constructed social formation - historically constructed because (like royalty) it is a product of some people's responses to historical circumstances; a social formation because it is a fact of society corresponding to no classification recognized by natural science. From RACE TRAITOR #1 (Winter 1993)

Aux Armes! Formez vos Bataillons!
Time was one might have expected opponents of official society to welcome a grassroots movement arming to defend individual liberties against federal encroachment. Contrary to such expectations, many who are pleased to locate themselves on the "left" have raised a cry of alarm at the militia movement surpassing even that from government circles. From RACE TRAITOR #5 (Winter 1996)

Until It Hurts
The goals of the new abolitionist project were anticipated by the more radical of the 19th Century abolitionists. They sought not only to end slavery but also to secure equal rights for the Negro and the ending of racial prejudice. For them, chattel slavery was simply the worst form of the sin they wished to eradicate. From RACE TRAITOR #5 (Winter 1996)

When does the unreasonable act make sense?
The way to abolish the white race is to disrupt that conformity. If enough people who look white violate the rules of whiteness their existence cannot be ignored. If it becomes impossible for the upholders of white rules to speak in the name of all who look white, the white race will cease to exist. The abolitionists are traitors to the white race; by acting boldly they jeopardize their membership in the white club and their ability to draw upon its privileges. From RACE TRAITOR #3 (Spring 1994)

The Rogue Debate
This is a transcript of a debate Rogue sponsored Sunday evening, March 17, between Harvard historian Noel Ignatiev and San Jose immigration attorney Dale Warner on the topic: Are Irish-Americans White? (Spring 1995)

Free To Be Me
According to press reports and our own correspondents, the white race is showing signs of fracture in the rural midwest. Several female students at North Newton Junior-Senior High School near Morocco, Indiana, who call themselves the "Free to Be Me" group, recently started braiding their hair in dreadlocks and wearing baggy jeans and combat boots, a style identified with Hip-Hop culture. From RACE TRAITOR #3 (Spring 1994)