Published in The Guardian Independent Radical Newsweekly (New York), October 29, 1980, Page 22:
Larry Pinkney, Mission, Canada: I am writing to the Guardian to congratulate you on your in-depth articles and thought-provoking analyses of the issues and concerns relevant to progressive struggle.
As a socialist and a Black political activist, I certainly cannot overemphasize the necessity to closely analyze the various facets and potential traps that we must be cognizant of as we surge forward in progressive struggle.
With this point in mind, I refer to the Oct. 8 Opinion and Analysis entitled “Feminism is Inherently Racist.” I most adamantly agree with the basic premise of this article. Indeed the sex myth is an actively propagated myth which is very dangerous and very racist as applied especially to Black males in North America, especially in the U.S.
In concurring with this Opinion and Analysis I must stress that “feminism” should not be, and can not be, approached as if it is an ideology in and of itself–for such an approach is reinforcing racism and playing into the hands of bourgeois thinking and tactics. Black men, and Black people in general, have paid and are still paying a most bitter price for the arrogant and chauvinistic assumption of a capitalist society permeated with racism.
This is not to say that sexism is unreal, for it is chillingly real. But this is to say that the sexism and the “liberation” of women are not to be utilized as a means of entrenching the deadly sex myth that has been responsible for so many bloody castrations and lynchings and is responsible for so many frame-ups of Black men today. The “Take Back the Night” slogan and march reinforces this myth, and it is only natural that the police were smiling in ‘support and cooperation’ with this march. There is no place in the progressive struggle for white chauvinism or chauvinism of any kind.
Tangible and viable alliances can and should be made between the women’s movement and other aspects of struggle but such alliances must be based upon the working principles of mutual grasping of the realities that afflict us as we seek to eradicate the sickness that oppresses us as a whole. This is not always easy, but it is definitely essential to real and successful struggle.
Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)
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