Smash anti-Asian racism with multiracial unity

BAY AREA, April 9—The nearly 3,800 violent assaults on Asian workers in the U.S. in the past year, focused on women and the elderly (San Jose Mercury News 3,26), are intolerable racist and sexist attacks on the working class. Only multiracial unity of Black, Latin, indigenous, white, and Asian workers can stand to defeat the racism that is endemic to the profit system.
Hate crimes against Asian workers are on the rise around the U.S. For example:

• Atlanta, GA: 8 people (6 Asian women) were killed in Atlanta massage parlors.
• San Francisco: an attacker threw an 83-year-old Asian man to the ground and broke his hip.
• Oakland, CA: a racist threw a 75-year-old Chinese man on the sidewalk. He died of head injuries.
• NYC: a racist knocked down a 65-year-old Asian woman and stomped on her head and chest.

The spike of anti-Asian hate crimes has been fostered by anti-Asian rhetoric of many capitalist leaders and media, stemming from the growing imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China. The main wing of the U.S. ruling class is worried because their empire is in decline, and the Chinese capitalists will soon surpass them (see CHALLENGE editorial, 3/14).
The U.S. is a failing empire that has lost dominance of manufacturing and world trade and is losing its political credibility. Although it has the world’s largest and most deadly military, the U.S. has lost every imperialist war since the 1950s. Meanwhile China has abandoned socialism and opted for capitalism (see letter, page 6).
President Joe Biden-appointed diplomats are now saying the U.S. must be ready to go to war with China (Atlantic Council, 2021). The finance capitalist wing of the U.S. ruling class has a contradiction on its hands. As they cynically shed fake tears for the gutter racist attacks against Asian workers, the bosses still need anti-Asian racism and nationalism against their imperialist rival, China. In preparation for war, the ruling class is fomenting racist divisions against Asian workers, blaming them for the pandemic and accusing China of human rights violations.
For an empire built on the slavery of Black workers, genocide of indigenous workers, separation of Latin families at the border, mass incarceration, terrorism against Muslim workers since Sept 11, racist police terror, anti-worker violence and imperialist wars, the U.S.  is in no position to accuse other countries of human rights violations.
Demonstrations against anti-Asian racism
Thousands have demonstrated against anti-Asian American anti-Pacific Islander (AAPI) hate crimes in the San Francisco Bay Area in dozens of towns since January. Asian, Black, Latin, Indigenous and white workers participated in multiracial rallies and marches.
PLP members joined in two demonstrations in Oakland April 2 and April 3. The April 2 rally and march was well-organized by high school young women in Bay Area AAPI (DM@bayareaaapi). A multiracial crowd of about 500 students and some older people marched across Oakland through Chinatown chanting, “Asian is not a virus; Hate is a virus.”
PLP distributed 300 leaflets and 20 CHALENGEs as well as meeting new friends.
The April 3 rally at an Oakland park was led by a new organization, Asians with Attitude (AWA). A multiracial group of about 500 workers participated, including a motorcycle club of Samoan workers. An inspiring speech was presented in Chinese by an elderly man who organizes against attacks on the elderly. He praised the multiracial character of the rally and said that ordinary people need to take a stand and defeat racism. National and ethnic identity truly took a back seat to multiracial unity this weekend!
The only class analysis or anti-capitalist analysis came from PLP’s 300 leaflets and 6 CHALLENGEs. The AWA leaders aspire to become a non-profit, a deadend that drains organizations of antiracist politics and militancy.
Nearly 200 years of anti-Asian Racism and Sexism

• Anti-Asian racism and sexism in the U.S. dates back to the 19th century when Chinese workers were imported to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Hundreds died in mountain tunnel explosions. More examples include:
• Los Angeles in 1871: One of the worst lynchings in U.S. history when 15 Chinese workers were lynched at one time, and four others murdered.
• Watsonville in 1930: a similar pogrom against Filipinos occurred because white and Filipino workers were dancing.
• The AFL refused to sanction Asian unions. But Black, Latin, and immigrant workers have led fights against exploitation. In 1877, immigrant-led railroad workers waged a nationwide strike in response to a capitalist depression. Workers briefly took over the city of Pittsburgh, PA, overwhelming the bosses and their brutal cops. Sadly, racist-led construction unions engaged in a pogrom against San Francisco’s Chinatown at that time, burning laundries and killing four Chinese workers.
• U.S. citizenship was denied to Asian people from 1882 to 1952.
• During World War II, the U.S.  locked 120,000 Japanese workers in concentration camps. They inflicted the ultimate horror of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.
• As recently as the 1990s there was slavery of Thai women in a garment sweatshop in Los Angeles, where workers were locked inside for up to 7 years, working off “debt” (Smithsonian Magazine, 7/31).

The ruling class distracts attention from the cruelty of imperialist war abroad—and the lack of jobs, adequate schools, health care and social programs domestically—by promoting racist and sexist stereotypes in the movies, media, and education. Asians are stereotyped as the “model minority” that can pick itself up by the bootstraps. This racist trope is inherently an attack on Black and Latin workers and an attempt to sow divisions in our class.
Multiracial unity, Black workers key
All these racist attacks on Asian workers are made possible because of the bedrock of anti-Black racism in the U.S.; a country birthed out of slavery and colonization can only beget racism. The U.S. could not have become an imperialist empire without the super profits it reaped from the brutal enslavement of Black workers. And the rise of U.S. capitalism could not be possible without racist Jim Crow. In short, anti-Black racism was the template the bosses used to unleash their  racist attacks  against Asian, Latin, and Arab, Muslim, and indigenous workers in the U.S. and globally. Therefore, any advances towards equality must put the fight against anti-Black racism at the forefront of the class struggle. Above all, any struggle without Black workers’ leadership is doomed to fail.
To maintain their profits and power, the capitalist system needs racism and sexism to divide and conquer. Our movement should unite all backgrounds to fight against racism as we did last summer during the anti-police murder rebellions, rather than being divided into separate ethnicity-oriented movements. Working-class multiracial unity disarms the ruling class.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) strives to build an egalitarian communist world, where the working class run society. We would abolish the material basis for the many divisions between us, from capitalist borders to racism, sexism, and identity politics. Let’s mobilize international working-class unity on May 1, 2021—international worker's day.