mekka okereke :verified:
🤔"Unions are better than DEI!" is a very confused statement. Because unions and DEI address completely different problems.
One important thing that effective DEI does, is address anti-Black racism. It makes the workforce tolerable for your Black coworkers (if you have any).
Every public school teacher in the US is in a union. And yet, Black teachers and Black students experience massive amounts of racism from those teachers. Because unions aren't a magical answer for anti-Black racism.
Doctor Memory
@mekkaokereke Dear god. I'm all for labor unions but among their other properties they're a tool that gets used to decide _who gets to work_ and anyone who thinks that _wouldn't_ sometimes be applied in a racist manner in this country shouldn't be allowed to carry sharp objects unattended. Like just on first principles, never mind doing a tiny bit of research into their history.
Philip Cardella
@mekkaokereke and while some unions have been front and center of the Civil Rights gains since at least as early as the 1945 Florida wade in that led to the first Black Beach in Southern Florida, other unions have been front and center of the racist exclusion in many work places.
Unions are important. Unions are essential.
The union record on race is a mixed bag.
Passenger
@philip_cardella @mekkaokereke
While I am proud, as an IWW member, that we were always a union with no race bar and gender bar, I am sad that that is something to be proud of.
mekka okereke :verified:
The statement "It's class, not race!" has been perverted, and is now used as a weapon against Black people. It's used to harm Black folk by minimizing the effects of racism, and pretending that growing up poor and white is an equal disadvantage to growing up poor and Black. It has become an anti-Black statement.
But it was originally popularized to help Black folk. To show poor white folk that had bought into racism, that poor Black folk are not their enemies.
mekka okereke :verified:
Yup. I've pointed out on here before, that if I take two white men:
1) a 50 year old, non college educated, union plumber or electrician from Pittsburgh or Atlanta
2) a 50 year old, college educated, venture capitalist from New York or Los Angeles
And ask them both what the Black Panthers' mission was, what "rainbow coalition" means, who first said "class, not race," or who Fred Hampton was... the "uneducated" tradesman has more accurate answers. 🙂🙃
Pär Björklund
@mekkaokereke afaik at least some studies have shown people in unions are less racist so it seems they are both important parts of addressing racism, from different angles
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