[Back to Normal, a play by the San…]

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Back to Normal, a play by the San Mime Troupe pokes fun at U.S. Gulf triumph' Another high point in the show is the Left to right: Daniel Chumley, Keiko Shimosato, Arthur Holden, Isa Nidal Totah United States, mars an otherwise diverting chorus of Hollywood "celebrities" who and Michael Sullivan from the Mime Troupe's Back to Normal. 14 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1991 wretched affair. I can hardly stand it." His persistent efforts to rid painting of social meaning, along with Brancusi's obsession with creating "a universe of form" in sculpture, have, despite some stunning achievements, led to a growing sterility in the arts.

In the 1940s and '50s, expression was said to have been made abstract, though how this could be done was never satisfactorily explained. In recent decades we have been treated to various forms of post-modernism, such as minimalism and post-minimalism, and finally to eclecticism-its subject matter drawn from past centuries, and little of it relevant to the times in which we live.

The phenomenon that today we call modern art is in reality the fragmented remnants Francisco Mime Troupe. Directed by Ed Holmes. Script by Joan Holden, Ellen Callas, Elliot Kavee, Gregory R. Tate, and Isa Nidal Totah.

"I'm not ready to laugh about the war,"

a friend told me on my way to see the San Francisco Mime Troupe's new play, "Back to Normal."

The laughs in this buoyant performance, however, are not at the expense of the Iraqi war victims but at the amazing ways the U.S. ruling class worked to sell the war to the American people and, as the war ended, to convince us that everything was "back to normal."

The high point of the show comes when the main character makes a casual wish on a lamp containing a magic genie.

That wish suddenly causes President Bush, during a televised appearance, to stop his "jive talk" and to tell the truth about why the United States invaded Iraq This unaccustomed truth-telling is hilarious. (I won't spoil it for you by repeating the jokes.)

Spike Lee

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Thurgood Marshall's retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court has shaken the liberal establishment. Marshall was the first Black person to serve on that august body.

But President George Bush's nomination of Clarence Thomas, also Black, to replace Marshall has sent shock waves among civil rights, women's rights, and labor organizations. The Congressional Black Caucus has also condemned the nomination and pledged to fight it.

Thomas, you see, is a conservative. Derrick Bell, a liberal Black professor at the Harvard University Law School, calls all Black conservatives "opportunists." "These guys," he says, "run the gamut from political opportunists to out-and-out hustlers."

Charles Rangel, the Black congressman from New York, adds, "There is no support in our communities for this man." Yet recent polls indicate that while a majority of Blacks disagree with many of Thomas' views, they support his appointment to the high court.

Liberals vs. conservatives What are Thomas' views? He agrees with the Bush administration and other conservatives that affirmative action programs that go beyond reversing individual discrimination are wrong. Thomas says Blacks should pull ourselves up through self-help and individual initiatives.

The civil rights agenda of the liberals, he continues, is no longer valid with the end of legal segregation. He and other conservatives-Blacks and whites—in fact point to the hard statistics that the lives of a majority of Blacks have not qualitatively improved with the government programs advocated by liberals.

In a speech given in February 1986, while head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Thomas said preferences based on race or ethnic origin were "a ticking time bomb" that would "hasten the socio-economic demise of Black Americans."

Thomas adds that he simply favors the type of economic nationalism advocated by people such as Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. As a poor Black from rural Georgia, Thomas says, it was education, discipline, and hard work that made it possible for him to get where he is.

Yet Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and Clarence Thomas have very little in common except the color of their skin. Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam, does not represent the interests of the Black community. He is a demagogue, a supporter of capitalism, and has promoted the Democrat Jesse Jackson and other capitalist politicians over the years.

The common enemy Malcolm X, on the other hand, was one of the most outstanding working-class Black leaders of this century. He not only advocated Black self-determination, including Black control of the Black community, but the need for all oppressed people to recognize their common enemy: the capitalist system.

Malcolm, in his last months before his brutal assassination in February 1965, had reached the conclusion that one's friends could not be judged by the color of their skin. He had met white and brown revolutionaries on his trips to Africa and the Middle East. That's why he said Black nationalism could not define his entire political outlook anymore. He had developed a world view of the Black struggle for freedom.

Not surprisingly, Malcolm criticized the liberal civil rights leaders. He denounced their view that the capitalist system could Malik Miah be reformed and that capitalism could allow true equality for Blacks. He also called on Blacks to stop backing the Democratic and Republican parties.

Clarence Thomas and the leadership of the NAACP; the National Urban League, and the Congressional Black Caucus reject Malcolm's views. In fact, both Thomas and the liberals share a common framework on Black politics: capitalism is the answer. Their differences are over tactics on how to reform the system that's responsible for racism.

Black liberals and conservatives are truly not that different. Both support the system that is the source of racial oppression.

Why a Thomas comes along today is not a fluke either. For more than a decade, the goverment and employers have been attacking the gains of the civil rights movement, the rights of women, and labor as a whole. Yet Bush picks a Black for the Supreme Court.

Black middle class

Thomas was promoted by Bush, in part, because there is a growing Black middle class. They provide the social base for the misleadership in the Black nationality. The middle class is a by-product of the victory of the wingers do you our 1611 MikE Luckovich civil rights movement that opened the door to the Thomases (and Jesse Jacksons) of the world.

The Black nationality is more class-divided than ever before. The Black liberals who led the civil rights movement because they also suffered from legal discrimination are not interested in fighting the institutionalized racism affecting most Blacks. They can make it. They have their eyes on Wall Street, the chief of staff of the U.S. military, and even the White House.

You want a minority on the court? Were talking about a real minority here How many black rightthink there are?

Thoma Moreover, the rulers reject a return to Jim Crow. It isn't profitable. The demographics of the country are such, in fact, that people of color and women are the majority of the working population. White males are now a minority.

The real problem for Blacks and other working people is not the politics of Thomas, conservatives, or liberals per se, but the lack of an independent Black and working class movement to challenge the current crop of misleaders.