‘Alleged racism’ , Dec 09, 1988, Volume 52, Issue 50, p. 10

A letter to the magazine responding to alleged racism in Socialist Workers Party and an article’s use of racist term to describe someone of Irish heritage published in the magazine.

The literature of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Richard Wright is referenced in a section of the letter that compares the use of this racist term to the use of N word. Speaker of Baldwin, Morrisson and Wright, the letter writer comments on how: ‘Such authors regularly use the term…from one black person to another, as an ironic or defiant redefinition of part of their oppression. That doesn’t mean that the term is any less racist, or any less to be opposed, when used by whites. Exactly the same is true for anti-Irish abuse when used in this country’.