KRISTYANKOURI is an artist and lecturer in sociology and women's studies at 1 8 California State University, Northridge. Arnerosia Journal 25:2 (1999): 18-40

At the Margins of the Asian American Polit i cal Experience: The Life of

Jenniferlung Hee Choi In the introduction to her autobiography, Living for Change, Grace Lee Boggs states: I consider myself blessed to have been born a Chinese American female. . . . Had I not been born female and Chinese American, I would not have realized from early on that fundamental changes were necessary in our society. Had I not been born female and Chinese American, I might have ended up teaching philosophy at a university, an observer rather than an active participant in the humanity-stretching movements that have defined the last half of the twentieth century.’ From this statement, one could easily anticipate the autobiogra- phy to recount 1) the significance of the author’s racial experiences as a Chinese in America to fueling her lifelong commitment to revo- lutionary change, 2) and consequently, the impact of the Chinese/ Asian American struggle on her political life and activities. How- ever, Boggs’ actual autobiography reveals quite the opposite. In reality, the Asian American experience has never been central to Boggs’ political or ideological development. Although her experiences as a Chinese American may be im- portant to understanding Boggs’ personal development, they play a relatively insubstantial role in her political career that spans more than fifty years. In fact, the struggles of Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans received marginal political attention

JENNIFER JUNG HEECHOI is an activist in the San Francisco Bay area and a first-year doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. 19 - ; from Boggs, particularly compared with African Americans who $ remained her primary focus. 7 ._0 Since the death of West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James in 1989 and Russian Marxist in 1987 with whom Boggs had a combined thirty-year plus intellectual and political association, a number of articles, anthologies, and manuscripts have surfaced on the former two, but little has developed around Boggs was an international figure in both the Trotskyist movement and the Black Liberation struggle in addition to having worked with renowned international radicals, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, , George Padmore and other^.^ However, Boggs prevails as the ”invisible” Asian American. She has received virtually little or no attention from Asian American scholars and activists. As Robert G. Lee summarized in his brief Asian immigrant radical historiography, “still less is known about leftists outside the [] such as the novelist H.T. Tsian, the progressive journalist Y.K. Chu or Grace Lee Boggs who became active in the Trotskyist m~vement.”~ This current study serves as a corrective-an attempt to make Boggs a more ”visible” figure in left, African American, and Asian American histories. This essay aims to (re)introduce Boggs to cur- rent Asian American activists and scholars by raising questions and suggestions about her relevancy to the Asian American Movement. I argue, as the struggles of Asian Americans have been marginal to Boggs’ political life, she has been at the margins of the Asian American political experience. Because of her political involvement principally with the African American movement and her ideologi- cal worldview, Boggs has been isolated from the Asian American experience most of her life. As an historical study, this work is based on primary and sec- ondary research. I rely heavily on her recently published auto- biography, a recent interview, published works and other resources. I give primary attention to Boggs’ political life and practice which is examined in two periods, 1941-1962 and 1962-1987. The two periods reflect Boggs’ heaviest and most intense stages of political activity and development. The first period examines Boggs’ political work within the Johnson-Forest Tendency and the second focuses on her political activity after her split with C.L.R. James and her intellectual and political partnership with her husband, . I also briefly examine some of Boggs’ ideological forma- tions. The article concludes with some questions about what ”les- sons” she may have to offer Asian American scholars and activists. 20 The Johnson-ForestTendency and Grace Lee Boggs, 1941-1962 The Evolution of a Socialist Activist In 1915, Grace Chin Lee was born in Rhode Island to Chinese im- migrant parents. While Boggs was born nine years before the immigration law that would officially close the doors to Asian immigration for decades to follow, her parents arrived in Califor- nia at the height of Asian exclusion. Boggs, however, grew up in the New England area and New York City, where her father owned a large Chinese restaurant. She was the fifth child among seven. At sixteen, Boggs attended Barnard College on a scholarship, ultimately majoring in philosophy. Boggs then attended Bryn Mawr where she graduated in 1940. After receiving her doctor- ate, Boggs said she was at a loss for what to do with her life. The opportunity to teach philosophy at a predominantly white univer- sity was closed to her due to racism. Despite her passion for phi- losophy, Boggs decided she would become involved with politi- cal struggles rather than engage in the practice of professional phi- losophy. She concluded that political struggle would give life to her philosophical reflection^.^ Boggs’ evolution as a political activist is closely tied to the em- bryonic African American mass movement of the 1940s and the in- ternational socialist movement, particularly the Trotskyist move- ment. In the fall of 1940, she moved from New York to Chicago. Before long, she became involved with the South Side Tenants Or- ganization-a tenants association affiliated with the Workers Party, a Trotskyist organization, led by Martin Abern, C.L.R. James, and A.J. Muste. Her involvement introduced her to ”people in the Black community,” and gave her a “sense of what segregation and discrimination meant in people’s lives,” and she learned how “to organize protest demonstrations and meetings. Up to that point [she] had practically no contact with Black people.”6 On the basis of her experiences with the South Side Tenants Organization and the proposed March on Washington in 1941 called by African American labor and civil rights leader, A. Phillip Randolph, Boggs became greatly excited by embryonic signs of an African American mass movement. Her revolution- ary spirit was fueled by the burning issues of racism and national oppression which she saw as adversely impacting the lives of Af- rican Americans. As a result, she decided “that what I wanted to do with the rest of my life was to become a movement activist in the Black comrn~nity.”~Despite the fact that she was an Asian Grace Lee Boggs, , September 1997. Photograph by Jennifer lung Hee Choi.

American, Boggs committed her life to the Black liberation struggle. In 1941, Boggs joined the Workers Party. She initially saw the Workers Party as assisting in her efforts to organize in the Black community. As she explained in her autobiography: Joining the Workers Party seemed a good way to start since it was through the party that I had made contact with the black community. I assumed that the party would provide me with the political education that I needed to overcome my ignorance.8 Her membership in the Workers Party offered her an oppor- tunity to do day-to-day organizing in the African American com- munity. Her membership in the Workers Party was also impor- tant because it marked her introduction to . Although Boggs claimed that she was never ideologically committed to , her understanding of Marxism was greatly influenced by political issues and ideological debates specific to the Trotskyist m~vement.~ Boggs soon concluded that the Chicago local chapter of the Workers Party worked in isolation from the African American 22 community. The organization's lack of political work in the Black community in addition to sectarianism caused Boggs to become increasingly dissatisfied with the Workers Party.lo Although she contemplated leaving the party, she decided to stay because she met West Indian Marxist Cyril Lionel Robert (C.L.R.) James. James, who had recently arrived in the in 1938, was a well-known activist, orator and theoretician in the interna- tional Trotskyist movement. In 1938, James was one of two Brit- ish delegates who participated in the founding of the Fourth In- ternational, serving on the executive committee from 1938 to 1940. Not only was James involved with the international social- ist movement, but he also had participated in the Pan-African movement, specifically the England-based group, the Interna- tional African Service Bureau, and its newspaper, International African Opinion. Since his arrival in the United States, James was involved in organizing Black sharecroppers in southeast Mis- souri and also actively recruiting more African Americans into the Trotskyist movement. Boggs and James shared an enthusiasm for the African American mass movement. Part of the reason that she gravitated toward James was because both shared the view that "the poten- tial for an American revolution [was] inherent in the emergence of the labor movement and the escalating militancy of blacks."" Soon after meeting James, Boggs discovered they both also had a passion for the nineteenth-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. As Boggs recounted: When together with another comrade I met [C.L.R. James] at the train station, he was carrying two thick books, volume 1 of Marx's Capital and Hegel's Science of Logic, both heavily under- lined. When he discovered that I had studied Hegel and knew German, we withdrew to my basement room where we spent hours sitting on my old red couch comparing passages in Marx and Hegel, checking the English against the original German.I2 This initial meeting between Boggs and James marked the beginning of their twenty-year political and theoretical collabo- ration which ended when they split politically in 1962. In 1942, Boggs moved to New York in order to work more with James and the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a small political collective within the Workers Party named after its two co-founders J. R. Johnson (the party name of C.L.R. James) and the Russian- born Raya Dunayevskaya whose party name was Freddie Forest. 23 -

0 Boggs’ involvement with the Johnson-Forest Tendency greatly en- t larged the scope and substance of her political perspective. Work- 72 E ing closely with James and Dunayevskaya, Boggs became a pivotal force in the theoretical and practical work of the Johnson-Forest E Tendency. As Boggs explained: I was sometimes considered the third leader of the tendency because I did so much of the research, wrote some of the docu- ments, and typed even more of them, but I saw myself as a jun- ior and a learner, and both C.L.R. and Raya treated me as such.13 Boggs was pivotal to a number of pamphlets, joint projects and political work associated with the group. For example, Boggs translated the first English editions of Marx’s Economic and Philo- sophic Manuscripts (1844) from the original German in 1947.14 She also wrote an essay to accompany The American Worker, which was an account of the day-to-day experiences of a worker at a General Motor’s automotive plant. She collaborated on a host of works ranging from the 1947 pamphlet The Invading Socialist Soci- ety to and World Revolution (published in 1950) to written in 1958.15 All these major theoretical works captured the evolving position of the Johnson-Forest Tendency and later the political offspring, the Correspondence Committee. Boggs’ association with the Tendency, particularly with James, greatly advanced her commitment to eradicating racism and na- tional oppression. As a member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, Boggs organized demonstrations in Harlem, street corner meet- ings and co-wrote articles on issues in the Black community, and while working in the defense plants she also conducted study groups on African American history.16 Much of her practical work around African Americans was greatly influenced by the Johnson-Forest Tendency’s position on the African American National Question. As the African Ameri- can mass movement began to intensify, the American socialist movement shifted its attention to the African American National Question, that is, the question of the relationship of the national democratic struggles of African Americans to the proletarian movement. Given the failure of Trotskyism to formulate a clear political position on the African American National Question and the low number of Black members in the Workers Party, the Johnson-Forest Tendency was at the forefront of this debate, spe- cifically within the Workers Party. Their practical and theoreti- 24 cal analysis of the so-called “Negro Question” was best captured in the 1948 document, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the United States,” which was written by James. James argued that African Americans play a critical role in advancing the American working-class movement. In 1947, after unresolvable political differences with the Work- ers Party, the Johnson-Forest Tendency became an organized po- litical formation within the Socialist Workers Party. In 1951, the Johnson-Forest Tendency broke politically with Trotskyism and decided to function as an independent political formation renamed the Correspondence Committee after the Committees of Correspon- dence of the first American Revolution. In conjunction with Corre- spondence, they organized the Third Layer School which was held in the fall of 1952. In the Third Layer School, rank-and-file work- ers, African Americans, women and youth who “were identified as the new revolutionary social forces [served as] the teachers and the older members and intellectuals would be the students”.17 Boggs moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1953 to work on the Cor- respondence newspaper. Shortly after her arrival in Detroit, she mar- ried James Boggs, an African American Detroit auto worker and activist, who was associated with the Third Layer School. In 1962, Grace and James Boggs split with C.L.R. James over the role of the working-class in the making of the ”second American Revolution.” The “Leap” from the International Socialist Movement to the Black Liberation Struggle: Politics after C.L.R. James, 1962-1987 In 1962, the twenty-year political collaboration and personal friend- ship between Grace Lee Boggs and C.L.R. James ended. The im- mediate cause of the split between Boggs and James was over James Boggs’ book, The American Revolution. According to James Boggs, African Americans would replace workers as the leading revolu- tionary force in the 1960s because labor had become socially un- necessary.18 After critically examining the work, C.L.R. James de- nounced the work and declared the organization needed a re-edu- cation in Marxism led by himself. James Boggs disagreed and pro- posed a resolution that Correspondence publish his document and James’ discussion on Marxism and the two be discussed inside the organi~ation.’~ . . .what C.L.R. said was we need to study Marxism. And he said we needed to study capitalism. And we said that whatever C.L.R. had to say about capitalism and Marxism should be part of the LJ - ; discussion. And that is when C.L.R. really hit the roof. Anybody 3 who wrote about revolution would put him on par with every- 70 ._0 body else. He broke with us completely, personally and politi- PY) cally.20 - E Q According to Grace Boggs, the split occurred in a matter of weeks. However, Boggs said their relationship had been disinte- grating for years, mostly since James had left the United States in 1953 to avoid deportation. From what little Boggs has said publicly in writings and interviews about the split, one could conclude that the Boggs and the few who supported their position felt that James had been "losing touch with the American movement and condi- tions since his departure. However, at the same time, James was still trylng to run the organization from abroad, which some viewed as the height of his egoism and arrogance. Boggs recounted in an interview, "I don't think he would have done it if he hadn't been so isolated. He had essentially become a cosmopolite. . . ,"21 a con- clusion which the Boggs and their supporters Freddy and definitively reached in 1974. "[Iln 1953 C.L.R. was already becoming a Marxist egocentric."22 Although it was considered a split, Boggs described her work after the Johnson-Forest Tendency and the Correspondence Com- mittee as a "leap." I think I saw it as not a break, but a leap. My experience has been that at a certain stage you have to go beyond where you have been and that is going to require breaks with people you are associ- ated with because it is very unlikely that everybody is going to be ready to move.23 According to Boggs, C.L.R James was one of those not ready to move.24 When Boggs described the political context in which her husband wrote the pivotal document, and in which the break occurred, she emphasized the early period of what is now consid- ered the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement and the intensification of international Third World liberation struggles in the late 50s and early 60s were concrete evidence supporting the Boggs' main thesis that American conditions were changing and new social forces were emerging to replace workers as the van- guard of the revolution-something C.L.R. James could not see be- cause he had experienced none of it. After the break, Grace Boggs became even more deeply rooted in the struggles of African Americans, particularly in Detroit. Boggs' work with her husband became even more solidified and inseparable as she cut her final tie to C.L.R. James.25 The depth to -2 which Boggs became involved in the Black movement in this pe- Z- riod was reflected in her use of the pronoun “we” when discuss- $ ing the African American struggle. “I was beginning to feel z. comfortable with the ‘we‘ pronoun, so comfortable that in FBI & records of that period, I am described as Afro-Chinese.”26In this F stage, Boggs was involved in the building of numerous organiza- tions, struggles and campaigns, too many to describe in-depth. g. However, I will highlight the major organizations and campaigns of > 3 which she was a part. ‘D_. The Boggs viewed their work in the period immediately follow- 2 ing the split as at the forefront of the rising revolutionary Black na- 73 0 tionalist movement. Given their location in Detroit, they believed they were playing an instrumental role in the early formation of the . In the first half of the 1960s, the Boggs worked with other African American leaders, particularly the Rev- 4% !! !! erend Albert Cleage in the struggle for ”Black Political Power”- 8 ”a movement to take over the city” by having African Americans control political 0ffices.2~They helped form the Michigan Freedom Now Party-an all-Black political party (with the exception of Grace Lee Boggs) that nominated all Black candidates for office in the 1964 election. Boggs coordinated the campaign that successfully got the party on the ballot but lost the election. In 1965, however, a few months after the assassination of Malcolm X, the Boggs shifted away from the idea of gaining power through the ballot. They convened a meeting with other Black lead- ers across the country and formed the ephemeral Organization for Black Power (OBI’). The OBP proposed “to develop bases of black power through independent politics” outside the electoral pro- cessF8 Then, in the summer of 1967, Detroit erupted into flames as the Boggs were driving back from a vacation in Los Angeles. The rebellions in Watts (1965) and Detroit (1967) formed the mate- rial basis for the Boggs’ changing position on the status and direc- tion of the movement. In this period beginning in 1968, the Boggs saw their role in the struggle as providing a revolutionary theo- retical vision for the movement. In this period, they made the dis- tinction between rebellion and revolution, a distinction made popular with their joint publication Revolution and Evolution. Ac- cording to the Boggs, ”Rebellion is a stage in the development of revolution, but it is not revoluti~n.”~~Rebellion is a spontaneous disruption of the status quo, but it does not take state power. The Boggs defined revolution in contradistinction to rebellion, as involv- - ; ing ”a projection of man/woman into the future. . .it initiates a new plateau, a new threshold on which human beings can continue 7$ .o to develop.”31 P In 1968, the Boggs wrote the Manifesto for u Black Revolutionary Party, which they used to attract Black militants to join an effort to build a Black revolutionary The Manifesto contained the guidelines for building a Black vanguard party, whose purpose was to inject a revolutionary theory and practice into the Black Power Movement, which the Boggs saw as bowing more and more to spontaneous rebellion^.^^ As Boggs explained: In order to achieve Black Revolutionary Power, it was necessary for blacks to build a vanguard party which would give revolu- tionary direction and keep before the Movement an enlarged vision of the goals of revolutionary struggle. Without such a party and such a vision, a Movement based upon spontaneous rebel- lion could only end up in opportunism and se~tarianism.~~ The Black Revolutionary Party was to consist of locals in vari- ous cities. The party aimed to develop the real meaning and objectives of Black liberation struggle, to organize a national organization, and to provide a long-term strategy for achieving Black Revolution- ary Power in the United The thrust of the organization was its publications. They wrote numerous pamphlets and statements which they sold. “Crime among Our People,” ’What Value Shall We Place on Ourselves?,” “Women in the New World,” ”Beyond Wel- fare,” and “But What about the Workers” are just a sample of the kind of topics on which they p~blished.~~However, by the mid- 1970s, they were only able to organize four locals based on the ideas and structure outlined in the Manifesto. As their efforts fell apart, the Boggs began to conclude that the Black Power movement had also fallen apart. In 1976 when African Americans joined the coali- tion to elect Jimmy Carter, they decided, ”the black movement and the period in which a black revolution might have been made un- der a black revolutionary leadership had come to an end.”37 However, they continued their revolutionary building activi- ties on a different basis. They formed the National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR) in 1979 based on an analy- sis that capitalism had entered a new stage-multinational capi- talism. Because of the effects of multinational capitalism, a revo- lutionary movement had to broaden to incorporate various social forces within the cities that were being most devastated by new ad- vancements in ~apitalism.~~The Manifesto for an American Revolu- 28

- ; tionary Party, published in 1982, captured the ideas of NOAR. In ---,2 the publication, NOAR called for a “second American Revolution” .o that would replace capitalism with decentralized power and a sys- P tem of self government. E Q Our challenge as Americans is to create new social, economic and political institutions on a human scale so that making socially re- sponsible decisions for ourselves, for our communities and for our country becomes a natural and normal part of our daily lives. Our struggle is to make a second American revolution that will turn self-government from an empty slogan into a reality.39 Their practice reflected this political outlook. NOAR engaged primarily in creating “committees” that focused on issues like violence, utility shutoffs and closed factories on community and neighborhood levels.@ NOAR also was involved in the campaign to elect Jesse Jackson for president in 1984. However shortly thereaf- ter NOAR began to dissolve. Between 1985-1987, the organization faded away.4l Ideological Developments, 1941 to 1987 This section will offer a brief summation of Grace Lee Boggs’ ma- jor ideological formulations. Although the ideological undercur- rents of Boggs’ political work only receive minimal attention in comparison to her actual work, they are still necessary to discern- ing her evolution as a revolutionary activist and theoretician. It should also be noted here that with the exception of Revohtion and Evolution in the Twentieth Century and a few pamphlets, I use works authored by James Boggs as a reflection of the ideas of Grace Lee. This fact should not be interpreted as that Grace Lee Boggs was in- capable of offering her own political analysis. Nor does this as- sumption imply that works authored under James Boggs are an ex- aggeration of his intellectual abilities. Materials published under James Boggs represent the collective ideas and work of both him and his wife. As early as 1962, they both testified that they shared common views and worked together collaboratively on the devel- opment of their political analysis and the formation of their ideo- logical world vie^.^^ Forming a position on the African American National Ques- tion and developing a philosophy of revolution based on human- ism were the two ideological issues that Boggs gave most attention, particularly in her later life and work with her husband. However, interest and commitment to these two areas are seen as early as her 3 0 time with the Johnson-Forest Tendency. During her time with the Tendency, Boggs was pivotal to the development of many significant ideological contributions that the group made to Marxist theory and practice. The ideological positions the Tendency offered also would have an enduring im- pact on the evolution of Boggs' political and ideological worldview. However, of all the ideological positions of the Tendency to which Boggs was most committed was the one in which C.L.R. James was principally responsible for formulating-the African American National Question. "The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem"43 captured the Tendency's position on the im- portance of the African American national democratic struggle to the fight to eradicate capitalism. James argued that African Americans played a critical role in advancing the American working-class movement. The proletarian movement, from James' perspective, could not advance unless the organized labor movement and Marxist political formations did away with the tendency "to subordinate or to push to the rear the social and po- litical significance of the independent Negro struggle for demo- cratic rights."44 Boggs recounted she was a "passionate defender of the Johnson-Forest position on [the so-called Negro] ques- ti~n."~~ After she and her husband split with C.L.R. James, the Boggs drew upon James' ideas concerning the revolutionary potential of the spontaneous African American movement and how it could act as a catalyst for the proletarian struggle. However, the Boggs took the position a step further and arrived at the political thesis that African Americans were the leading force in the second "American Revolution." Their position was first clarified with the publication of James Boggs' The American Revolution, and further developed with Racism and Class Struggle and Revolution and Evo- lution.46 The American Revofufion concluded, "The American Revolu- tion does not necessarily have to start from economic grievances. Nor does it have to start with the American working class in the lead."47 The American RevoZution forcibly stated the "Negro cause" encompassed more than a race struggle and more than a class struggle. The strength of the Negro cause and its power to shake-up the social structure of the nation comes from the fact that in the Negro struggle all the questions of human rights and human relation- ships are posed. At this time the American Negroes" are most con- saous of, and best able to time their actions in relation to the - c0 crisis and weaknesses of American capitalism, both home and 70 abroad.48 0 ._y1 Another central ideological formulation for the Boggs was a P E philosophy of revolution based on dialectical humanism, a concept Q that emerged more in the later period of their political work and writings. Dialectical humanism didn’t fully appear as a concept in their work until James Boggs’ publication of Racism and Class StruggZe, though Grace Lee Boggs had shown an interest in human- ism much earlier. Her interest in humanism surfaced during her association with the Johnson-Forest Tendency, particularly when translating Marx‘s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844). As she commented, the manuscripts, “were a tremendous expansion of our whole thinking because they brought in a kind of humanism in Marx which actually was a challenge to economic determinism, to economism of the radical m~vernent.”~~ In Racism and Class Struggle, the Boggs began to utilize dialecti- cal humanism as a revolutionary philosophy that put human re- lations, not social relations of production, at center stage. Dialec- tical humanism as a philosophy ”transforms. . .the victims of op- pression into human beings who are more advanced in the quali- ties that distinguish human beings: creativity, consciousness, self- consciousness, and a sense of political and social responsibility.”50 A dialectical humanist philosophy of revolution is more concerned with creating “more human human beings” as opposed to a Marxist (dialectical materialist) outlook which concentrated on changing social relations of prod~ction.~~ The Boggs’ concept of humanism also framed not only their standpoint on revolution but who would and should lead that revo- lution. Ultimately, dialectical humanism led to the conclusion that the most dehumanized forces contain the most revolutionary po- tential. For the Boggs, African Americans were historically the most dehumanized and benefited the least from capitalism. As further explained in the Manfesesto: Blacks, on the other hand, are the ones who have been the least integrated into the American way of life. They have benefited least from its material progress and been corrupted least by its abundance. They are therefore in the best position to question its mode of operation and reject its fundamental values. . . . Black Americans possess the greatest revolutionary potential for over- throwing the present system and replacing it with a new one in which human values take precedence over material values.52 32 Furthermore, the African American struggle itself was a revolu- -P T tion to change all of human relations. From the Boggs’ standpoint: m Coming in the United States at a time when there is no longer any problem of material scarcity, the Negro revolt is therefore not just a narrow struggle over material necessities. It does not belong to the period of struggle over goods and for the devel- opment of productive forces which we call the era of “Dialecti- cal Materialism.” Rather it ushers in the era of “Dialectical Hu- manism,” when the burning question is how to create the kind of human responsibility in the distribution of material abundance that will allow everyone to enjoy and create the value of human- ity.53 D --.0 As shown, the two major ideological formations-the African n o_ American National Question and a dialectical humanist philoso- rn phy of revolution-converged to provide an overall ideological U 4_. framework for the Boggses’ political work. Their concentration on the African American mass movement was supported by their two m2 ideological formulations. At the Margins: Grace Lee Boggs and the Asian American Question The African American struggle has been the primary focus for Grace Lee Boggs most of her political life. There was, however, a brief period in which Grace Lee Boggs gave some attention to the struggle of Asian Americans. With the Asian American move- ment emerging nationwide in the late 1960s, Boggs was central to the formation of the Asian Political Alliance (APA) in Detroit. The APA was a small group of Asians who offered a “modest” program of cultural and political education through workshops, films and discussion.% Concerning her involvement with the Asian American movement, Boggs stated, “The Vietnam War was tak- ing place so we had a cause to identdy ourselves with. . .and to be with a lot of other people who were against the Vietnam War. . .You had a feeling there was a national movement that you could get into. It just gave us an opportunity to be active and energeti~.”~~ In her autobiography, Boggs described her involvement with the APA as one of the most enjoyable periods of her political life. Boggs represented the APA at the 1970 Asian American Reality Conference at Pace College in New York City. In a speech, she described the activities of the organization and discussed the emerging Asian American political movement.56 In the speech, Boggs posed the question of the role of Asian Americans in the 33 Grace Lee Boggs, Detroit, September 1997. Photograph by Jennifer lung Hee Choi.

revolutionary movement, which she did not immediately an- ~wer.~~She later stated: After the blacks, we Asians may be the ones who have the most to contribute to the struggle. . .I believe we have something very im- portant to contribute in the form of a historical perspective and in the concept of the human contradictions. . .58 Although the experience of participating in the Asian American movement was enjoyable for Boggs, it didn't last long. The APA, ac- cording to Boggs, lasted two years. The end of the APA seemed to conclude Boggs' political work with Asian Ameri~ans.5~However, this period appears significant to Boggs' identity formation. "I felt a strong sense of Asian American identity when the Asian movement was just getting going," Boggs said.60 34 This was the first and only period in my life that I was meeting -P regularly with political people who shared my background as T an Asian American. The experience made me much more aware 3 2 of how Asians have been marginalized not only in American soci- '0. ety in general but movement circles. . VI .61 e Overall, though she felt at times a part of the Asian American 5 movement, she claimed that she never felt a part of it to the same > $2. degree as she did the African American movement, which she felt 2 was much more deeply rooted.62 Even as Asian Americans began $ to organize around the Vincent Chin killing in Detroit in 1982, ?. Boggs did not feel compelled to get involved. In a recent interview, Boggs stated, "I didn't participate [in the Vincent Chin organizing]. -. Not that I didn't think it was a valid cause, but I, I didn't have 5 o_ anything really socially in common with those folks."63 m Perhaps because of her personal estrangement from the Asian 4% American community and experience, Boggs never really recog- 5. nized a high revolutionary potential from Asian Americans. How- 0 ever, one could see how this could stem from Boggs' humanist analysis of revolution that placed the most dehumanized people at the forefront of the struggle. From her practical and theoreti- cal work, Boggs had long since concluded African Americans have historically been the "most oppressed and at one time carried the most revolutionary potential. Several times throughout her autobi- ography, Boggs made distinctions between the experiences of Af- rican Americans and Asian Americans. "I was always careful to keep clear the distinction between the discrimination experienced by Chinese Americans and the hell that African Americans had en- dured."@ Boggs repeated a similar sentiment during an interview when she was asked if she thought African Americans had a more dehumanizing experience than Asian Americans.

I don't think there is any question about that. . .Deculturalization . . .that is the sort of thing that by and large Africans who were brought on slave ships faced in addition to hard labor. That is very different from what happened to Chinese and others. Most Chinese had a choice as to what they could do. . .An immigrant group is very different from a group that comes on slaves ships.l As shown by this essay, Boggs' primary focus was on African Americans politically and ideologically even though she is Chinese American. Her political activism has submerged her in the world and culture of first, the international socialist movement and then in the Black liberation struggle. Her political work and theory of revo- 35 - ; lution have left Asian Americans at the margins of her life and 72 analysis. ._ Given this relative insignificance of the Asian American experi- (0U ence to Boggs, how do we understand her relevancy, and others like her, to Asian Americans-a question which has been of interest to past and present activists. During the planning of last year‘s Asian Forum (AALF), a national gathering of Asian Ameri- can radicals at University of California, Los Angeles, discussions erupted over a listserv of whether to invite Boggs to address the Forum. The discussions centered on the issue of her significance to the Asian American Movement. Many young activists, who had never heard of Boggs, challenged the ”usefulness” of having her speak, while several, mainly older, activists cautioned planners not to continue to marginalize Boggs by excluding her on the basis that she did not work among Asian Americans. Some were skeptical of the lessons she could offer Asian leftists, given her political expe- riences had largely been outside Asian American communities. Others countered that her experiences in ”other” movements made her relevant to the early generation of Asian American activists, who were initially inspired by the Black movement. But as one young activist posed on email, ”Many Asians may develop their consciousness in other people’s efforts, but why should they stay there?” The discussions indicated that though Boggs’ direct sig- nificance to Asian Americans is debatable, her life, however, raises a long-standing question of what makes someone “qualified as being a part of and able to speak to the Asian American political experience. Even more importantly, I argue, is the question of what lessons her life offers to Asian American activists today. This essay con- cludes that though the Asian American political experience occu- pied a marginal place in Boggs’ political work, she still can provide relevant insights for Asian American activists. For instance, her life exemplifies the importance of the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) to many early Asian American activists, who at the time had no formal nationalist struggle to claim of their own. These older generations of radicals have much to contribute in recounting their experiences in the BLM and other struggles. Furthermore, Boggs is a part of a ”pre-movement” Asian radical legacy, along with Yuri Kochiyama, Philip Vera Cruz, and countless others, who partici- pated heavily in other social movements. By the virtue of working in “other” struggles, all three suggest the possibilities of someday moving beyond race- or nationality-based movements. Although 36 they are individual examples, they show the potential for multi- 5 racial work among radical peoples of color. 1 However, we should not accept these lessons wholesale. Boggs $ may have rooted herself in a community outside her own racial back- ;. ground, but her political work does not represent coalition orga- & nizing (though her current activities in Detroit’s inner city could 3- be classified as such). She did not attempt to build linkages between z Asian American and African American communities. Also, any 2 analysis that places racial oppression on a hierarchy and prizes one > 3 group as more oppressed than another undermines any real possi- e_. bilities for true multiracial organizing. Evaluating the radical PO- 2 tential of a community on the basis of the ”amount” of oppres- w o_ sion it faces can easily lead to the dismissal of its revolutionary 3 possibilities, particularly for groups like Asian Americans who have been stereotyped as “model minorities” and are believed to experi- :: ence little racism and exploitation. This type of analysis only con- 3. 2 tinues to marginalize Asian Americans in radical movements. 8 Any multiracial efforts must begin with the recognition of the equal value of all groups’ varied experiences and revolutionary poten- tial. Finally, one does not have to be Asian American or draw only from the Asian American experience to offer pertinent political les- sons. There is much to be learned from all human struggles for liberation. However, as activists of the Asian American Movement, we must decide which lessons are valuable to our struggles, and speak to our times and conditions. This essay has not aimed to de- finitively answer which lessons those are, but only to foster further discussion on Boggs, and other revolutionaries, whose relevancy to Asian American politics may be debatable, but whose contibu- tions to human struggles are not. Notes My sincere appreciation goes to Stephen C. Ferguson II and Grace Lee Boggs, to whom this project is greatly indebted, as well as those who ed- ited and offered valuable feedback. 1. Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography (Minneapo- lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), xi. 2. On James, see Kent Worcester, C.L.R. James: A Political Biography (New York State University of New York Press, 1996); Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain, eds., C.L.R. James: His Intellectual Lega- cies (Amherst:University of Massachusetts Press, 1995); Aldon Lynn Nielsen, C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction (Jackson:University of Mississippi Press, 1997), as well as numerous anthologies and col- 37 lections of his writings. On Dunayevskaya, see Kevin Anderson, "Raya Dunayevskaya, 1910 to 1987, Marxist Economist and Philoso- pher," Review of Radical Political Economies 20:l (1988): 62-74; and Kevin Anderson, Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (Chicago: University of Illinois, 1995). 3. Nknunah, who led Ghana, the first African nation to independence in 1957, asked Boggs to marry him. Once jokingly he told her husband, James Boggs, "I hope you won't mind if I say this, but if Grace had married me we would have changed all of Africa." Living for Change, 73. 4. Robert G. Lee, "The Hidden World of Asian American Radicalism." In The Immigrant Lefi in United States, edited by Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 278; and William Wei, The Asian Amm'can Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1996) mentions Boggs when he describes the Asian Political Alliance in Detroit. 5. Boggs, Living For Change, 44. 6. Ibid., 36. 7. Ibid., 39. 8. Ibid., 39-40. 9. Grace Lee Boggs, Interview by author and Stephen C. Ferguson, 11, Detroit, September 19-20, 1997. 10. Boggs, Living for Change, 43. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 62. 14. It was published independently by the Johnson-ForestTendency un- der the following title: Essays by , Selectedfrom the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (New York Johnson-Forest Tendency, 1947). See Living for Change, 59. 15. Paul Romano (Phil Singer) and Ria Stone (Grace Lee Boggs), The American Worker (New York The Johnson-Forest Tendency, 1947); C.L.R. James, F. Forest (Raya Dunayevskaya), and Ria Stone (Grace Lee Boggs), The Invading Socialist Society (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1972); C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Grace Lee Boggs, State Capitalism and World Revolution (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1986); C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Grace Lee Boggs, Facing Re- ality (East Lansing, Michigan: Garvey Institute, n.d.). 16. Boggs, Living for Change, 54-55. 17. Ibid., 67. 18. James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pagesfrom a Negro Worker's Notebook (New York Modern Reader Paperbacks, 1963). Livingfor Change, 107. Boggs. Living For Change, 109. 20. Boggs, interview. 21. lbid. 22. James and Grace Lee Boggs, and Freddy and Lyman Paine, Conversa- tions in Maine: Exploring our Nation‘s Future (Boston: South End Press, 1978), 286-287. 23. Boggs, interview. 24. Boggs, Livingfor Change, 109. 25. Throughout the rest of this study, I will increasingly speak of the “Boggs“ and their work as a reflection of their increasingly insepa- rable ideological and political collaboration. 26. Boggs, Livingfor Change, 119. 27. lbid., 117. 28. ibid., 2. 29. Boggs and Paines, Conversations in Maine. The Boggs began to work out what they considered the contradictions of the period through their discussions with their old comrades, Freddy and Lyman Paine, whom they worked closely with since the days of the Johnson-For- est Tendency. In 1970, they began to record their political con- versations, which were eventually published in 1978 in a book Con- versations in Maine. 30. James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution in the Twenti- eth Century (New York: Press, 1974), 16. 31. ibid., 19. 32. James Boggs, Manifesto for a Black Revolutionary Party, 5th ed. (Muskegon, Michigan: Committee for Raising Political Conscious- ness, 1976). 33. ibid., iii. 34. lbid. 35. ibid., 29. 36. Boggs, Livingfor Change, 165. 37. lbid., 171. 38. Manifesto for an American Revolutionary Party (Philadelphia:National Organization for American Revolution, 1982). 39. lbid., 13. 40. ibid., last page. 41. Boggs, Livingfor Change, 187. 42. James Boggs stated in Racism and Class Struggle, Further Pagesfrom a Black Worker’s Notebooks (New York Monthly Review Press, 1970) how he and Grace spent many hours preparing the pieces in the book. There were several publications that were results of joint col- laboration, like the Manifestofor a Black Revolutionary Party that con- tained only James Boggs’ byline. 39 - 0 43. E C.L.R. James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in 3 0 the United States,” in C.L.R. James on the Negro Question, edited by 7 ._0 Scott McLemee (Jackson:University Press of Mississippi, 1996). DY) 44. Ibid., 139.

QE 45. Boggs, Living for Change, 57. 46. James Boggs, The American Revolution, Racism and Class Struggle, Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution. 47. James Boggs, The American Revolution, 89. 48. Ibid., 85. 49. Boggs, interview. 50. Boggs, Revolution and Evolution, 24. 51. Boggs, Living for Change, 153. 52. James Boggs, Manifesto for a Black Revolutionary Party, 7. 53. James Boggs, Racism and Class Struggle, 18. 54. Boggs, Living for Change, 196. 55. Boggs, interview. 56. Grace Lee Boggs, Asian Americans and the U.S. Movement (Detroit: Asian Political Alliance, 1970). 57. Ibid., 4. 58. lbid., 22. 59. Boggs ended her participation in Asian-American politics for the most part except for appearing at recent conferences like the First Asian Pacific American Women’s Symposium at the in 1993 and the “Serve The People’s Conference” at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998. 60. Boggs, interview. 61. Boggs, Livingfor Change, 196. 62. Boggs, interview. 63. Ibid. 64. Boggs, Living For Change, 81. 65. Boggs, interview.

40 The StUte of &Ha At [as Robert Benewick and Stephanie Donald The latest addition to the acdaimed series, features full-color maps and distinctive graphics that offer accessible, incisive information about this emergent international player. The profound changes dgin China are illustrated in this atlas, along with da~hesof priorities: between population L grow+ and the one-child family; human rights and politid stability energy needs and the environment. Penguin Reference original 128 pp. 0-14-051458-9 $17.95 F

WoMd the N~VVOW ate THE JOURNEY OF FOUR CHINESE WOMEN FROM THE MIDDLE KINGDOM TO MIDDLE AMERICA Leslie Chang k$*? Dutton 304 pp. 0-525-94257-2 $24.95

sbdows adWid:A VIEW OF MODERN VIETNAM , Robert Templer Penguin original 400 pp. 0- 14-028597-0 $13.95 The IrkatIit$ of Ed LIVING DANGEROUSLY IN CAMBODIA: A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT’S STORY Nate Thayer I Viking 224 pp. 0-670-88576-2 $24.95

R.kleYofThe:A MEMOIR OF VIETNAM Jo Swain Berkley 304 pp. 0-425-16875-1 $12.95

One Tho~sandCbestmtt pees: A NOVEL OF KOREA Mira Stout I Riverhead 336 pp. 1-57322-738-2 $14.00 pachiouraf African mdO~etftaf Music Otto Karolyi Peneuin original 150 DD. 0-14-023107-2 $13.95