By Richard Mellor in California
This is Jack Maltester, the former Mayor of my town situated a little south of Oakland California; he passed away some time ago. I have lived here in San Leandro for some time, having lived in Oakland previously. The public utility I worked for has facilities here where I spent the past 6 years before my retirement.
For many years, the Black guys I worked with, who lived across the border in Oakland, particularly the older folks, would talk about how difficult it was for them if they worked down here but especially as they drove through. They were constantly harassed or stopped by the police.
They used to call it Klan Leandro
They used to call it Klan Leandro. For years I never wanted to move here because of this reputation, though I worked with many white guys that grew up here and certainly were not by any means people that would fit that description.
Despite any weaknesses white workers may have, the issue of racism is a social one; it is integral to capitalist society and it is through the institutions of the capitalist state that racism is felt the most: housing education, the justice system, opportunity, etc.
I moved to East Oakland in 1980 and then, after returning home after work, I never saw white people again until I returned to work the next day, as they generally lived outside the city in the suburbs or smaller towns that make up this huge urban area.
Much more segregated than North London
When I first came to the US, I found it to be much more segregated than where I lived in North London; it seemed white poverty was rural in the main and black was urban.
I remember there was a cross burning on a Black family’s lawn in San Leandro as late as 1984, I think it was, and when I first got here in 1973, two years after this interview, I recall the KKK were confident enough to be quite open in Castro Valley, the town to the east.
By 1970, San Leandro was 99.4% white, and out of a population of about 70,000 there were maybe 25 Black folks, the mayor estimated. Maltester explains that the racial exclusion was not accidental. Home ownership is very important in the US as it is seen as a symbol of prestige and stability, never mind that one may never actually own the home until near death, after paying the moneylenders their interest payments.
So the home is the bank in a way, it provides security in old age and also a source of cash for a child’s education, and so on. The idea of free education, socialized medicine and social housing is so demonized and labelled ‘socialistic’ in order to drive people into debt bondage, anything but freedom from the clutches of capital.
In the midst of a Black Revolt
On May 6, 1967, Maltester made some comments about racial inequality at a hearing of the US Commission on Civil Rights, which was investigating housing discrimination. He admitted that prejudice was a part of the problem; you cross the border from Oakland and San Leandro is 1% black.
We have to remember that his comments came in the midst of the Black Revolt and the rise of revolutionary figures like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X Fred Hampton and so on. The Black Revolt and scenes of men, women and young children being beaten by police and having dogs set on them was a global embarrassment to the US ruling class, the leaders of the so-called free world and a paragon of democracy and human rights. Any concessions Maltester made as he found himself a secure niche in the racially infused system was a result of the Black Revolt.
There was a simple answer
He was mayor for many years and his talk of having no simple answer is nonsense. There was a simple answer, take a damn position against it and work to that end. He claims “blacks don’t want to come” to San Leandro. I wonder why?
He is honest to a point though, when he says that running for office means you have to “take everyone into account”. Most importantly, take those who have more money in to account and given the history in the US, that means white folks.
Things have changed a lot and San Leandro, which was once featured on ‘60 Minutes’ a popular US news program, as the most racist town in the US, has changed considerably. But the reliance on racism as the primary divide and rule strategy on the part of US capitalism remains.
