The Abolition of the White Race

[bailey_187]

What is everyones view on Noel Ignatiev writings that say the white race is a historically constructed social grouping of those who benefit from having white skin and are so are empowered by the status quo.
And therefore that the "white race" (as defined above, not white people), needs to be abolished. How though?

Is Ignatiew a Marxist? How does his ideas fit into Marxism?

[Pirate turtle the 11th]

That sounds absurd. While reducing racist sentiment helps us as a movement claiming to wish to abolish the white race is not just outright ridiculous and offensive its also alienated the majority of proles in the west. However real life is obviously not a concern of academic fuckwits like noel.

[Искра]

You can't abolish race.

All we need to do is to move race from political sphere into biological.

[bailey_187]

I can accpet that white people benefit more then others in the west, but i dont get the whole "abolition of the white race" thing. Why not just say "end white privalege(cant spell it i dont think)"?

[Искра]

I agree.
As I said race (white or any other) should not be political, which means that people should not be discriminated because of their race. Race is just biological phenomenon and it should stay there. You can't abolish the race. I'll still be white and some people will still be black.

[Axle]

Abolishing only the historically upper racial caste (I assume he's talking about white privelige here*) still leaves historically lower racial castes unless you wholly abolish the entire social concept of race. The idea is similar to simply getting rid of the wealthy classes and doing nothing about capitalism.

Ignatiev is merely addressing the symptom and not the disease.

But if he's literally talking about abolishing white people...well then he's just an idiot.



*correct me if I'm wrong

[ComradeMan]

What is everyones view on Noel Ignatiev writings that say the white race is a historically constructed social grouping of those who benefit from having white skin and are so are empowered by the status quo.
And therefore that the "white race" (as defined above, not white people), needs to be abolished. How though?

Is Ignatiew a Marxist? How does his ideas fit into Marxism?

The man is a buffoon at best and a vile racist at worst.

There is an argument that all concepts of race as we have them today are historical constructs. And who are those who benefit from having a white skin? All white people? The European serfs and slaves? The workers in the Industrial Revolution who lived in an absolute squalor and poverty?

To define the white race as those who benefit from having a white skin is ridiculous. And who is white and who isn't? What this man seems to be doing is associating "white" with a specific class- he goes on somewhere to mention that the Irish immigrants to the US were not considered white by the Anglo-Saxon "Yankees" etc. He seems to have his terminology somewhat confused at best.

Nevertheless Ignatiev did mind his employment at Harvard- not an elitist and therefore "white" university?

What worries me about this so-called scholar is that he seems to work with the stereotypes of the people he despises so much.

[ComradeMan]

Although by no means the norm, the fact that the US president and the first lady are black it might leave Ignatiev's theories a little in the mire- it certainly sets his head on the academic block.

[Sasha]

(save an new ice age) with increased travel and migration whiteness will die out eventualy anyway.

[New Tet]

What is everyones view on Noel Ignatiev writings that say the white race is a historically constructed social grouping of those who benefit from having white skin and are so are empowered by the status quo.
And therefore that the "white race" (as defined above, not white people), needs to be abolished. How though?

Is Ignatiew a Marxist? How does his ideas fit into Marxism?

I don't know Ignatiev, but the idea resembles the one about people calling themselves Non-non-whites.

[New Tet]

(save an new ice age) with increased travel and migration whiteness will die out eventualy anyway.

Like all other so-called "pure" races, assuming we survive the coming Dark Age.

[Sam_b]

I think in order to answer this question we need a definition of what 'race' is: I think there is a strong argument to be made of it as a social construct.


As I said race (white or any other)

Do you believe a 'white race' exists? What do you mean by it?

[bcbm]

You can't abolish race.

All we need to do is to move race from political sphere into biological.

race doesn't exist in biology. its a social concept, not a biological one. what ignatiev is arguing is basically to destroy the concept of race and all privileges attached to race. from his journal race traitor:


We do not hate you or anyone else for the color of her skin. What we hate is a system that confers privileges (and burdens) on people because of their color. It is not fair skin that makes people white; it is fair skin in a certain kind of society, one that attaches social importance to skin color. When we say we want to abolish the white race, we do not mean we want to exterminate people with fair skin. We mean that we want to do away with the social meaning of skin color, thereby abolishing the white race as a social category. Consider this parallel: To be against royalty does not mean wanting to kill the king. It means wanting to do away with crowns, thrones, titles, and the privileges attached to them. In our view, whiteness has a lot in common with royalty: they are both social formations that carry unearned advantages.

[Искра]

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:17anznMQ_Dz-VM:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/scarf.jpg (http://images.google.hr/imgres?imgurl=http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/scarf.jpg&imgrefurl=http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/04/30/97-scarves/&usg=__kKXrGLfSBtoE-OBpeZlwlwLfGd8=&h=471&w=500&sz=159&hl=en&start=1&sig2=l8iR9VlviSPh0fO9_CeGtw&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=17anznMQ_Dz-VM:&tbnh=122&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwhite%2Bpeople%26hl%3Den%26client%3Df irefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1&ei=5Q8XS4KDLdyi_QbQu9WZBg) http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:GdIPPzMBcVxVsM:http://abcdigmusic.net.au/image-proxy.php%3Furi%3Dhttp://www.discogs.com%252Fimage%252FA-81139-1094767047.jpg (http://images.google.hr/imgres?imgurl=http://abcdigmusic.net.au/image-proxy.php%3Furi%3Dhttp://www.discogs.com%252Fimage%252FA-81139-1094767047.jpg&imgrefurl=http://abcdigmusic.net.au/artist/toots-the-maytals&usg=__D66RTAauyXUUhrjgjSaWwuhD_Bg=&h=283&w=361&sz=14&hl=en&start=2&sig2=juTAsVBZhLHQ0qd4amOsfQ&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=GdIPPzMBcVxVsM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=121&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtoots%2Band%2Bthe%2Bmaytals%26hl%3Den %26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1&ei=BBAXS8e3Cs3I_gbOu6ibBg) http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:UlOoFeXDLn0w-M:http://www.chucknorrislegend.com/images/Burce%2520Chuck.jpg (http://images.google.hr/imgres?imgurl=http://www.chucknorrislegend.com/images/Burce%2520Chuck.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.chucknorrislegend.com/index.php/2006/03/24/chuck_norris_biography_part_1_the_early&usg=__jg_xTHF0nqApMvd4pZmSD4pyTz0=&h=383&w=479&sz=41&hl=en&start=8&sig2=o8arH5lTtaiVArmOoWyaDw&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=UlOoFeXDLn0w-M:&tbnh=103&tbnw=129&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dburce%2Blee%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfire fox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1&ei=DxAXS6LJDdCE_Ab8sZWSBg)

I posted here image of white girl, Toot's and the Maytals and Bruice Lee.

Those people differ by their skin colour. I don't know what's right expresion you use in English, in Croatian it's race. It's both social (political) and biological component.

We should not have any problem with biological because people are different. Why should we be the same? We do have different pigments (right?) because we were born on different geographical locations (at least "in the beginning", today it really doesn't matter).

What we should be against is political/social component of race which means that one race is "greater than other". So we have centuries of white dominion, we have white supremacy movements, we have "Asia to Asian people", we have Japanese racism in China etc.

I don't know if you understand what I'm talking about. Maybe I'm missing a word.
I'm just saying that people are different but that we should (MUST) have equal rights and treatmant and that people mustn't be discriminated on the basis of their "skin colour".

[bricolage]

If you believe race to be a social construct then in order to abolish the concept of the white race as a privileged race surely at the same time you have to abolish the concept of a black race as an inferior, oppressed race. It is the same way that in abolishing the ruling class you are also abolishing the working class. However we don't talk about that, we talk about abolishing the class system in favour of a classeless society. In this respect would a better way to phrase it be abolishing the all races and the very idea of race in favour of a raceless society? However I feel that I might have got lost somewhere here.

[pastradamus]

If I could give less of a shit about what Noel says than I would.

[bcbm]

Those people differ by their skin colour. I don't know what's right expresion you use in English, in Croatian it's race. It's both social (political) and biological component.

yes, but race implies more than just skin color, its generally used to describe an entire physiology that seperates white from black from whatever. the problem is that, for one, these categories have drastically changed over time and groups that were formerly non-white are now white and, for two, the supposed differences they're supposed to describe simply don't exist on a biological or genetic level, all races have a wide range of variation. indeed, there is generally more variation within a "race" than outside of it. from a biological standpoint, the color of your skin is as insignificant as the color of your eyes or hair in terms of how you relate to others.

[Искра]

Ofcourse, I agree. We are different by our outside looks. "Skin colour" has nothing to do with intelligence etc.

[Nwoye]

I think it's important that we try to analyze the modern concept of "race" not in terms of it's validity from a scientific standpoint but from the standpoint of how it is used as a mechanism of exerting control over a population. From there it becomes very clear that race as we know it today has been created to divide the working class into different and supposedly opposed groups whose respective interests cannot be reconciled. Blacks are different from Whites and have different material and cultural interests, and these two groups must struggle for equality/power etcetera (see Slavoj Zizek's argument on the culturization of politics). So moving forward, it should definitely be our goal to - instead of fighting the battle within this existing discourse of "giving blacks rights" - transcend this discourse and recognize the pre-eminence of the class struggle over the racial one. It's much the same as the fight over "homosexuality" - our fight isn't to legitimize homosexuality, but rather to abolish specifications of individuals according to their sexual drives and integration into existing gender roles. The same goes for race.

all that being said, the fight for immediate racial equality in many ways represents a potential reform-within-capitalism - something which i think we all support.

[Tatarin]

The simple fact is that race is a construct based on idiotic myths. The "white race", often referred to as "Aryans" by the nazis in the 30's and 40's Germany, was mythologized. Not directly, but they couldn't put forth the idea that "the white race came from Africa", so instead a myth of "mysterious origins" and Atlantis was created. They even sent groups to Tibet where they measured those people's sizes and culture.

The thing is, no "race" can sustain itself without biological change. A group of people living in a certain area will develop adapting characteristics of that area. This we have abundant facts of from the animal and insect kingdoms.

What needs to be done is to get rid of the thinking that we are so different that we can not live together.

[blake 3:17]

There were some pretty serious theoretical problems with Race Traitor, the journal Ignatiev edited, but it was pretty amazing for the most part. My own objection was to some of the pieces that suggested one could suddenly become unwhite all of a sudden.

The single best thing on the issue is Dave Roediger's Wages of Whiteness, one of the very best books on either race or the US labor movement.

Speaking as a white person, I'm pretty sick of us.

[Guerrilla22]

I think we need to eliminate the concept of race completely.

[proudcomrade]

I don't have experience with any other country; but in the US, one thing that I have noticed over the past decade that seems to be making the subject even more divide-and-conquer, is the conflation of "race" with ethnicity. The two terms, race and ethnicity, are now being used interchangeably; meanwhile, whole bunches of different ethnic backgrounds with absolutely jack shit in common, are being lumped together under the same "race/ethnicity" by skin color and continent-wide geography alone (often written just like that on forms, "race/ethnicity", backslash and all), while groups who tend to be very similar culturally, get divided along these artificial racial lines.

I could tell you guys a million-and-one stories of what I have gone through as a person of a half Mediterranean and half Anglo background (some of the Mediterranean side is Sefardic Jewish, too- all of which, until just two generations ago, would have been considered mixed-race, something that was used to discriminate against many of my older relatives). I have been harassed by some people of color who associate me with the Anglo Saxon oppressor, and I have been shunned, endlessly made fun of, and generally treated with prejudice, by Anglos and/or supremacists who will never accept me as "like them". I have been mistaken for a light-skinned Arab/Turk/Moroccan, and ocasionally for a very light Latin person, and get different treatment from both sides (from the Anglo middle-classers, and from people of color) depending on which background they perceive me to be- and then their treatment of me changes completely if they find out that their guess was off.

We currently get chucked into the generic "white" bin with people with whom I have zip in common culturally. I did not grow up eating the Anglos' bland junk foods; was not raised with their sad excuse for a family structure; am not a Protestant; am not middle-class; do not come from a family ever granted the privilege of a higher education until me. Meanwhile, those Latin cultures with whom we do have all of those things in common, plus a very similar, intelligible second language in common, are suddenly (since the late 1990s) considered to be a totally different "race" than people from my background. WTF?

Recently, some young people seem to be substituting "Spanish" as the new synonym for "Latino", blabbering on about the "Spanish" "ethnicity", apparently not realizing for a second that "Spanish"=Spain=Europe="white". :rolleyes:

While all this is going on, the general public have spent some time now talking about "Hispanics" as a "race", even though anyone from a white Argentine to a black Dominican to an indigenous Bolivian to a Japanese peruano, are all every bit as Latin as the stereotypical part-Euro and part-indigenous definition that commonly gets associated with "Latino".

Don't even get me started on the white supremacist fools using all of the above to vent their endless ire against Mexicans who live in the US.

I have heard of biracial kids still constantly tormented by both sides of their family one too many times...Afro-Latinos given crap for identifying themselves "Hispanic" rather than "black", or vice-versa, and one-drop racism still in effect every time a Native American descendant goes to apply for a damned scholarship. Meanwhile, Koreans get lumped into the same supposed "ethnicity" with Japanese despite cultural differences and a history of one of those nations oppressing the other. People descended from all over the entire African continent are lumped together and called the same "ethnicity" as Jamaicans and Bajan people.

Sometimes, I truly believe that I live in the most "race"-obsessed nation on the entire planet. And the more they try to update the "racial" definitions which have been pulled out of racist government bureaucrats' asses for the past 200+ years now, the more confusing, hostile and divisive they manage to make it.

I cannot wait for the sweet day when the whole, entire human race finally buries "race" and moves the hell on.

[bcbm]

I cannot wait for the sweet day when the whole, entire human race finally buries "race" and moves the hell on.

it might help to not spout racial essentialist crap then.


I did not grow up eating the Anglos' bland junk foods; was not raised with their sad excuse for a family structure; am not a Protestant; am not middle-class; do not come from a family ever granted the privilege of a higher education until me.

[proudcomrade]

it might help to not spout racial essentialist crap then.

My deepest and most heartfelt apologies for being so racist against WASPs. :lol:

[bcbm]

My deepest and most heartfelt apologies for being so racist against WASPs. :lol:

i didn't say it was racist, but rather pointed out how absurd it is to rant against race while proclaiming all sorts of stereotypical nonsense against "whites," hardly a homogenous category.

[proudcomrade]

i didn't say it was racist, but rather pointed out how absurd it is to rant against race while proclaiming all sorts of stereotypical nonsense against "whites," hardly a homogenous category.

Dude, learn when to drop it before it becomes a flame war. I was kidding. Shall we return to the main topic? Thanks.

[syndicat]

Yeah, and you think ethnic stereotyping is okay if you call it a "joke"? That doesn't wash. A large part of poor whites in the USA are "WASPs" by the way.

"Race" is indeed a social construct but it doesn't help to say one should simply ignore it. It's necessary to be aware of racism and oppose it when it happens, and to learn about the concerns of groups who have been subjected to racist treatment. A problem with the Race Traitor line was that it treated the solution in individualistic terms...individuals renouncing their "privilege." But structural racism is an entrenched social structure that can only be addressed by a social movement, that is, collectively.

A useful approach, I think, is bringing people from different backgrounds together in settings where they can express their concerns, learn about others, and also see where they have commonalities. I'm talking about diverse working class groups.

[proudcomrade]

Yeah, and you think ethnic stereotyping is okay if you call it a "joke"? That doesn't wash. A large part of poor whites in the USA are "WASPs" by the way.

Here we go again...:rolleyes:

Point out, verbatim, where I committed "ethnic stereotyping". Chapter and verse.

[chegitz guevara]

Speaking as a WASP, our food is not known for intensity of flavor (though much off it is pretty damned good). Fortunately, I'm also Italian-American, so I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home where some of the food had intensity. As an adult, I ran pretty far from the boring food of WASP culture, diving into the cuisines of the world and loving it.

But there's still a place in my heart for mac & cheese, and turkey and mayo sandwiches.

[syndicat]

We currently get chucked into the generic "white" bin with people with whom I have zip in common culturally. I did not grow up eating the Anglos' bland junk foods; was not raised with their sad excuse for a family structure;

This is ethnic stereotyping. Why not throw in "white trash" while you're at it. Eating of junk food is, to a certain extent, a class thing in the USA. This is because people who have very little money have fewer options for what to eat, and poor neighborhoods often don't even have places to buy fresh produce. At my local McDonalds the customers are entirely working class people...mainly people of color, but in other parts of USA would be poor whites.

WASPs of the professional, managerial and capitalist classes are far less likely to eat junk food. You'll see them at your chi chi candle lit restaurants.

[khad]

The point of whiteness studies is the argument that the entire racial system relies on the self-identifying construct of whiteness. Historically it can be shown that legislated whiteness in colonial America came only after considerable unrest along lines of class carried out by the proletariat of white and black unfree laborers. Ignatiev's work is focused on the nineteenth century, but the premise of the white self underpinning racial ideology is common to all whiteness studies texts.

Here's a summary of Theo Allen's The Invention of the White Race, published in Cultural Logic, a Marxist journal. Allen's argument is an interesting Marxist intervention in previous scholarship by Winthrop Jordan (White Over Black) and Edmund S. Morgan (American Slavery, American Freedom). Personally, I think Allen misreads or overlooks some of the important nuance of Jordan's argument, but the man nevertheless did a great piece of scholarship.

Don't knock an argument because you haven't taken the time to read it.

http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/allen.html
http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/allen2.html


41. A fundamental barrier to any possibility of instituting a system of racial oppression in seventeenth-century Virginia was the lack of a substantial intermediate buffer social control stratum. This general defect was made dramatically evident during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch wars (1665-67 and 1672-74), when Dutch naval incursions appeared to threaten the very existence of Virginia as an English colony. In June 1667, Colony Secretary Thomas Ludwell confided to a correspondent in England that Virginia's small landholders were restrained from rebellion only by "faith in the mercy of God, loyalty to the King, and affection for the Governor." Seven years later, the Governor and Colony Council, in letter to the King, described in graphic terms the woeful state of social control that colony:

intersected by so many vast Rivers as makes more miles to Defend, then we have men of trust to defend them, for by our nearest computacon wee leave at our backs as many Servants (besides Negroes) as there are freemen to defend the Shoare and on all our Frontiers the Indians. Both which gives men fearfull apprehentions of the dainger they Leave their Estates and Families in, Whilst they are drawne from their houses to defend the Borders. Of which number also at least one third are single freemen (whose labor Will hardly maintain them) or men much in debt, both which Wee may reasonable expect upon any small advantage the Enemy main gained upon us, would revolt to them in hopes of bettering their Condicon.61

VI

Social status: a matter in contention

42. Aside from the two circumstantial factors--class solidarity and insubstantiality of the intermediate stratum--seventeenth-century records show that the juridical status of African-Americans vis-a-vis European-Americans was not a settled question; it was, rather, a matter in direct and indirect contention to a degree inconsistent with an established system of racial oppression.

43. In 1640, the Virginia General Court, in a singular instance (see p. 26, above), sentenced John Punch, an African-American, to lifetime bond-servitude when he was arraigned with two European-American fellow bond-laborers for having run away from their owner.62 But why did the appetite for profit not lead the Court to sentence John Punch's European-American comrades to lifetime servitude also?63

44. Professor Jordan directs particular attention to this decree, and cites it as evidence for his belief that the enslavement of Negroes was the result of an "unthinking decision," arising out of a prejudice against Negroes.64 It may be true that the Court in this case was motivated by such feelings. Other inferences are possible, however. Under English common law Christians could not be enslaved by Christians; presumably, Scots and Dutchmen were Christians; but Africans were not. As a practical matter, England's relations with Scotland and Holland were critical to English interests, so that there might well have been a reluctance to offend those countries to whom English concerns were in hostage, whereas no such complication was likely to arise from imposing lifetime bondage on an African, or African-American. The Court members in all probability were aware of the project under way to establish an English plantation colony on Providence Island, using African lifetime bond-laborers;65 and they surely knew that some Africans were already being exploited elsewhere in the Americas on the same terms. They might have been influenced by such examples to pursue the same purpose in Virginia. They were also aware that the African-American bond-laborers arriving in Virginia from the West Indies (or Brazil via Dutch colonies to the north of Maryland66 did not come with English-style, term-limiting indentures. The members of General Court may thus have felt encouraged to impose on John Punch the ultimate term, lifetime, in such cases. Whether the decision in this instance was a "thinking" or an "unthinking" one, the Court by citing John Punch's "being a negro" in justification of his life sentence, was resorting to mere bench law, devoid of reference to English or Virginia precedent.67 What the record of this case does show, as far as the ideas in people's heads are concerned, is a disposition on the part of some, at least, of the plantation bourgeoisie to reduce African-Americans to lifetime servitude.

[proudcomrade]

This is ethnic stereotyping.

:rolleyes: Not even worth debating.


Why not throw in "white trash" while you're at it.

Because that's not the group to whom I was referring; that's "why not". I am talking about those Anglos who live near me, and I am not from the South or Midwest.


Eating of junk food is, to a certain extent, a class thing in the USA. This is because people who have very little money have fewer options for what to eat, and poor neighborhoods often don't even have places to buy fresh produce. At my local McDonalds the customers are entirely working class people...mainly people of color, but in other parts of USA would be poor whites.

I am well aware of this. I have discussed this very subject at great length on other threads. The next time you go trying to "school" some stranger on this site, do a little research on their posts first. I am not talking about the poor; I am talking about middle-class, white-collar Northeastern Anglos. But in your rush to pick a silly flamewar over nothing, that apparently sailed straight over your head.


WASPs of the professional, managerial and capitalist classes are far less likely to eat junk food. You'll see them at your chi chi candle lit restaurants.

See above.

Now, for the second time, may we please just drop it and return to the main topic? This is the last time I am engaging any of this pointless waste of energy.

[Dimentio]

The simple fact is that race is a construct based on idiotic myths. The "white race", often referred to as "Aryans" by the nazis in the 30's and 40's Germany, was mythologized. Not directly, but they couldn't put forth the idea that "the white race came from Africa", so instead a myth of "mysterious origins" and Atlantis was created. They even sent groups to Tibet where they measured those people's sizes and culture.

The thing is, no "race" can sustain itself without biological change. A group of people living in a certain area will develop adapting characteristics of that area. This we have abundant facts of from the animal and insect kingdoms.

What needs to be done is to get rid of the thinking that we are so different that we can not live together.

The most interesting thing with the "Aryan theory" was that it was popularised by British 19th century historians who wanted to show that the British and Indians were brothers and therefore the repression of the Indians was morally wrong.

The only thing which has been proven is that there are similarities between the languages though. :unsure:

[syndicat]

I am talking about middle-class, white-collar Northeastern Anglos.

You said "WASPs" who subsist on "junk food." You acknowledge that junk food is more of a diet of the poor, so you can understand how I thought you were talking about the WASP working class. but now suddenly you inform us you're talking about the more privileged "middle class" Anglos. Somehow I doubt they subsist on a diet of junk food. And you've done some sociological study of their "family structure"?


This is ethnic stereotyping.
Not even worth debating.


It's not a "debate". I'm calling you out on your ethnic stereotyping...or at least, insensitive use of language. I guess apologizing would hurt your male ego. Anyway, this is all i have to say on this topic. Carry on with the thread.

[redarmyleader]

I have to say that overall the discussion of race did not make me cringe, which is what I usually do on this site whenever race is discussed. I am glad to see approached of understand racism on the basis of a Marxist analysis. Of course race is a social construct, and one, just like the construction of the nuclear family, that is to the benefit of the ruling classes.

As a black person n the U.S. I have to say that there can be no American revolution (and this is becoming more and more true especially for Europe, but all around the world) without revolutionaries making the fight against racism a key central focus. Two reasons for this: 1) the U.S., along with most of Europe, over the next 10 to 20 years will be majority-minority, making racism a central focus is key because the fight against racism will be a key demand for this majority-minority population; 2) besides dealing with numbers, for the capitalist racism has and continue to fundamental political instrument in maintaining their rule. If white people cannot break from racism and the white privilege they receive on the basis of the second-class treatment of minorities they will never break with capitalism, and instead continue to have illusions about the capitalist (who are in their majority white) and capitalism. Another way of saying this is that white people must identify white-privilege and consciously break with it in order to break with every vestige of capitalism in its entirety, the same way the working-class and mass oppressed must break with the official established political parties and leadership.

Anyone calling themselves a Marxist and revolutionary must understand and accept this fundamental truth, or they are not qualified to call themselves such.

I do apologize for not making a more thorough, yet succinct statement about the subject. While what I said is somewhat simplistic, it still contains some very basic and important Marxist understanding of the significance of race.

P.S. the calling of the destruction of the white-race is an ultra-left, moralist perspective that in no way should be taken seriously

[bcbm]

the calling of the destruction of the white-race is an ultra-left, moralist perspective that in no way should be taken seriously

um, but what ignatiev et al are arguing is that "white people must identify white-privilege and consciously break with it."

[khad]

People need to take time to read before rattling off their uninformed opinions. I would suggest starting with Theo Allen's marxist analysis of whiteness in early colonialism, the summary at Cuitural Logic which I have linked.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Thanks. Perhaps we should make a reading list in the Literature Forum for books that address white privilege from a revolutionairy standpoint and have a reading group on the subject.

[Robocommie]

Thanks. Perhaps we should make a reading list in the Literature Forum for books that address white privilege from a revolutionairy standpoint and have a reading group on the subject.

I think this forum could also benefit from a Communist group hug session. Am I right? Little cranky all around sometimes? ;)

[redarmyleader]

But I think people should not just rely on Marxist writings about race because frankly most of it is terrible. Some good writings are done by Eric Foner, James McPherson, and articles by Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. to name a few (And there have been studies by African-American studies professors that are worth looking at). I will try to compose list of things for people. But of course the thing that most be done with this material is to apply Marxist method to it.

[Sendo]

use the human genome to abolish this. The genetic variance from human to human in the same "race" (in non-race genes: blood types, height, tissue markers, internal organs, bone structure, chemical balances) differ AS MUCH AS or sometimes MORE than the differences between two people of different "races".

Also, these differences are basically negligible. Every study they make on tests scores, broken homes, psychology, always the strongest correlation is with poverty. A college buddy worked on this stuff. He made him sad that all the the work he did, like so many other papers will get locked in some cabinet because the thesis is useless under capitalism. The research time and again shows that poverty causes the most social, psychological, health problems and the only way to fix that is revolution.

So the ruling classes who fund these studies in part just ignore the findings.