Thoughts on 'intersectionality'? White Privilege?

[Unclebananahead]

I've been conversing with someone who posted the following, and I was wondering if I could get some thoughts/reactions from you-all:

"i would say that there are distractions, and capitalism does support other systems to keep us divided. <VAGUELY LEFT-COMMUNIST ANALYSIS INCOMING> But these systems are not caused by capitalism, merely reinforced. For example, capitalism did not cause racism, racism existed in europe as whitey vs whitey.

but today, we have whiteness, which is a different form of racism. the 'race' (a social construct already) of a person doesnt really matter, as long as they can 'pass' for white. however, one only recieves privilege(benefits) derived from whiteness if the other people you're interacting with see you as white. for instance, a racist pig who would normally pull over any person of color might assume that a light-skinned person who ran a red light wasnt worth the effort.

anyway, what i was trying to get at is that i dont think of patriarchy and whiteness as subsets of classism that are used by capitalism. i view them as their own systems that are interlinked with each other(and classism, agism, ableism, etc) and ALL of these systems are used by capitalism."

[Nox]

My view on white privilege is that obviously it does exist but people (especially liberals) need to stop fucking blaming white people collectively for everything and realise that capitalism is the cause of the world's problems.

[Unclebananahead]

Much like most Marxists, I generally tend to view social problems through the prism of economics, and class structures--how society produces and divvies up its 'stuff.' Racism strikes me as being economic (i.e., 'my people deserve 'stuff' more than your people'). It's likely that racism pre-dates capitalism, but not in the systematic way that it exists under capitalism. But still, at the heart of things there's an economic incentive. White people in Europe didn't collectively embark upon mass genocide, land theft, and enslavement of non-whites just because they are genetically inclined towards being big mean bullies; rather the owning classes of Europe sought to fill their pockets by way of imperialist adventures abroad. Capitalism only accelerated this phenomenon by rapidly accelerating both demand for raw materials as well as the desire to acquire and control new markets (more people to buy the capitalists' 'stuff').

The whole 'intersectionality' thing strikes me as sort of a post-modern 'series of truths'/narratives, by placing sex and race at the same level as class. It decries more traditional Marxists who place capitalism and class struggle in the preponderant position as far as principal contradictions are concerned, as exercising their 'privileges' should they happen to be white (meaning can 'pass' as white) and/or male (me apparently, according to the person I quoted in the OP). It almost seems like the logical conclusion of white guilt/white privilege reasoning.

[Jimmie Higgins]

In my view these things are most definitely connected, but are not separate and intersecting forms of oppression. To me it would be like arguing that war and poverty predate capitalism so they are separate from the system but used by the system.

Of course sexism (in particular) has long pre-dated capitalism, some kinds of bigotry as well, but the specific way these oppressions function in capitalist society comes from the system and the needs of the ruling class. Sexism now is much different than under feudalism, in fact it's much different than in early capitalism. Since the Victorian era the emphasis for women's function in society is to raise the new generation of workers and be a privatized form of domestic labor. Even today where women are a huge part of the workforce, society continually pushes the view that the MOST fulfilling thing is to have kids, so get a job, but make sure you raise those kids! In the pre and early industrial era, women were seen as the industrial workforce - men learned trades or worked on the farm, daughters were sent to mills.

Likewise racism was very clearly constructed through efforts from above and there are clear records that show this development. In places with a black slave majority, "middle" races were constructed and then viewed as a separate racial caste to be overseers of the non-creole slave labor. In the US and earlier in the colonial era, racial codes were created and racial behaviors assigned. White servants and black slaves shared the same conditions and quarters, but as slavery became more profitable than indentured labor (life-expectancy rose which made a more expensive slave a better deal than a cheaper indentured servant because now there was a chance of a slave outliving a normal term of service for white servants) and the fear of rebellions of both slaves and poor whites grew, the black population was repressed as a way to divide and rule.

It's like a lot of things in society and culture. As capitalism developed it's starting point is a different society and all their views and prejudices. The new capitalist ruling class maybe didn't create some of these divisions out of thin air, but they did take that raw material and shape it into kinds of oppression that help bolster the system. Antisemitism is a good example of this in Europe because in Feudal europe it was a caste and religious intolerence whereas modern anti-semitism is about "blood" and "race". So in feudal Europe anti-Jewish pogroms and ghettoization was about upholding strict caste lines or about religious dominance whereas for 19th and 20th century antisemitism, the hatred is about scapegoating poverty on an already marginalized and impoverished group: they justify inequality in racial terms of superior or inferior "blood" or culture.

To say that these oppressions exist separate from the society in which they function and are maintained logically leads to two conclusions. The first is reformist - you can get rid of racism without confronting capitalism. The other is determinism - you can't get rid of racism because group hatred is an inherent feature of humans.

[NewLeft]

It is a post-modern development and that itself isn't a good reason to reject it.. It seems like internationality was taken up because of a conflict between the 'class struggle' and feminism, anti-racism, LGBTQ causes.. etc. Capitalism isn't inherently racist, sexist or homophobic. That is how capitalism plays out in practice when divide and conquer becomes strategic for the ruling class. Whether it was the usage of colonial rule to divide the working class or the exploitation of men/women through their abilities or homophobia to reinforce sexism. Internationality is a way of understanding how all these factors create different experiences of discrimination. Being a lesbian minority will give you a different experience from a straight minority man. They both have different traits to exploit.