What is the hell is Third-Worldism!?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Alright, I've had a pretty shit day today. After looking for anything remotely bearing resemblance to socialism in my local area, I stumbled upon a commitee of "third worldists" in the city adjacent to mine. Thinking that this was some form of maoist group that I could learn a little from, I decided to contact and meet up with them. What I did not expect was that I'd be insulted and ridiculed by these people to the point of absurdity.

First of all, they said that I wasn't allowed to join because I was white! After complaining that I had already understood beforehand that my unchangeable skin colour gives me an unfair privilege in our society, and that going on to reject me on the basis of said skin-colour was racist and completely hypocritical, they called me an 'ignorant elitist' and started going on about westerners being suppressed by the shackled skin-colours or something.

After getting into a heated argument, I left with steam coming out of my ears and drove back home. Are these actual maoists? Is this how the left sees discrimination: as a one-sided societal generalisation in which any form of attack or peruse of the advantaged group is ignored or even encouraged? I really hope not. Acknowledging that being born into a privileged role in society is one thing. Having to take personal insults, degrading comments and rejection is another.

Also, could you explain to me what your views on discrimination are?

(Sorry If my writing is incohesive - I'm quite tired)

[The Douche]

Non-white people cannot be racist towards white people, first of all.

Second of all, 3rd worldism is generally not considered to be a legitimate form of communist thought, and you will not find any 3rd worldist organizations with any real-world clout.

Sorry you wasted your time with some dingbats though.

[ВАЛТЕР]

Third-Worldists are morons. Ignore them. In fact, next time, if you get a chance, punch one in the mouth. Tell them it was from me.

I really don't know how to explain their positions, other than that they're morons. They discriminate against an entire portion of the worlds proletariat because they are from the first-world. Implying that somehow there is no exploitation in the first-world and that there are no poor people and that they are all reactionary scum for being born there. The funny thing is that every MTW I've met either in person or online had been from the US, Canada, or England. So they sit in their cozy homes and philosophize about how the third-world needs to organize.

I've had one tell me because a family in the US makes 40,000 dollars a year, that means they are rich and shouldn't complain. Now granted 40,000 dollars is a lot in many parts of the world, however in the US, that still means you live in shit conditions and barely get by. To which the MTW said "well they live beyond their means.". I just asked him to go down to the ghettos of Detroit, Cleveland, LA, etc. and see for himself just how "beyond their means" the people live.

They are the laughing stock of the communist movement and aren't taken very seriously by anyone. Which explains their whining.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Non-white people cannot be racist towards white people, first of all.

Is racism not discrimination based on 'race'? If someone called me, and I quote, a "boorish, womanising cracker" , then how is that not racial discrimination? Like I have said before, I completely understand the tremendous social overtone being white-skinned has in our society, but I do not believe nor will tolerate people who use that as an excuse to label everyone with low amounts of melanin in their body as some kind of opponent.

Thankyou for the information.

[L.A.P.]

Yeah, maoists third-worldists tend to be bizarre upper middle class first-worlders who just hate poor people except for the ones that they never have to deal with.

[Art Vandelay]

Non-white people cannot be racist towards white people, first of all.

Wtf :confused:

Edit: Unless you were meaning something like this (which I just read in a thread about sexism), posted be Louis Henrique:


"Sexism against men" doesn't exist. Sexism isn't an individual stance, it is a systemic trait of patriarchal societies - and as all modern societies are patriarchal, there cannot be sexism against men, even though evidently some women and some men harbour prejudiced views of men. But sexism (and I use this word as a translation of the Portuguese machismo) victimises all people, men and women, though of course more (and in far more serious ways) the latter than the former.

Were you arguing something along those lines, except for racism not sexism?

[Tim Cornelis]

Non-white people cannot be racist towards white people, first of all.

This is such nonsense. Racism is not a matter of agglomerating all social attitudes.

[Manic Impressive]

What he means is systemic racism. But then again that's only true of countries where white people are the majority, except for South Africa.

[The Douche]

Racism is systemic, individual prejudice is not necessarily the same as racism.

[Ocean Seal]

Yo so I heard that the attempted revolutions/riots/general strikes failed in Europe so I'm going to assume that all western workers are comfortable and are taking part in exploiting the third world. So basically I'm going to support bourgeois dictators (regardless of their ploy in imperialism) in the third world and tell the proletariat in the first that they shouldn't wage revolution cuz they bourgeois. That way I'll effectively kill off revolution in the first and third world.

[ВАЛТЕР]

Yo so I heard that the attempted revolutions/riots/general strikes failed in Europe so I'm going to assume that all western workers are comfortable and are taking part in exploiting the third world. So basically I'm going to support bourgeois dictators (regardless of their ploy in imperialism) in the third world and tell the proletariat in the first that they shouldn't wage revolution cuz they bourgeois. That way I'll effectively kill off revolution in the first and third world.

Pretty much this.

[Ostrinski]

I am very, very sorry that you had to interact with them without having prior knowledge. Maoist-Third-Worldism is basically the result of complete social ineptitude and the need to manifest it into ideology somehow.

[Lucretia]

Non-white people cannot be racist towards white people, first of all.

Um, no. White people can most certainly be the victims of racism. Just as men can sometimes be the victims of sexism. So, for example, if a black man who was recently fired from his job by his white boss, decided that he was going to go outside and open fire on the first white man he sees, that white man is the victim of a racist crime.

This doesn't mean, of course, that black people are not disproportionately the victims of racism. Obviously they are. But to say that white people cannot be the victims of racism is to define racism in a non-sensical way.

[kurr]

Yo so I heard that the attempted revolutions/riots/general strikes failed in Europe so I'm going to assume that all western workers are comfortable and are taking part in exploiting the third world.

What "revolutions"? Where has there been a revolution in the US, Canada, Austrailia, New Zealand, and Western Europe? And what were the motives of the "riots" and general strikes? Were they making revolutionary demands?

No, they were not. They were in response to the draconian measures that affected their pie and their place of relative comfort in society. They were reformist, just like the situation in Greece has been.


So basically I'm going to support bourgeois dictators (regardless of their ploy in imperialism) in the third world and tell the proletariat in the first that they shouldn't wage revolution cuz they bourgeois.

First off, what proletariat do you speak of? I'm not trying to imply that there isn't a revolutionary force in a country like the US, quite the opposite from what I've said in my recent posts. However, you're going to have to be more specific.

The white working class in this country doesn't align itself to anyone except the aspirations of being "middle class" and, ultimately, imperialism. Whether they realize it or not is not the question. It's not like it's 1860 and they have no means of finding out. The information is there.

Now, there will be individuals that come from that class who are interested in revolutionary ideas. The most, however, will - at best - try to fight for the same living conditions that the Euro-American working class had in the 1950's and 60's.

Third-Worldists do not say that the "proletariat shouldn't wage revolution", rather, they know (in their view) that proletarian revolution isn't possible in the United States. It's not one I personally share.

This is a view in which I take issue and it's the same problem that can be found in your post; the idea of a multi-national/racial "proletariat". A proletariat that just simply exists disregarding the fact that Africans, Latinos, and the Indigenous constitute colonized peoples. It is that which is the downside of all Marxists regardless of whatever sect they align themselves to.

[kurr]

Um, no. White people can most certainly be the victims of racism. Just as men can sometimes be the victims of sexism.

I believe the term is "apples and oranges".

[kurr]

I do find it interesting how many people would rather throw around childish insults and petty shit which doesn't belong in a serious discussion rather than engage with contemporary political theory. Then again, it's Revleft and everyone here wants to play romantic revolutionary, in their own different ways of course.

While I find their theory of revolution, or JDPON (Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Oppressed Nations), apocalyptic and their view of revolutionary subjects lacking to say the least, I personally find their economics and writing on the Productive Forces interesting. That's not to say that I agree with all of it but for better or worse they are making some attempt to break with the trite old platitudes that are all too commonplace on this forum.

[Lucretia]

I believe the term is "apples and oranges".

It's not apples and oranges at all. The argument people here seem to be making is that because "black" people are victimized by racism more severely and broadly than "white" people, that racism against white people isn't really racism. Or if it is, it's of a different (excusable?) kind. (Notice that I put "black" and "white" in quotes because race, unlike biological sex, is not a scientific category.)

As with a debate I had about sexism in another thread, the underlying conception or racial power here seems to be that racism by definition is a structure of power wielded by all white people against all black people, just as sexism is a structure of power created and wielded by all men against all women. So by definition you cannot have racism against whites.

Both these models are profoundly flawed, anti-Marxist, and rooted in philosophical idealism that attributes power to groups of people ("white" people and men), without tying that power back to its roots in the relations of production. The result is to falsely group white/black people and men/women into antagonistic binaries with inherently opposed interests.

[#FF0000]

I personally find their economics and writing on the Productive Forces interesting.

Any books/papers/pamphlets on these subjects you'd recommend?

[Grenzer]

Racism is systemic, individual prejudice is not necessarily the same as racism.

That's odd, the dictionary seems to disagree.



1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

2: racial prejudice or discrimination

There is nothing inherent to racism that makes it systemic, unless you are talking about the fact that it takes a holistic view of race; but there is nothing about racism that makes it exclusively the property of social systems, as opposed to being on an individual level.

[kurr]

It's not apples and oranges at all. The argument people here seem to be making is that because "black" people are victimized by racism more severely and broadly than "white" people, that racism against white people isn't really racism. Or if it is, it's of a different (excusable?) kind.

As with a debate I had about sexism in another thread, the underlying conception or racial power here seems to be that racism by definition is a structure of power wielded by white people against all black people. And sexism is a structure of power created and wielded by all men against all women.

Both these models are profoundly flawed and anti-Marxist.

First and foremost, "Anti-Marxist" means fuck all to me.

And I'll make it real short and sweet for you, racism was used to justify the colonialism in Africa, Asia, and whats now known as Latin America. From this, Western Europe (and eventually the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as a whole rose up economically and yadda yadda yadda.

Your buddy Karl actually detailed this in his theory of primitive accumulation, maybe you've heard of it.

Meanwhile, sexism has never been used as anything remotely equivocal.

So yeah, racism and sexism... totally not even remotely comparable, guy. Apples and oranges.

And there is no such thing as racism against Whites/Euro-Americans.

[kurr]

Any books/papers/pamphlets on these subjects you'd recommend?

Prison Censorship (http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/) has an archive on MIM's journal and other writings.

I would suggest:
MIM Theory 1: A White Proletariat
MIM Theory 10: Labor Aristocracy
Imperialism and Its Class Structure in 1997.

These can be found in the Labor Aristocracy/Economics section.

More contemporary, I guess, would be..

Reflections on the Theory of the Productive Forces by shubel morgan (http://peopleswarpress.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/new-from-pw-press-reflections-on-on-the-theory-of-the-productive-forces-by-shubel-morgan/) (pdf)
Revisiting value and exploitation by LLCO (http://llco.org/revisiting-value-and-exploitation/)
Real versus Fake Marxism on Socialist Distribution by LLCO (http://llco.org/real-versus-fake-marxism-on-socialist-distribution/)

Once again, this is not to imply that I agree with most of these. And come to think of it, it's actually been a while since I've read some of these myself.

[kurr]

Alright, I've had a pretty shit day today. After looking for anything remotely bearing resemblance to socialism in my local area, I stumbled upon a commitee of "third worldists" in the city adjacent to mine.

Do you happen to remember the name of this committee?

[Manic Impressive]

And there is no such thing as racism against Whites/Euro-Americans.
That's a very American-centric thing to say wouldn't you agree?

I do like the term euro-Americans though

[Lucretia]

First and foremost, "Anti-Marxist" means fuck all to me.

And I'll make it real short and sweet for you, racism was used to justify the colonialism in Africa, Asia, and whats now known as Latin America. From this, Western Europe (and eventually the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as a whole rose up economically and yadda yadda yadda.

Your buddy Karl actually detailed this in his theory of primitive accumulation, maybe you've heard of it.

Meanwhile, sexism has never been used as anything remotely equivocal.

So yeah, racism and sexism... totally not even remotely comparable, guy. Apples and oranges.

And there is no such thing as racism against Whites/Euro-Americans.

It's not surprising that Marxism means "fuck all" to you, because you appear wedded to a crass version of identity politics that posits that "whites" and "blacks" are unitary, monolithic categories that reside on opposing ends of a struggle for power. You have racial groups forming, wielding power, and struggling for it in a materialist vacuum -- with no reference to the continuous role played by class power in any of these processes. This is philosophical idealism at its finest. If that doesn't bother you, fine. But let's not mince words in stating where things (and people) stand.

And, no, racism is not the same as sexism, anymore than homophobia is the same the same as racism or sexism. All three are forms of power that function very differently. But that doesn't have any bearing on my point, which wasn't that racism and sexism are the same, but that you were making the same theoretical mistake that others had made in discussing sexism in an earlier thread.

Why you choose to bring up that racial ideology was implicated in colonialism is unclear, as not even milquetoast liberals would contest that.

[kurr]

That's a very American-centric thing to say wouldn't you agree?

Did you already forget about the subject of this thread?

[Manic Impressive]

Did you already forget about the subject of this thread?
Third worldism so what's your point? :confused:

[kurr]

It's not surprising that Marxism means "fuck all" to you, because you appear wedded to a crass version of identity politics that posits that "whites" and "blacks" are unitary, monolithic categories that reside on opposing ends of a struggle for power. This is philosophical idealism at its finest.

I'm going to assume that you live in the US.

Whites/Euro-Americans, regardless of class, have always been on the side of the ruling class when it comes to Africans, Mexicans/Latinos, and the Indigenous. Through voluntary lynchings and vigilantism to modern day pigs, prison, and border guards.


And, no, racism is not the same as sexism

Oh come on. You just said that it was. You tried to make a comparison!



Why you choose to bring up that racial ideology was implicated in colonialism is unclear

To show that "racism" is not in anyway similar to sexism.

[kurr]

Third worldism so what's your point? :confused:

You're almost there. The entire thread is American-centric considering that the Third Worldists that he's most likely referring to are based in the US. Hence my post.

[Lucretia]

I'm going to assume that you live in the US.

Whites/Euro-Americans, regardless of class, have always been on the side of the ruling class when it comes to Africans, Mexicans/Latinos, and the Indigenous. Through voluntary lynchings and vigilantism to modern day pigs, prison, and border guards.



Oh come on. You just said that it was. You tried to make a comparison!




To show that "racism" is not in anyway similar to sexism.

I really don't have much to say to somebody who talks about "all whites always siding with the ruling class." I think that kind of a statement comes with its own label, so I don't need to assign it one of my own.

Instead, I'll ask you a simple question. Where in this thread have I said that sexism is the same thing as racism? If you can't point to such a statement, I think a retraction is in order.

[Manic Impressive]

Ah fair enough I see what you're saying. Carry on :lol:

[PetyaRostov]

Did you already forget about the subject of this thread?
I did. lets talk about kyriarchy

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

I imagine interacting with third-worldists is similar to interacting with Jehovahs Witnesses; a sour experience but interesting.:)
And yes, maoists-3-worldists have more in common with your avarage christian cult than with marxism and the political workers movement.

[cynicles]

I know they're patronizing if you're not white and disagree with them.

[islandmilitia]

The main historical reference of the term Third Worldism is not to small groups if internet Maoists, it is actually more commonly used to refer to certain trends of radical thought from the 1960s and 70s, encompassing those in the imperialist countries who looked to Third World revolutions and national liberation movements as the most important sections of the world revolutionary movement. In that original sense, I would certainly identify as a Third Worldist, because I think that movements in the non-imperialist countries have the greatest potential to create fractures and explosions across the capitalist world-system.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Um, no. White people can most certainly be the victims of racism. Just as men can sometimes be the victims of sexism. So, for example, if a black man who was recently fired from his job by his white boss, decided that he was going to go outside and open fire on the first white man he sees, that white man is the victim of a racist crime.The white person would be a victim of being unfairly grouped together as part of the problem - that problem, anti-black racism. I assume this hypothetical black person went on a hypothetical shooting spree because he felt that his joblessness and situation and probably other daily abuses were due to anti-black racism in society - not because the hypothetical shooter wanted to protect a superior status of black people in society by keeping the whites down:rolleyes:.

So yes this white person would be a victim of racism in a way - anti-black racism in society that's so bad that it causes people to blame all whites for the situation.


This doesn't mean, of course, that black people are not disproportionately the victims of racism. Obviously they are. But to say that white people cannot be the victims of racism is to define racism in a non-sensical way.No it's to refocus racism as a function of class-society rather than group-animosity as it is popularly presented in our "colorblind" society. Racism defined abstractly with no connection to the larger organization of society is IMO non-sensical. I think it confuses the fight against oppression because it reinforces the idea that group-competition in places like the US are the result of "natural" human tendencies rather than the result of ruling class attempts to divide people as well as the result of competition for scare jobs and good housing or access to schools in class societies.

Legally there is no racial bias in the police and prison systems and yet these are in effect systems where racial control is a huge aspect. According to the common contemporary definition of racism as individual bigotry, the prison system is not a racist institution because it is officially "colorblind".

[Lucretia]

The white person would be a victim of being unfairly grouped together as part of the problem - that problem, anti-black racism. I assume this hypothetical black person went on a hypothetical shooting spree because he felt that his joblessness and situation and probably other daily abuses were due to anti-black racism in society - not because the hypothetical shooter wanted to protect a superior status of black people in society by keeping the whites down:rolleyes:
So yes this white person would be a victim of racism in a way - anti-black racism in society that's so bad that it causes people to blame all whites for the situation.

No it's to refocus racism as a function of class-society rather than group-animosity as it is popularly presented in our "colorblind" society. Racism defined abstractly with no connection to the larger organization of society is IMO non-sensical. I think it confuses the fight against oppression because it reinforces the idea that group-competition in places like the US are the result of "natural" human tendencies rather than the result of ruling class attempts to divide people as well as the result of competition for scare jobs and good housing or access to schools in class societies.

Legally there is no racial bias in the police and prison systems and yet these are in effect systems where racial control is a huge aspect. According to the common contemporary definition of racism as individual bigotry, the prison system is not a racist institution because it is officially "colorblind".

Yes, so unfairly and harmfully grouping a person together with other people on the basis of his or her "race" is not racism, because white people, by definition, cannot be the victims of racism? Why not? Well, this is again is where we separate a materialist understanding of racism from idealist claptrap.

According to you, white people cannot be the victims of racism because, well "white people" benefit from racism, participate in it, and enjoy superior status from it. So it makes no sense to say that white people are its victims--which would make racism contradictory.

This is just a repetition of the deeply troubling understanding of racism, which as I noted earlier, conflates a socio-cultural structure of racialized oppression with the agents who might participate in that structure in different ways. In social theory, this error is called "downward conflationism" because it erases the agency of individual human actors (in this case to participate in, to resist, or to form new varieties of racialized oppression) vis-a-vis social structures. Or, quite literally, it conflates structures with agents. This doesn't "refocus racism as a function of class society." It treats racism as a pristine and monolithic structure of oppression cut off not only from agential activity, but also from class structures.

The result of all this is you end up saying that there is only one structure of racial oppression (white over everybody else), and that white people are all on one side of racial structures of power and oppression, while everybody else is on the other side.

I trust, JH, that you are bright enough to see the problems with this -- even if this flawed thinking is a short-cut to certain political conclusions that might seem opportunistic in the present moment.

[Rottenfruit]

Alright, I've had a pretty shit day today. After looking for anything remotely bearing resemblance to socialism in my local area, I stumbled upon a commitee of "third worldists" in the city adjacent to mine. Thinking that this was some form of maoist group that I could learn a little from, I decided to contact and meet up with them. What I did not expect was that I'd be insulted and ridiculed by these people to the point of absurdity.

First of all, they said that I wasn't allowed to join because I was white! After complaining that I had already understood beforehand that my unchangeable skin colour gives me an unfair privilege in our society, and that going on to reject me on the basis of said skin-colour was racist and completely hypocritical, they called me an 'ignorant elitist' and started going on about westerners being suppressed by the shackled skin-colours or something.

After getting into a heated argument, I left with steam coming out of my ears and drove back home. Are these actual maoists? Is this how the left sees discrimination: as a one-sided societal generalisation in which any form of attack or peruse of the advantaged group is ignored or even encouraged? I really hope not. Acknowledging that being born into a privileged role in society is one thing. Having to take personal insults, degrading comments and rejection is another.

Also, could you explain to me what your views on discrimination are?

(Sorry If my writing is incohesive - I'm quite tired)

Reactionary,Repulsive,Racist(fetishised Orientalism)

The bourgeois is the entire west, they don't belie that poverty exists in the "first world", they flat out hate western nations to such extreme ive seen some of them advocating wholesale democide of the west ,

Third Worldist Maoist are so Kool ,K is always in upperKase letter beKause AmeriKKKa is evil

[Rottenfruit]

Non-white people cannot be racist towards white people, first of all.
.
Your joking right?
Ever heard about nation of islam, the new black panthers

Heard or read about melanin theory , a psudeosceniftic theory that claims that black are the supreme race, the blacker you are the purer and better you are and of course white people are lowest of all people on earth according to that

Totaly not a racist black man advocating genocide of whites and he´s in no way homophobic although he wants all "faggot dead"

Ca_rQyKx_dg

Another black guy totaly not racist saying black people have to kill infant white babys and every white person in the world has to be killed. No racism going on there,

2QWDkUVEFDA

[doesn't even make sense]

Your joking right?
Ever heard about nation of islam, the new black panthers or melanin theory?

Totaly not a racist black man advocating genocide of whites and he´s in no way homophobic although he wants all "faggot dead"

Ca_rQyKx_dg

Another black guy totaly not racist saying black people have to kill infant white babys and every white person in the world has to be killed. No racism going on there,

2QWDkUVEFDA


This problem has already been solved, back on the first page. When asked for clarification on his statement The Douche replied:


Racism is systemic, individual prejudice is not necessarily the same as racism.

I.e. racism is a social structure supporting the subjugation of certain categories of people. Those guys might be really misguided, hateful assholes but they aren't racists in the way radicals use the term. A liberal understanding of racism would indeed consider them racist because liberals are primarily concerned with what particular individuals think and do, rather than actual social forces.

[Rottenfruit]

This problem has already been solved, back on the first page. When asked for clarification on his statement The Douche replied:



I.e. racism is a social structure supporting the subjugation of certain categories of people. Those guys might be really misguided, hateful assholes but they aren't racists in the way radicals use the term. A liberal understanding of racism would indeed consider them racist because liberals are primarily concerned with what particular individuals think and do, rather than actual social forces.
How are those men in the videos not racist?
Advocating genocide of a race is pretty much as racist you can get as a racist



SO neo nazis are not racists but misguided hateful assholes?

[mew]

did this really happen???

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

This whole idea of "systemic racism" being the only form of racism is playing semantics. You can definitely have institutionalized prejudice against a systemically hegemonic group on a smaller scale, and this is racism in a sense too. At the least, there is an attempt to replace the systemic racism of one group with their own. Whether or not we call it "racism", it is prejudicial on a racial basis, it is materially relevant, but it is not impacting people on the scale of the entire society. In addition, supremacist groups may well be calling for the imposition of a system of "racism" which benefits currently oppressed races - this is a racist program as much as fundamentalists of repressed religious minorities still have fundamentalist programs.

People who are talking about systemic racism being the only form of racism are really just trying to say that issues of prejudice are only really issues when institutions materially reinforce and profit from the social prejudice. Trying to argue over the definition of the term "racism" is semantics, while the social institutions which reinforce white dominance is where people should be focusing their attention.


Whether or not we call it "racism" or just prejudice, it is true that MTW orgs rejecting white people on their ethnicity is incredibly stupid, but it is also true that the vast majority of current social institutions do not reinforce such stupidity.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Alright, I've had a pretty shit day today. After looking for anything remotely bearing resemblance to socialism in my local area, I stumbled upon a commitee of "third worldists" in the city adjacent to mine. Thinking that this was some form of maoist group that I could learn a little from, I decided to contact and meet up with them. What I did not expect was that I'd be insulted and ridiculed by these people to the point of absurdity.

First of all, they said that I wasn't allowed to join because I was white! After complaining that I had already understood beforehand that my unchangeable skin colour gives me an unfair privilege in our society, and that going on to reject me on the basis of said skin-colour was racist and completely hypocritical, they called me an 'ignorant elitist' and started going on about westerners being suppressed by the shackled skin-colours or something.

After getting into a heated argument, I left with steam coming out of my ears and drove back home. Are these actual maoists? Is this how the left sees discrimination: as a one-sided societal generalisation in which any form of attack or peruse of the advantaged group is ignored or even encouraged? I really hope not. Acknowledging that being born into a privileged role in society is one thing. Having to take personal insults, degrading comments and rejection is another.

Also, could you explain to me what your views on discrimination are?

(Sorry If my writing is incohesive - I'm quite tired)

Every TWist I've heard, seen or spoken to has been some spoiled suburbanite tool (which is being charitable considering tools actually have purposes) screaming about the injustices done to "minorities." Needless to say, this story is very odd from my perspective. No loss, Third Worldism is idiotic from start to finish and you probably wouldn't have learned much from them anyway.

[Comrade #138672]

So they're sabotaging their own cause by excluding some people who want to help them because of their race. That doesn't sound very effective.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I wouldn't explicitly condemn all "TWists" ... there have been some reasonable movements and thinkers referred to as "third worldist" like Fanon, who were speaking in a time when voices from the third world had been explicitly ignored, and tried to offer social and economic theories from the perspective of the colonized.

It's the extremist Maoists who are irritating.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Unfortunately LLCO's domain has expired so I can't get anther look at those articles Kurr posted, however as I recall their class analysis is based entirely on wages. In one of their articles they even claim that first world workers are members of the global bourgeoisie due to the fact that they have access to credit cards and 401(k)s :rolleyes:.

Also for someone who is not a third worldist, Kurr sure as fuck does talk about the LLCO a hell of a lot.

[Maize]

Two points I'd like to make:

1.) Generally stating that non-whites cannot be racist is referring to the societal power dynamic between them. Yes, in technical terms, individuals or small groups of individuals (such as the TWst in the OP) can exhibit racism or impose racist actions, such not allowing entry into a meeting based upon skin color, in this example. However, the negative effects on people from racism as a whole exist on a systematic scale. Its creation branches out far beyond individual acts of prejudices, and digs in on the legislature level. It permeates down into the bedrocks of the justice system and economic business practices. In essence, when you (assuming white individual) are a victim on individual acts of racism you still hold the power. You are still on the higher end of the dynamic, and *in most cases* you are not negatively affected in the same way a person under the yolk of systemic racism. You walk away free from the oppression.

This is, again, a general point, but in populations so large you need to take the societal factors as a whole vs individual anecdotal. Of course we can find isolated examples flying in the face of the standard. I'm not attempting to diminish the moral problems of non-white on white racism, but if you immediately take the statement that "non-whites can't be racist" as offensive, you may want to check your privileges.


2.) While I disagree with Third-Worldist rhetoric, it's important to veer from ad hominem when dismantling it's legitimacy. Pointing out that members come from 'first world' countries diminishes their personal credentials but it does nothing to legitimately disprove the ideology. Bridging the misunderstanding between proletariat struggles world-wide serves to only further unify the far-left.

So the problem with the ideology? It doesn't recognize that 1st & 3rd world working classes are exploited mutually, and feed off of one another's oppression. It upholds a mistaken belief that the proletarians of industrialized nations reap many if not all of the basic benefits that the elite enjoy. There is a lack of acknowledgement that a successful and proper movement in these industrialized nations mutually benefits the other side as well (and vice versa). To exclude the working class on any part of the world from the movement destroys its intended purpose.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yes, so unfairly and harmfully grouping a person together with other people on the basis of his or her "race" is not racism, because white people, by definition, cannot be the victims of racism? Why not? Well, this is again is where we separate a materialist understanding of racism from idealist claptrap.My argument IS materialist because anti-black attitudes are used to help bolster the system whereas anti-white attitudes may be divisive, but they do not help bolster ruling class rule in the way that support of repressive powers of the police, support of restrictions on immigrant labor rights etc have.


According to you, white people cannot be the victims of racism because, well "white people" benefit from racism, participate in it, and enjoy superior status from it.
LOL! According to me? Where did I argue that!? Please quote it for me since I have constantly argued AGAINST privilege theory as a useful way to understand oppression. OK, I don't expect you've read my other posts on the subject in different threads and so I'm sure it just wasn't clear in the posts from this thread - so to clarify: I don't think at all that white people DO benifit, white workers suffer from what the ruling class is able to do with racism, nativism, homophobia and sexism.

I am arguing that bigotry against blacks (or bigotry against LGBT or women) has a different role, source, and social function, than anti-white bigotry by blacks, anti-male sentiment among women, blaming all straight people for homophobia etc. While they can be said to be similar in that they are all divisive and will divide the class, that is about as far as it goes IMO. One bigotry BOLSTERS and helps promote among the class a particular order in society desired and promoted by our rulers - to bolster the systemic oppression. The other is a reaction to that systemic oppression, a misguided one to various degrees, but a result of a strong antipathy to the ruling class staus-quo for society.

It may be a semantic point I'm making about racism (and I'm making this argument among comrades because I think we have to talk about oppression in a meaningful sense rather than the amorphous and rather useless way it is popularly talked about) but the ramifications are concrete as far as how we understand and try and combat racism.

If we are talking about bigotry and how white and black bigotry are both bad ideas, then yes, they are both bad ideas. But what do we do about it? It seems to me that if people think racism is just group-hatred, then the answer is to go out and argue one on one with people: hey, don't say that about black people/hey don't say that about white people. This would be an idealist strategy IMO. I think as radicals we need to go for the root of the problem which means while not ignoring the daily things, not just ignoring when an ally says, "well this war is because men are in charge" but as far as strategy, we need to go after the systemic pillars of racism and sexism and nativism as structures of this society. We can oppose the NAZIs and Minutemen of course, but we also need to take on the prison system, the police, etc.


The result of all this is you end up saying that there is only one structure of racial oppression (white over everybody else), and that white people are all on one side of racial structures of power and oppression, while everybody else is on the other side.NO! You are charging at strawmen here. There is no anti-white racism because NO WHERE in the US are white people systemically oppressed for being white. There can be anti-white attitudes that are divisive just as people hating hipsters or other sub-groups, but systemic oppression is qualitativly different.

Confusing the two or even giving ground to "reverse-racism" arguments obfuscates how special oppressions in society are connected to the class structure of society. Equating any dislike for any other dislike or stereotyping in society leads to Identity Politics arguments or Colorblind arguments, not to an understanding of why racism and sexism are so central to our society and why and how we should fight it.


I trust, JH, that you are bright enough to see the problems with this -- even if this flawed thinking is a short-cut to certain political conclusions that might seem opportunistic in the present moment.Yes I see the problems with these views that I reject and have argued against in other threads :P

[Jimmie Higgins]

Your joking right?
Ever heard about nation of islam, the new black panthers

Heard or read about melanin theory , a psudeosceniftic theory that claims that black are the supreme race, the blacker you are the purer and better you are and of course white people are lowest of all people on earth according to that

Totaly not a racist black man advocating genocide of whites and he´s in no way homophobic although he wants all "faggot dead"

Ca_rQyKx_dg

Another black guy totaly not racist saying black people have to kill infant white babys and every white person in the world has to be killed. No racism going on there,

2QWDkUVEFDA

Leaving aside how marginal these groups and attitudes are... What is the social origin of these sentiments? Is it from black people wanting to preserve the current order of society and make sure that white people don't get into their schools and take their resources? So that white people don't take black people's jobs? So that the poltical leadership of this country remains black? So that whites are forced to stay in their proper place at the bottom of the society?

Or is it due to the existance of anti-black racism in US society and the desire to get away from it even if it absurdly means killing all white people or forming a seperate society somewhere.

So called black-racism in the US is the consaquence of systematic racism. White-racism, however, is dedicated to bolstering and expanding that current state of social affairs.

Because of the relations involved, while induvidually, the hatred may seem the same, objectivly there is no equivalancy in regards to the relationship of these attitudes and behaviors to the overall class system in the US.


Edit: oh and hating all gay people is homophobia, not anti-white.

[Maize]

Wow Jimmie, you pretty much summed up everything I was saying with better detail.

On a *technical* level, racism, no matter which race is 'against' which, is a negative and morally reprehensible thing. I'm being US-Centric here when I speak about this btw, I'm not going to try to pretend to be an expert in racial divides on all parts of the world. Still, if anything, anti-white racism is reactionary. Racist against whites have no power, they have no piece of the pie in the system. It's yet another symptom of the entire problem going on. And Jimmie is right, not even white workers truly benefit from a racist society. Still, it's a handy divide passed down from the ruling class to prevent solidarity.

Calling it an argument of semantics steers this all away from the crucial point. Getting offended and pissed off about anti-white racism, and mentally equivocating it to the exact same type of racism that said minorities experience is the problem. You can say it is bad, ethically wrong, whatever. But if you see the two things as perfectly equal, utterly devoid of the context in which the racism exist, it's an error.

VVVVV Could you please clarify what the "significant scale" anti-white racism holds power? Everybody *ultimately* is negatively affected by racism, I don't think there is a disagreement here on this. But to say that whites don't in some way benefit from racism in our current society is wrong too. Black men and women are less likely to be hired on a job based on their name alone, blacks are more likely to be incarcerated for committing the same crime as a white, blacks are more likely to receive longer prison penalties(and thus fed into a prison system that perpetually feeds itself) not to mention the "anti-crime" legislation passed in recent decades that just so happens to affect minorities the most. None of that is okay. None of it is ethical. But it is a fact of a society we live in. And whites do casually benefit from this, from job hunts to plea deals, on the virtue of simply being white. Saying that "non-whites can't be racist" is an inflammatory and misleading statement obviously. I wouldn't say it like that myself. I think the part of your post that is flying over my head is that extreme non-white racist groups of having anywhere the same pull and far reaching affects. We could discuss and debate all day where these groups came from all day, but these groups still don't hold any social or economic backing, they don't have any legal system that reinforces their goals.

[Lucretia]

JH, you're a very frustrating person to have a discussion with because you often recite these pat, seemingly rehearsed boilerplate answers. And when confronted with formulations that don't fit neatly into your rehearsed schema, you have a tendency to fall back on evasive (sometimes even contradictory) language and - I hate to say - rambling. I don't fault for you for not being equipped to respond to new ideas, or new ways of looking at old concepts. Where I do fault you is in your pretending to be equipped, in pretending that you are adequately responding. In this latest round of discussion, you very clearly aren't.

My argument throughout this entire thread, to repeat it succinctly, is that racism is a socio-cultural structure (a patterned set of ideas that harmfully generailze entire groups of people on the basis of their perceived "race") that agents can and do draw on when interacting with one another in real life (resulting in racist practices), which has a disproportionately negative impact on racial minorities vis-a-vis European-Americans, but also adversely affects the latter. By this understanding of racism, there is not *one* structure of harmful stereotypical thinking that acts as a repository for oppressive behavior. Rather, there are multiple structures that different agents can draw from at different moments, and in response to different groups (e.g., a "white" person calling a Hispanic person a "wetback" and refusing to hire him because of his ethnicity/race; or a black group identifying white people as The Devil, and therefore disallowing them from joining a political group). Some agents are more powerfully positioned to institutionalize and legitimize their racist behavior by virtue of their individual or collective role in relation to the means of production, but that does not mean that only their behavior is racist. On the contrary, oppressed groups can behave in ways that are also racist, by drawing off their own harmful generalizations and caricatures of a "racial" type and institutionalizing these practices on an admittedly smaller, but albeit still significant, scale.

Your response to this materialist, realist formulation of racism is to declare that your own formulation is "materialist" because it, in your words, shows how "anti-black attitudes are used to help bolster the system." But, if left at this level of understanding, this is not any kind of materialism I would want to be aligned with as a Marxist for the simple reason that it is grossly reductionist. Racism certainly does "help bolster" the system, BUT THAT IS NOT ALL IT DOES. Racism certainly *emerges* and *takes shape* as a result of class power, but once it does take shape as a structured pattern of ideas that can be passed down and put into practice from generation to generation, in different material circumstances of course, it takes on some degree of relative autonomy from economic exploitation, such that the most heavily exploited "racial" groups in society might also adopt and put into practice racist views -- that is, practice racism. And it's simply not good enough to say that such racism isn't REALLY racism simply because it is being practiced by people who, in another context, are themselves the victims of racism (or sexism, or homophobia, or economic exploitation).

It was certainly a relief to see you admit that you reject the white-vs-black, "privilege" theory, and to concede that "not all that white people DO benifit" from racism. Because in so doing, you are thereby opening an important wedge between individual members of a "race" and the socio-cultural ideas and practices of "racism" -- in a way that admits there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the two, such that some "black" people can be racist, just as some "white" people can oppose racism on the basis of the fact that it materially harms them. This, and only this, is the crux of my entire argument, and one that many posters here have openly disavowed by claiming that white people, by definition, cannot be the victims of racism.

But instead of recognizing the implications of your rejection of "privilege" theory, you still fasten on to some of the conclusions which flow from it -- namely that there are these groups called "races" that exist on opposite polls of privilege, such that a member of the more "privileged" group being prejudiced against a member of the less privileged group is "racism," whereas a member of a less privileged group being prejudiced group being discriminatory and prejudiced against a member of the more privileged group is "a reaction to systemic [racial] oppression" (not a form of racial oppression in its own right?) which you characterize as "a result of a strong antipathy to the ruling class status-quo for society." What's disturbing about this is that, by implication, it seems that you don't think white people's racism is some sense a distorted, alienated expression of discontent against the ruling class. When in fact IT IS! And to claim otherwise is to conflate being "white" with enjoying economic "privilege" and therefore totally in line with the interests of class society. It therefore makes no sense to claim that one "racial" group's racism enjoys some sort of privilege as anti-ruling-class just because, on average, that "racial" group find itself on the receiving end of more racial oppression in society. Racism, not just anti-black racism but all forms of racism, including anti-white racism, benefits the ruling class.

So we see that you at least want to reject race-privilege theory, but then smuggle it in through the backdoor by defining some forms of racism as more "understandable" or, I suppose, in some sense politically progressive than other forms. But what is more puzzling still is your outrage that I characterized your argument as basically claiming that "white people cannot be the victims of racism because, well 'white people' benefit from racism, participate in it, and enjoy superior status from it." You responded to this by exclaiming: "LOL! According to me? Where did I argue that!? Please quote it for me."

But then later in the very same post, you make the statement that "There is no anti-white racism because NO WHERE in the US are white people systemically oppressed for being white." I'm not sure I want to waste my time trying to deconstruct your slippery use of the word "systemic" here, but there are certainly organizations and institutions that do exhibit anti-white racist practices, and the groups mentioned in this thread constitute some of them. But all this is besides the point, which is that you are taking harmful practices rooted in racially prejudicial ideas, institutionalized in formal structures of power, and pretending that these practices and ideas do not merit the term "racism" because the institutions in questions aren't institutions of the ruling class, or aren't backed by the same amount of power as institutions which systemically discriminate and harm black people. This is just utter non-sense, and as others have pointed out, a semantic game.

[Jimmie Higgins]

JH, you're a very frustrating person to have a discussion with because you often recite these pat, seemingly rehearsed boilerplate answers. And when confronted with formulations that don't fit neatly into your rehearsed schema, you have a tendency to fall back on evasive (sometimes even contradictory) language and - I hate to say - rambling.LOL. I fully accept the frustrating and rambling charges. The rest? Not so much.


My argument throughout this entire thread, to repeat it succinctly, is that racism is a socio-cultural structure (a patterned set of ideas that harmfully generailze entire groups of people on the basis of their perceived "race") that agents can and do draw on when interacting with one another in real life (resulting in racist practices), which has a disproportionately negative impact on racial minorities vis-a-vis European-Americans, but also adversely affects the latter. By this understanding of racism, there is not *one* structure of harmful stereotypical thinking that acts as a repository for oppressive behavior. Rather, there are multiple structures that different agents can draw from at different moments, and in response to different groups (e.g., a "white" person calling a Hispanic person a "wetback" and refusing to hire him because of his ethnicity/race; or a black group identifying white people as The Devil, and therefore disallowing them from joining a political group). ^This is an example of why I think your formulation is idealist. First (and I don't know if you are arguing this in the above) I'm not making an argument that only anti-black sentiment exists or that there is only anti-black systemic racism. This is why I think it's more useful to sperate out "bigotry" (which may or may not be connected to larger systemic oppression in society) from (systemic) racism. Because while there can be anti-white/male/hetero/native-worker attitudes, there are no specific systems of control or oppression directed at these groups.

Racism (as in bigotry) exists as a set of ideas, sure - this is the most obvious way these divisions are experienced in daily life. These ideas are divisive and can be directed at anyone in society; they can be promoted or stoked by elietes for the own purposes or just the result of people having to compete over crumbs in capitalist society. But racism (systemic) is not mearly free-floating antagonoisms - there is a relationship to the specific organization of society at that time.

The difference between merely bad and divissive ideas (as I would argue the "white devil" example is) and systemic racism



Some agents are more powerfully positioned to institutionalize and legitimize their racist behavior by virtue of their individual or collective role in relation to the means of production, but that does not mean that only their behavior is racist. Poor whites did not create Jim-Crow - that was the Democratic Party and rural elites! Was it mearly to divide people - this was certaintly a huge part of it, but this division was not just ideas but a SYSTEM of control to keep labor in the south tied to the land and keep their system going.

The racist ideas about blacks aren't JUST divisive, they are part of a larger argument to try and justify neoliberalism: these kids 'don't want to learn' these 'bad people' don't want to work, they 'just want to steal or be thugs or sell drugs'. Divisive yes, but also the house that the War on Drugs, the undermining of education and welfare, the roll-back on civil rights and new deal reforms! Anti-immigrant sentiment likewise is directly connected to the organization of capitalist production and the creation of a 2nd class workforce. Sexism is used also to devalue women's labor, not just divide us: why do those nurses want to strike - don't those women WANT to take care of sick kids?


On the contrary, oppressed groups can behave in ways that are also racist, by drawing off their own harmful generalizations and caricatures of a "racial" type and institutionalizing these practices on an admittedly smaller, but albeit still significant, scale.Now, I don't know where you are going with this argument. So institutional oppression comes out of divsions in society rather than from the organization of class society? Homophobia is institutionalized just because there happen to be more straight people - therwise Hereophobia would be the main oppression? It has nothing to do with the organization of capitalist society and the promotion and institutionalization of hetero nuclear families?


Your response to this materialist, realist formulation of racism is to declare that your own formulation is "materialist" because it, in your words, shows how "anti-black attitudes are used to help bolster the system." But, if left at this level of understanding, this is not any kind of materialism I would want to be aligned with as a Marxist for the simple reason that it is grossly reductionist. Racism certainly does "help bolster" the system, BUT THAT IS NOT ALL IT DOES. Racism certainly *emerges* and *takes shape* as a result of class power, but once it does take shape as a structured pattern of ideas that can be passed down and put into practice from generation to generation, in different material circumstances of course, it takes on some degree of relative autonomy from economic exploitation, such that the most heavily exploited "racial" groups in society might also adopt and put into practice racist views -- that is, practice racism. And it's simply not good enough to say that such racism isn't REALLY racism simply because it is being practiced by people who, in another context, are themselves the victims of racism (or sexism, or homophobia, or economic exploitation).1) My argument has nothing to do with "victimhood" but with how a particular antagonism in society is related to the structure of society. It can easily be argued that US blacks have overall been "more oppressed" than arabs in the US - but if a black person calls the cops because he sees someone who "looks like an arab terrorist" that is not only common bigotry but "racism" in the sense I was talking about. The reason I was arguing that there can be anti-white bigotry but not "racism" is because there is no systemic oppression of white people in the way that blacks are targeted by the police system, the way that Arab Muslims are targeted by the FBI to justify US wars.

2) Of course people internalize these ideas - that's true of a whole hoast of reactoionary or just plain bourgoise ideas. And frankly in my experience it's much more common for working class black people to adopt ANTI-BLACK rascist ideas than out and out anti-white bigotry.


It was certainly a relief to see you admit that you reject the white-vs-black, "privilege" theory, and to concede that "not all that white people DO benifit" from racism. Comrade, I would have had to have held this idea in the first place for me to "concede" the point.:rolleyes:


Because in so doing, you are thereby opening an important wedge between individual members of a "race" and the socio-cultural ideas and practices of "racism" -- in a way that admits there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the two, such that some "black" people can be racist, just as some "white" people can oppose racism on the basis of the fact that it materially harms them. This, and only this, is the crux of my entire argument, and one that many posters here have openly disavowed by claiming that white people, by definition, cannot be the victims of racism.They can not be victims of systemic racism. Anyone can be the subject of divissive attitudes: temp-workers, yuppies, the rich, hipsters, etc. But outside the world of ideas, in order to fight systems of oppression which help keep the class order in society IMO it's important to understand the relationship of these ideas to the material structure of society.

So let's take some concrete examples of bigoted attitudes which we might encounter:

1. A white worker who says: "the problem in society is that these blacks just want entitelments and to not have to work"

Vs.

A black person who says: "The problem is that white people are the devil and keeping us down"

Do these attitudes have the same relation to the system? I think in effect the first is adopting ruling class arguments that scapegoat black poverty on blacks and helps promote gutting reforms; attidudes which directly aid the goals that our rulers have for our class and black people specifically. On the other hand, what is the source of the second statment socially? I think it's the result of a recognition of a situation of racial oppression - it's a incorrect and bad explaination that is divissive and a dead-end no doubt, but the ruling class would much rather promote the kinds of attitudes expressed by Bill Cosby than ideas which might lead to people taking action against the police or might create an independant (though from our perspective misdirected and problematic) political movement among the oppressed AGAINST the system.

2. A straight person who says, "Those gays can do what they want, but just don't flaunt it all over"

Vs.

A gay person who blames "breeders" and rejects strights as allies: "I'm here and queer, get used to it".

Again, one serves in practice to reinforce the existing systems of oppression while the second is a REACTION to that condition of oppression in society - though again a dead-end ultimately.

3. A man who says: "the problem with women is that they are all teases"

vs.

A woman who says: "the problems of society are all because men are in charge"

Again, the first adopts and reinforces the notion that women are 2nd class and only exist to serve men in some way while the 2nd is a recongnition of female oppression, but an inadaquate analysis etc.

See the difference? In practice no radical should view these ideas equally. We are COMPETING with the ideas of "patriarchy" as an explaination for sexism, the idea that white people as a whole cause anti-black racism etc. These are inadaquate answers to the very real problems we seek to smash through organizing a working class movement (and need to begin to adress in order to build that class movement). We are not in competiton for explaining why "women are all cockteases" or why "blacks are naturally violent". These ideas and people who hold them are not directly our audience and we need to fight the whole concept and assumptions - and more importantly the systemic elements (the prison system and wage inequality, restrictions of rights) that are directly related to these attitudes. We want to convince anti-racists that class struggle is needed - we don't want to convince racists that class struggle will "put women/blacks/gays in their place" - well at lest not the place racists want them.

My boss is about to show up for work so I'm going to have to stop there for now.

[Thirsty Crow]

1.) ...In essence, when you (assuming white individual) are a victim on individual acts of racism you still hold the power. You are still on the higher end of the dynamic, and *in most cases* you are not negatively affected in the same way a person under the yolk of systemic racism. You walk away free from the oppression.

It is clear that this doesn't represent "holding power" in any way, as I'm not sure if you expressed yourself in the best possible way.
What is at stake here that it is wrong an inaccurate to pinpoint race as the distinguishing factor, or criterion, in relation to the power dynamics in capitalist society. And that in itself by no means entails downplaying issues of racism (which of course you correctly trace back to the "systemic" level), only that a claim which would attribute power to whites as a homogenous group is bogus and disregards class as a crucial factor in society.

[Lucretia]

LOL. I fully accept the frustrating and rambling charges. The rest? Not so much.

^This is an example of why I think your formulation is idealist. First (and I don't know if you are arguing this in the above) I'm not making an argument that only anti-black sentiment exists or that there is only anti-black systemic racism. This is why I think it's more useful to sperate out "bigotry" (which may or may not be connected to larger systemic oppression in society) from (systemic) racism. Because while there can be anti-white/male/hetero/native-worker attitudes, there are no specific systems of control or oppression directed at these groups.

Racism (as in bigotry) exists as a set of ideas, sure - this is the most obvious way these divisions are experienced in daily life. These ideas are divisive and can be directed at anyone in society; they can be promoted or stoked by elietes for the own purposes or just the result of people having to compete over crumbs in capitalist society. But racism (systemic) is not mearly free-floating antagonoisms - there is a relationship to the specific organization of society at that time.

The difference between merely bad and divissive ideas (as I would argue the "white devil" example is) and systemic racism


Poor whites did not create Jim-Crow - that was the Democratic Party and rural elites! Was it mearly to divide people - this was certaintly a huge part of it, but this division was not just ideas but a SYSTEM of control to keep labor in the south tied to the land and keep their system going.

The racist ideas about blacks aren't JUST divisive, they are part of a larger argument to try and justify neoliberalism: these kids 'don't want to learn' these 'bad people' don't want to work, they 'just want to steal or be thugs or sell drugs'. Divisive yes, but also the house that the War on Drugs, the undermining of education and welfare, the roll-back on civil rights and new deal reforms! Anti-immigrant sentiment likewise is directly connected to the organization of capitalist production and the creation of a 2nd class workforce. Sexism is used also to devalue women's labor, not just divide us: why do those nurses want to strike - don't those women WANT to take care of sick kids?

Now, I don't know where you are going with this argument. So institutional oppression comes out of divsions in society rather than from the organization of class society? Homophobia is institutionalized just because there happen to be more straight people - therwise Hereophobia would be the main oppression? It has nothing to do with the organization of capitalist society and the promotion and institutionalization of hetero nuclear families?

1) My argument has nothing to do with "victimhood" but with how a particular antagonism in society is related to the structure of society. It can easily be argued that US blacks have overall been "more oppressed" than arabs in the US - but if a black person calls the cops because he sees someone who "looks like an arab terrorist" that is not only common bigotry but "racism" in the sense I was talking about. The reason I was arguing that there can be anti-white bigotry but not "racism" is because there is no systemic oppression of white people in the way that blacks are targeted by the police system, the way that Arab Muslims are targeted by the FBI to justify US wars.

2) Of course people internalize these ideas - that's true of a whole hoast of reactoionary or just plain bourgoise ideas. And frankly in my experience it's much more common for working class black people to adopt ANTI-BLACK rascist ideas than out and out anti-white bigotry.

Comrade, I would have had to have held this idea in the first place for me to "concede" the point.:rolleyes:

They can not be victims of systemic racism. Anyone can be the subject of divissive attitudes: temp-workers, yuppies, the rich, hipsters, etc. But outside the world of ideas, in order to fight systems of oppression which help keep the class order in society IMO it's important to understand the relationship of these ideas to the material structure of society.

So let's take some concrete examples of bigoted attitudes which we might encounter:

1. A white worker who says: "the problem in society is that these blacks just want entitelments and to not have to work"

Vs.

A black person who says: "The problem is that white people are the devil and keeping us down"

Do these attitudes have the same relation to the system? I think in effect the first is adopting ruling class arguments that scapegoat black poverty on blacks and helps promote gutting reforms; attidudes which directly aid the goals that our rulers have for our class and black people specifically. On the other hand, what is the source of the second statment socially? I think it's the result of a recognition of a situation of racial oppression - it's a incorrect and bad explaination that is divissive and a dead-end no doubt, but the ruling class would much rather promote the kinds of attitudes expressed by Bill Cosby than ideas which might lead to people taking action against the police or might create an independant (though from our perspective misdirected and problematic) political movement among the oppressed AGAINST the system.

2. A straight person who says, "Those gays can do what they want, but just don't flaunt it all over"

Vs.

A gay person who blames "breeders" and rejects strights as allies: "I'm here and queer, get used to it".

Again, one serves in practice to reinforce the existing systems of oppression while the second is a REACTION to that condition of oppression in society - though again a dead-end ultimately.

3. A man who says: "the problem with women is that they are all teases"

vs.

A woman who says: "the problems of society are all because men are in charge"

Again, the first adopts and reinforces the notion that women are 2nd class and only exist to serve men in some way while the 2nd is a recongnition of female oppression, but an inadaquate analysis etc.

See the difference? In practice no radical should view these ideas equally. We are COMPETING with the ideas of "patriarchy" as an explaination for sexism, the idea that white people as a whole cause anti-black racism etc. These are inadaquate answers to the very real problems we seek to smash through organizing a working class movement (and need to begin to adress in order to build that class movement). We are not in competiton for explaining why "women are all cockteases" or why "blacks are naturally violent". These ideas and people who hold them are not directly our audience and we need to fight the whole concept and assumptions - and more importantly the systemic elements (the prison system and wage inequality, restrictions of rights) that are directly related to these attitudes. We want to convince anti-racists that class struggle is needed - we don't want to convince racists that class struggle will "put women/blacks/gays in their place" - well at lest not the place racists want them.

My boss is about to show up for work so I'm going to have to stop there for now.

Your whole argument is premised on this strange attempt to divide "individual bigotry" from "systemic racism." This falls flat on its face when we see examples of entire groups of people (and not just the groups referenced in this thread) who share a common set of "bigoted" (read: RACIST) assumptions and use those assumptions to form institutions that are deliberately exclusionary on the basis of those harmful racial stereotypes. You would refer to this is as "individual bigotry," but it's not individual at all. It's every much an institutionalized form of racism that draws off a socially constructed repository of harmful stereotypes. Now certainly these institutions tend not to be ones that wield a lot of social power or are controlled by the ruling class, but I see that as a completely arbitrary and non-sensical criterion for establishing whether racism is racism. By that criterion, poor hispanics can't be racist against African-Americans because the former tend not to occupy the highest positions of ruling class institutions, and therefore -- by your argument -- can't institutionalize racism and make it systemic. Therefore it is just "individual bigotry." Apparently such hispanics are inventing their racial ideas out of whole cloth and exist in a social vacuum. Absurd.

Because there can be institutionalized racism that's not institutionalized by members of the ruling class. I think your discomfort at admitting this is that it sounds like I am demeaning any "racial" exclusion -- and am pretending that I am calling for all people to act as though this were a color-blind society. I'm not. And it is possible to make a distinction between racial policies, and racist policies.

The rest is just a restatement of the argument I've already carefully and systematically debunked. You're again trying to set up this good racism/bad racism paradigm, which falls apart when white racism against black is also understood as a misguided attempt to make sense of poverty ("Those poor blacks are causing me to work unnecessarily hard because I have to pay for their welfare!") and capitalist exploitation. By saying that such racism is not as "against the system" as anti-white racism is just foolish, and is again a flagrant conflation of racism with "races" in a way that tries to equate white with ruling class. That equation made at least some sense in the antebellum south, when no African-Americans could be members of the ruling class, although most whites didn't come close to it. The equation doesn't make sense now.

Where you are correct is in evaluating the different degrees of social power that have accrued to different "racial groups" -- divergences of social power which give racist members of these groups differential ability to project their institutionalized ideas into the mainstream of most people's daily lives -- but that doesn't mean their ideas or practices are any less racist, or any more "against the system." It's just as much an alienated, foolish, and fucked up response to real social problems as "white" people's racism is.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Your whole argument is premised on this strange attempt to divide "individual bigotry" from "systemic racism." This falls flat on its face when we see examples of entire groups of people (and not just the groups referenced in this thread) who share a common set of "bigoted" (read: RACIST) assumptions and use those assumptions to form institutions that are deliberately exclusionary on the basis of those racial ideas.

Strange divide? How about your bizarre logic which would idealistically conflate racial profiling and Jim-Crow or the Chinese Exclusion Act or whatnot with petty-bourgeois black nationalists and their adherents who hate whites BECAUSE of the existence of Jim-Crow and racial profiling etc.

In your argument it is as if theses ideas just float around among the population neither here nor there, all just bad ideas with no connection to the social order and system we live in.

My argument isn't "good" bigotry or "bad" bigotry, but that some of this animosity aids oppression in society while other animosities are misdirected REACTIONS to the existence of that oppression in society. Because of this difference, revolutionaries should have different responses to say, radical feminism on the one hand and anti-woman pro-lifers on the other; ID politics Latino groups on the one hand and the Minutemen on the other.


You would refer to this is as "individual bigotry," but it's not individual at all. It's every much an institutionalized form of racism that draws off a socially constructed repository of harmful stereotypes. Now certainly this institution is not one that wields a lot of social power or is controlled by the ruling class, but I see that as a completely arbitrary and non-sensical criterion for establishing whether racism is racism. Um, then what does it mean for the class struggle? Why are we equating things without social weight to Jim Crow and the Democratic Party run KKK and the contemporary Prison system? This argument of yours is absurd: "racism is equally bad no matter who is doing it, even though some doesn't really have much of an impact on society but the other is used by the ruling class to dominate all of society.


By that criterion, poor hispanics can't be racist against African-Americans don't tend to occupy the highest positions of ruling class institutions, and therefore -- by your argument -- can't institutionalized racism and make it systemic. Therefore it is just "individual bigotry." Apparently such hispanics are inventing their racial ideas out of whole cloth and exist in a social vacuum. Absurd.NO! If a BLACK person says "well the problem is that black people don't want to learn" then he is adopting ANTI-BLACK RACIST IDEAS. Certainty there are BLACK folks who are full participants in promoting anti-immigrant laws, homophobic policies, etc. Certainty there are LATINO immigrants who think black people deserve to go to prison, are unintelligent or violent or so on.

It matters little on the INDUVIDUAL level - it matters more HOW THOSE BIGOTED IDEAS FIT INTO THE SYSTEM AND CLASS ORDER OF THIS SOCIETY.


Because there can be institutionalized racism, you know, that's not institutionalized by members of the ruling class.So where are the all-black police forces racially profiling white college students and targeting them for pretext stops and the Gay judges denying straight people rights? This is why IDEAS don't matter that much and people can hate rich people all they want but it won't mean there is anti-rich oppression or "classism" in society because these are just attitudes with no social structural component.

I don't mean institutionalized in the sense of normalized or organized, I mean bigotry that bolsters the oppressive systems and institutions in this class society. Korean people forming exclusive organizations that stereotype white people means jack shit in the scheme of things because there is no way this would be systemic oppression of white people for being white in this society. It may suck to be stereotyped, it may be a problem in trying to organize class struggle and must be taken on and overcome - but by contrast, RACISM (systemic) must be SMASHED. The prison system must be destroyed and therefore the racist ideas used to justify and excuse its existence.


Ok Ok... so say that any group can be equally "racist" in society. Then how do we fight racism? Tell me. From your formulation, as far as I can tell the only thing to do would be try and create multiracial groups and then tell people that their bigoted ideas are bad and that ours are better. The fight against racism is just a logical argument that needs to be won?

What's your strategy for ending racism?

[PC LOAD LETTER]

First and foremost, "Anti-Marxist" means fuck all to me.

And I'll make it real short and sweet for you, racism was used to justify the colonialism in Africa, Asia, and whats now known as Latin America. From this, Western Europe (and eventually the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as a whole rose up economically and yadda yadda yadda.

Your buddy Karl actually detailed this in his theory of primitive accumulation, maybe you've heard of it.

Meanwhile, sexism has never been used as anything remotely equivocal.

So yeah, racism and sexism... totally not even remotely comparable, guy. Apples and oranges.

And there is no such thing as racism against Whites/Euro-Americans.
I know this is from the first page, but I just wanted to point out that it was religion that was the justification for the early trans-Atlantic slave trade, in that they believed that these 'infidels' deserved to be captured and forced to live a 'christian' life so they could gain salvation, even if it was in slavery. Others later took the view that African peoples were not human. Race as a biological hypothesis (not a theory because, as Lucretia said, 'race' has no biological basis and is subjective) did not gain traction until the abolitionist movement started to grow in the early 1800s and the pro-slavery folks were looking to justify the continued enslavement of African peoples. There WERE some people advocating a biological race hypothesis before that, but it was more academic circle-jerk and the view was pretty uncommon outside of that environment.


As far as racial categories during the initial Spanish invasion of south America, well, they considered Spain-born Spanish and New World-born Spanish to be different social categories, which doesn't really fit in with an elaborated biological race hypothesis.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I know this is from the first page, but I just wanted to point out that it was religion that was the justification for the early trans-Atlantic slave trade, in that they believed that these 'infidels' deserved to be captured and forced to live a 'christian' life so they could gain salvation, even if it was in slavery. Others later took the view that African peoples were not human. Race as a biological hypothesis (not a theory because, as Lucretia said, 'race' has no biological basis and is subjective) did not gain traction until the abolitionist movement started to grow in the early 1800s and the pro-slavery folks were looking to justify the continued enslavement of African peoples. There WERE some people advocating a biological race hypothesis before that, but it was more academic circle-jerk and the view was pretty uncommon outside of that environment.

As far as racial categories during the initial Spanish invasion of south America, well, they considered Spain-born Spanish and New World-born Spanish to be different social categories, which doesn't really fit in with an elaborated biological race hypothesis.

And also the creation of various tiers of "race" in the Caribbean where the concentration of the slave population verses the elites caused them to make a sort of racial caste system based on how much your ancestry was this or that. Race and the dominant forms of racism - at least in the US - were pretty noticeably constructed from above.

[Lucretia]

Strange divide? How about your bizarre logic which would idealistically conflate racial profiling and Jim-Crow or the Chinese Exclusion Act or whatnot with petty-bourgeois black nationalists and their adherents who hate whites BECAUSE of the existence of Jim-Crow and racial profiling etc. In your argument it is as if theses ideas just float around among the population neither here nor there, all just bad ideas with no connection to the social order and system we live in.

In response to my very clearly stating that some racist practices carry much greater social weight than others, you accuse me of "conflating racial profiling and Jim Crow with petty black nationalists." I really don't know what more to say about this than to repeat that just because a racist institution or a racist group doesn't hold the balance of class forces in its hands does NOT mean that it's not a racist group or institution. It just makes it a racist institution that is removed from the strategic center of class struggle. But again, instead of grappling with my actual argument, we get the boilerplate response that I am pretending "ideas just float around." This is disappointing, and racism is a topic of such great importance that it deserves closer attention to detail in argument than what you're giving it.


My argument isn't "good" bigotry or "bad" bigotry, but that some of this animosity aids oppression in society while other animosities are misdirected REACTIONS to the existence of that oppression in society. Because of this difference, revolutionaries should have different responses to say, radical feminism on the one hand and anti-woman pro-lifers on the other; ID politics Latino groups on the one hand and the Minutemen on the other.I know you didn't use the words "good" and "bad" to describe your position here. I did, because I think it underscores a troubling logic that some forms of racism, because they are "misdirected reactions to the existence of oppression" are more "rational" or more understandable than other forms, which just "aid oppression." It never seems to cross your mind that some "reactions to oppression" actually further consolidate that oppression, thereby "aiding oppression," while other seemingly unprovoked acts of oppression are themselves misguided responses to real exploitation and oppression (again, the example of the confused "white" person accusing "the blacks" of cheating welfare and making him pay way more in taxes than he has to). You are trying to draw too neat of a line here between forms of oppression, and when I call you on it with very clear examples of how this thinking is flawed, you just repeat yourself. Again, disappointing.


Um, then what does it mean for the class struggle? Why are we equating things without social weight to Jim Crow and the Democratic Party run KKK and the contemporary Prison system? This argument of yours is absurd: "racism is equally bad no matter who is doing it, even though some doesn't really have much of an impact on society but the other is used by the ruling class to dominate all of society.Your use of the word "equate" here is slippery indeed. They are "equal" in the sense that they are both racist and both move us further away from a united working class capable of overthrowing capitalism. They are "unequal" in the sense that some racist institutions -- like the Democratic Party of the 1950s -- do wield more power. How racist practices and institutions differ from one another is an empirical question that needs to be worked out from actual research. It is not helpful to declare that, because some racist practices, ideas, and institutions are backed by more social power, that those backed by less social power are somehow not racist. Neither is it helpful to imply that if white people just stopped being racist to black people, black people would no longer have a reason to be racist (as if anti-white racism isn't sometimes rooted in the very same illusions that prompt anti-black racism) and we could the move forward with the class struggle. All racist practices divide the working class, period. And there isn't a form of racism that enjoys some elevated status as "more rational" than another, and less deserving of being condemned.


NO! If a BLACK person says "well the problem is that black people don't want to learn" then he is adopting ANTI-BLACK RACIST IDEAS. Certainty there are BLACK folks who are full participants in promoting anti-immigrant laws, homophobic policies, etc. Certainty there are LATINO immigrants who think black people deserve to go to prison, are unintelligent or violent or so on.

It matters little on the INDUVIDUAL level - it matters more HOW THOSE BIGOTED IDEAS FIT INTO THE SYSTEM AND CLASS ORDER OF THIS SOCIETY.Nobody here is making the argument that it is unimportant how racist ideas fit into the larger system of class exploitation, and how those ideas relate differently to different groups. This is far, FAR different than the claims you're making, which are that anti-white racism is a rational response to oppression, not wielded by people with significant amounts as social power, and therefore by definition should not be considered racism a priori.

I would also like to add that so-called "white" people, as a category, not only don't benefit from racism of all types, but they are actually harmed by it. This is not a mysterious, marginal, anti-Marxist position. Hell, just crack open Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, and you'll see that this is one of his central theses. I suppose he was just an "idealist" who thinks "racial ideas" just float around also.

[Jimmie Higgins]

In response to my very clearly stating that some racist practices carry much greater social weight than others, you accuse me of "conflating racial profiling and Jim Crow with petty black nationalists." I really don't know what more to say about this than to repeat that just because a racist institution or a racist group doesn't hold the balance of class forces in its hands does NOT mean that it's not a racist group or institution. It just makes it a racist institution that is removed from the strategic center of class struggle. Ok, to try and clarify the semantic crap. When I have been talking about "racism" I mean the police, jim-crow, immigration restrictions etc: systems of racial control tied in with the way the class system works in the US. "Racism" in this sense are the attitudes which support and bolster this system. So when I originally said black people can not be racist against whites (or women can't be sexist against men) - I do NOT mean that people can't have BIGOTED ideas towards non-specifically-oppressed people in society.

Bigotry can be any dislike of any group by anyone.

The REASON I initially tried to make this distinction and why I think radicals need to clarify one thing from another is because the common sense of what racism is in the US is a totally idealist and practically useless crude racism of "people not liking a certain race or group of people".

This separation of understanding (systemic, as in tied to the system) "racism" and common bigotry since the 1960s (when people understood racism to mean systems and racists to mean supporters of those systems) has allowed the "colorblind" and "reverse-racism" arguments to develop that are now fully mainstream and accepted ideas.

This is a set-back for us IMO because it obfuscates and excuses the connection between race and class in the US IMO. It turns it from a structural fight, to an idealist fight over ideas. It also means that racist structures in our society such as the way policing is done are legally and popularly NOT considered racist because they are systemic and without any over BIGOTRY.

I hope that was clarifying for my position and why I initially tried to make this distinction. The language is less important to me than the concept and understanding that people not liking you for your ethnicity does not have the same impact as a system of racial oppression or control.


This is disappointing, and racism is a topic of such great importance that it deserves closer attention to detail in argument than what you're giving it.:rolleyes: Spare me this concern-trolling condescension.


I know you didn't use the words "good" and "bad" to describe your position here. I did, because I think it underscores a troubling logic that some forms of racism, because they are "misdirected reactions to the existence of oppression" are more "rational" or more understandable than other forms, which just "aid oppression."So you accused me of arguing things YOU KNOW I DIDN'T ARGUE?!! FUCKING CHRIST and you called me frustrating to debate with:lol:

I argued that the relationship to the system is different. Someone supporting Jim-Crow wants a stronger system and to "put people in their place". Inherently someone who blames all whites for racism is someone who wants the current system GONE - or at least they want to get away from it. Is this problematic, yes in many ways - but it is qualitatively a DIFFERENT problem because they want what we want, they just have a bad answer to it.

Think about it this way: someone who blames Bush for the war in Iraq and imperialism is someone with a bad answer to a real problem. Someone who thinks that Arabs are "crazy fanatics" who must be controlled by US military power... is a fucking reactionary. As revolutionaries, we should want to COMPETE with the ideas held by the first person and offer a much more realistic and better understanding of why this happens and how to end it. What about the second person... should we view them as also just a case of some wrong ideas equal to blaming Bush?

Is this making any sense?


It never seems to cross your mind that some "reactions to oppression" actually further consolidate that oppression, thereby "aiding oppression," while other seemingly unprovoked acts of oppression are themselves misguided responses to real exploitation and oppression (again, the example of the confused "white" person accusing "the blacks" of cheating welfare and making him pay way more in taxes than he has to).Misguided yes... but also quite different. That white person is coming from a place of class frustration as are ALL WORKING CLASS fascists. But frustration alone doesn't tell us much. Now if a black person blames all whites for blacks being poor, fundamentally the underlying issue is the distribution of resources and lack of access to jobs and housing and so on for poor blacks. The white on the other hand is falling into pro-racism arguments that workers should not receive welfare, that poverty is the fault of the poor, and that white people's interest is in making sure that those resources don't go to the poor. How do these different attitudes play out in society? Well the blame-whitey ideas might gain some kind of following, it might stagnate, it might develop into something better as people who hold this view begin to run up against the inability of those kinds of politics to actually do anything about racism in society. On the other hand, what about the idea that black people are lazy and shouldn't recieve any welfare or unemployment and maybe even not much in school funding since they "don't like education anyway". Well these ideas were the basis for the "tax revolt" "white flight" the removal of welfare, school funding, etc.

So in the balance. The blame-whitey politics might hurt some feelings, and maybe some fanatics might actually hurt some random white people - on the other hand what have post Jim-Crow racist ideas done for the US working class: delegitimized social protest (Nixon/Regan Law and Order), helped sell neoliberalism to the population, justified the transfer of taxes not only from cities to suburban developer's pockets but transferred social spending funds to build the biggest prison system the world has ever known and a police force with military hardware.

So one is a bad answer to a problem we want to see destroyed (structural racism) and the other helps the ruling class stay in power and rule over us much much more directly.


Your use of the word "equate" here is slippery indeed. They are "equal" in the sense that they are both racist and both move us further away from a united working class capable of overthrowing capitalism. Yes divisions in the class are a problem and I think the main one with "blaming whites/straights/men for oppression" - it lends itself to cross-class colaboration and tends to give the petty-bourgoise of the oppressed group the political initiative and makes a class strategy against specific oppressions in society more difficult. That's one level and on that superficial level I agree with you. But on another level some bigoted attitudes are tied more directly with how the ruling class rules and are tied to material processes and structures in society such as employment and housing and so on. These are the things IMO we need to fight against and point to as the sources of oppression, that is why I think it's more important to focus on this rather than anti-male bigotry which really can't have much impact other than preventing a better fight against anti-female sexism whereas because anti-women attitudes are related to how we are all exploited as workers, these attitudes are much more detrimental beyond merarly being "bad or divisive" ideas.


They are "unequal" in the sense that some racist institutions -- like the Democratic Party of the 1950s -- do wield more power. How racist practices and institutions differ from one another is an empirical question that needs to be worked out from actual research. It is not helpful to declare that, because some racist practices, ideas, and institutions are backed by more social power, that those backed by less social power are somehow not racist.Forget the semantic stuff. If you mean they are equally bigoted and divisive, then yes I agree. Are they the same as Jim-Crow or the millions locked in prison and millions more stuck in probation or courts? No.


Neither is it helpful to imply that if white people just stopped being racist to black people, black people would no longer have a reason to be racist (as if anti-white racism isn't sometimes rooted in the very same illusions that prompt anti-black racism) and we could the move forward with the class struggle.No, in modern (systemic) racism, white people don't even NEED to hold bigoted ideas for RACISM as a SYSTEM to exist and function - this is part of why I think we need to separate out what we mean by racism. Few people running the major institutions that oppress women and blacks specifically every involve any overtly bigoted attitudes. To eliminate the tendency for gays to blame straights for homophobia or blacks to blame whites for racism, it isn't a idealist question of "changing people's minds" or "checking privilage" it's a question IMO of actually taking on the STRUCTURES that keep systemic oppression of specific targeted groups in place and then allow related bigoted ideas to flow from there or at least create a sort of anchor for those ideas in society (it would be hard to argue that blacks are more violent and criminal if the prison system was smashed). This can't be done completely without a revolution of course, but I also don't think there could be a revolutionary movement if people haven't at least made some major and serious attempts at destroying that kind of racially and class oppressive structure.


Nobody here is making the argument that it is unimportant how racist ideas fit into the larger system of class exploitation, and how those ideas relate differently to different groups. This is far, FAR different than the claims you're making, which are that anti-white racism is a rational response to oppression, not wielded by people with significant amounts as social power, and therefore by definition should not be considered racism a priori.Holy crap, yet again you misrepresent my arguements. How does arguing that bigotry as a response to oppression is "a dead end" as I did, or calling it inherently problematic and divissive (as I have several times now) become an argument that these ideas are "rational". There's some kind of weird linguistic-alchemy that must happen when I type that totally changes the words I used when you read them.


I would also like to add that so-called "white" people, as a category, not only don't benefit from racism of all types, but they are actually harmed by it. This is not a mysterious, marginal, anti-Marxist position. Hell, just crack open Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, and you'll see that this is one of his central theses. I suppose he was just an "idealist" who thinks "racial ideas" just float around also.Yes, if you look back at my first post and my argument against 3rd worldism, that was my argument: anti-black racism, sexism, nativism, all ultimately hurt ALL workers which therefore would include white workers.

[Maize]

It is clear that this doesn't represent "holding power" in any way, as I'm not sure if you expressed yourself in the best possible way.
What is at stake here that it is wrong an inaccurate to pinpoint race as the distinguishing factor, or criterion, in relation to the power dynamics in capitalist society. And that in itself by no means entails downplaying issues of racism (which of course you correctly trace back to the "systemic" level), only that a claim which would attribute power to whites as a homogenous group is bogus and disregards class as a crucial factor in society.

Yes, it was a poor way to word it in retrospect. I think I clarified my definition of "power" in this scenario a little better in my follow up post. I would not consider racism the distinguishing factor either. Upon some reflection, stating that you, the victim, still wield power after being subjected to non-white racism implies that it's not important nor awful, which again was not the intention.

I do want to note, however, that while we do live in a capitalist society (I'm assuming the USA on this one) we do live in a racist, capitalist society. Not all capitalist societies are thoroughly equal in their implementation. I think that down playing the heavy effects that racism has on our capitalist society isn't the right way either. Racism in America goes beyond social factors alone. While the Jim-Crow era has been "repealed" officially, blacks and other minorities are still heavily affected by our legal system, which churns out a corrupted, inhumane economic industry on its own (I would like to expound on this last point but I feel like it is extending beyond the scope of this thread). I absolutely and whole heatedly do believe that racism is at least one important fact in this capitalist society.

I don't see racism as the sole attribution, and I don't see how it would simultaneously disregard class either. Race is indeed tied with class. I don't mean on any biological level, no of course not. Nor by simply being born white in and of itself. No, not all. But by the very aforementioned factors I have stated in this post and my most previous one, the systematic racism in America is yet another way for large populations of minorities to remain in poverty and disfranchisement. Of course whites suffer from the negative consequences of a racist society but in a different way.

[Marxaveli]

I'm going to assume that you live in the US.

Whites/Euro-Americans, regardless of class, have always been on the side of the ruling class when it comes to Africans, Mexicans/Latinos, and the Indigenous. Through voluntary lynchings and vigilantism to modern day pigs, prison, and border guards.

Sweeping generalization. GTFO with your reactionary, idealistic bullshit. I am white, proletarian, and very much anti-capitalist and against the racism that necessitated and caused by it; as any other class conscious proletarian is, be they white or of color - so there goes your theory: right down the shitter!

[Radikal]

I'm going to assume that you live in the US.

Whites/Euro-Americans, regardless of class, have always been on the side of the ruling class when it comes to Africans, Mexicans/Latinos, and the Indigenous. Through voluntary lynchings and vigilantism to modern day pigs, prison, and border guards.

Yeah, totally, White people always are on the side of the ruling class. I'm pretty sure this site has a large amount of White people, and many leftist movements from the late 1800s to the present day have a large amount of White people in them. What about the Whites who supported Rev. King and other civil rights leaders? What about the abolitionists of the 1800s? Surely they were supporting minorities, and not the bourgeoisie?

Now, there was, and is, a hell of a lot of racism. There still is a problem. But saying that Whites are always on the side of the oppressor is false. Though, most racism is carried out by Whites, I'm not arguing that. Just saying that you can't generalize. If you do, you're no better than the oppressor.

(I know this is from the second page, I just wanted to comment on it.)

[Sasha]

Yeah, damn that white family of mine, always on the side of opression and the ruling class, even when they where dying on the Spanish frontline or the nazi deathcamps...
Go fuck yourself kurr...

[Lucretia]

Ok, to try and clarify the semantic crap. When I have been talking about "racism" I mean the police, jim-crow, immigration restrictions etc: systems of racial control tied in with the way the class system works in the US. "Racism" in this sense are the attitudes which support and bolster this system. So when I originally said black people can not be racist against whites (or women can't be sexist against men) - I do NOT mean that people can't have BIGOTED ideas towards non-specifically-oppressed people in society.

Bigotry can be any dislike of any group by anyone.

The REASON I initially tried to make this distinction and why I think radicals need to clarify one thing from another is because the common sense of what racism is in the US is a totally idealist and practically useless crude racism of "people not liking a certain race or group of people".

This separation of understanding (systemic, as in tied to the system) "racism" and common bigotry since the 1960s (when people understood racism to mean systems and racists to mean supporters of those systems) has allowed the "colorblind" and "reverse-racism" arguments to develop that are now fully mainstream and accepted ideas.

This is a set-back for us IMO because it obfuscates and excuses the connection between race and class in the US IMO. It turns it from a structural fight, to an idealist fight over ideas. It also means that racist structures in our society such as the way policing is done are legally and popularly NOT considered racist because they are systemic and without any over BIGOTRY.

I hope that was clarifying for my position and why I initially tried to make this distinction. The language is less important to me than the concept and understanding that people not liking you for your ethnicity does not have the same impact as a system of racial oppression or control.

:rolleyes: Spare me this concern-trolling condescension.

So you accused me of arguing things YOU KNOW I DIDN'T ARGUE?!! FUCKING CHRIST and you called me frustrating to debate with:lol:

I argued that the relationship to the system is different. Someone supporting Jim-Crow wants a stronger system and to "put people in their place". Inherently someone who blames all whites for racism is someone who wants the current system GONE - or at least they want to get away from it. Is this problematic, yes in many ways - but it is qualitatively a DIFFERENT problem because they want what we want, they just have a bad answer to it.

Think about it this way: someone who blames Bush for the war in Iraq and imperialism is someone with a bad answer to a real problem. Someone who thinks that Arabs are "crazy fanatics" who must be controlled by US military power... is a fucking reactionary. As revolutionaries, we should want to COMPETE with the ideas held by the first person and offer a much more realistic and better understanding of why this happens and how to end it. What about the second person... should we view them as also just a case of some wrong ideas equal to blaming Bush?

Is this making any sense?

Misguided yes... but also quite different. That white person is coming from a place of class frustration as are ALL WORKING CLASS fascists. But frustration alone doesn't tell us much. Now if a black person blames all whites for blacks being poor, fundamentally the underlying issue is the distribution of resources and lack of access to jobs and housing and so on for poor blacks. The white on the other hand is falling into pro-racism arguments that workers should not receive welfare, that poverty is the fault of the poor, and that white people's interest is in making sure that those resources don't go to the poor. How do these different attitudes play out in society? Well the blame-whitey ideas might gain some kind of following, it might stagnate, it might develop into something better as people who hold this view begin to run up against the inability of those kinds of politics to actually do anything about racism in society. On the other hand, what about the idea that black people are lazy and shouldn't recieve any welfare or unemployment and maybe even not much in school funding since they "don't like education anyway". Well these ideas were the basis for the "tax revolt" "white flight" the removal of welfare, school funding, etc.

So in the balance. The blame-whitey politics might hurt some feelings, and maybe some fanatics might actually hurt some random white people - on the other hand what have post Jim-Crow racist ideas done for the US working class: delegitimized social protest (Nixon/Regan Law and Order), helped sell neoliberalism to the population, justified the transfer of taxes not only from cities to suburban developer's pockets but transferred social spending funds to build the biggest prison system the world has ever known and a police force with military hardware.

So one is a bad answer to a problem we want to see destroyed (structural racism) and the other helps the ruling class stay in power and rule over us much much more directly.

Yes divisions in the class are a problem and I think the main one with "blaming whites/straights/men for oppression" - it lends itself to cross-class colaboration and tends to give the petty-bourgoise of the oppressed group the political initiative and makes a class strategy against specific oppressions in society more difficult. That's one level and on that superficial level I agree with you. But on another level some bigoted attitudes are tied more directly with how the ruling class rules and are tied to material processes and structures in society such as employment and housing and so on. These are the things IMO we need to fight against and point to as the sources of oppression, that is why I think it's more important to focus on this rather than anti-male bigotry which really can't have much impact other than preventing a better fight against anti-female sexism whereas because anti-women attitudes are related to how we are all exploited as workers, these attitudes are much more detrimental beyond merarly being "bad or divisive" ideas.

Forget the semantic stuff. If you mean they are equally bigoted and divisive, then yes I agree. Are they the same as Jim-Crow or the millions locked in prison and millions more stuck in probation or courts? No.

No, in modern (systemic) racism, white people don't even NEED to hold bigoted ideas for RACISM as a SYSTEM to exist and function - this is part of why I think we need to separate out what we mean by racism. Few people running the major institutions that oppress women and blacks specifically every involve any overtly bigoted attitudes. To eliminate the tendency for gays to blame straights for homophobia or blacks to blame whites for racism, it isn't a idealist question of "changing people's minds" or "checking privilage" it's a question IMO of actually taking on the STRUCTURES that keep systemic oppression of specific targeted groups in place and then allow related bigoted ideas to flow from there or at least create a sort of anchor for those ideas in society (it would be hard to argue that blacks are more violent and criminal if the prison system was smashed). This can't be done completely without a revolution of course, but I also don't think there could be a revolutionary movement if people haven't at least made some major and serious attempts at destroying that kind of racially and class oppressive structure.

Holy crap, yet again you misrepresent my arguements. How does arguing that bigotry as a response to oppression is "a dead end" as I did, or calling it inherently problematic and divissive (as I have several times now) become an argument that these ideas are "rational". There's some kind of weird linguistic-alchemy that must happen when I type that totally changes the words I used when you read them.

Yes, if you look back at my first post and my argument against 3rd worldism, that was my argument: anti-black racism, sexism, nativism, all ultimately hurt ALL workers which therefore would include white workers.

I don't really have much more to say in this exchange, JH. Because I feel I've made my positions pretty clear, and don't feel your reponses have raised any significant doubts about them. I still find your distinction between "systemic racism" and "common bigotry" utterly unconvincing and spurious, since as I have stated repeatedly, the "system" (or as we revolutionaries tend to call it, "capitalism") has a vested interested in racism (or "bigotry" or "color prejudice" or whatever you want to call it) being practiced among people of all "races," for indeed all racist practices impede the movement -- and the millionaire capitalists who benefit the most from racism, and who are disproportionately of European ancestry, benefit just as much from anti-white racism as they do from anti-black racism, as counter-intuitive as that might seem at first glance to empiricist purveyors of privilege theory. I similarly find problematic this notion of more rational forms of racism and less rational forms. Race, as such, does not exist. So all racism is irrational, regardless of whether the parties practicing it are millionaires or hobos.

If you want a deeper understanding of the views on "race" and racism that have most affected me, see Barbara Fields' "Ideology and Race in American History," Bob Carter's Realism and Racism, and Carter's useful follow-up to that "Not Thinking Ethnicity" in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior.

[Jimmie Higgins]

millionaire capitalists who benefit the most from racism, and who are disproportionately of European ancestry, benefit just as much from anti-white racism as they do from anti-black racism, as counter-intuitive as that might seem at first glance to empiricist purveyors of privilege theory. So tell me how does black anti-white attitudes help the ruling class to justify the prison system the way they cultivate the idea among the population that black criminals are unreformable sociopaths? How do anti-male ideas among some women help the ruling class devalue male labor's value the way that the ruling class devalues female labor?

Yes racially divisive attitudes are, divisive and counter to what the class needs in order to unite and win. You keep arguing this point as if I don't agree. But that divisiveness function seems to be where your analysis of racism ends and this is severely lacking. Anti-white attitudes are not used to directly control and place extra oppression onto white labor. Conversley anti-black attitudes are used to directly control black urban populations as a sort of reserve labor force and a downward pressure on all working class wages. Anti-white ideas may be a barrier to a united class-based fight back, but that is where it ends - it has no other significant social function.

And frankly your condescension ("we revolutionaries call it..." and "read these books") and constant insistence on arguing against "privilege theory" straw-men are pitiful and obnoxious. You keep claiming to have rebutted my points and yet you did not answer ONE of the direct questions I posed to you, you did not use ONE real historical example whereas I used many to back up my points.

Privilage theory believes that certain groups are not just not-subjected to specific oppressions in society, but that there are racial and gender BRIBES given to workers in order to get them to support the ruling class. On an observational level I can see how one might see that, but I think it turns oppression on its head and ignores that every "benefit" that workers have, the bourgeois rights they have that are respected are due to people struggling and the legacy of those struggles. The main flaw of this set of ideas is that it offers no way forward and involves a lot of idealistic "owning your privilege" stuff that's useless - acknowledging the ways one is not oppressed does jack shit for someone who is oppressed.

But conversely, I don't see how in your definition of racism that is basically just divisive attitudes or organizations leads to anything but another idealist strategy: telling people not to have divisive ideas.

I honestly want to know how your understanding of racism would play out in practice. What are the implications. If racism is an attitude, then really there's not much to be done until the revolution; but if divisive attitudes will prevent us from uniting into a revolutionary force, then there's sort of a problem, eh?

This is why I think we need to focus on the structures and institutions of racism, the police, discrimination in jobs and housing etc. Multiracial and class-based movements against these institutional forms of racism can both challenge the racial attitudes, but more importantly can actually direct class anger at the actual structural elements which are the scaffolding of racial attitudes.

[Lucretia]

So tell me how does black anti-white attitudes help the ruling class to justify the prison system the way they cultivate the idea among the population that black criminals are unreformable sociopaths? How do anti-male ideas among some women help the ruling class devalue male labor's value the way that the ruling class devalues female labor?

Yes racially divisive attitudes are, divisive and counter to what the class needs in order to unite and win. You keep arguing this point as if I don't agree. But that divisiveness function seems to be where your analysis of racism ends and this is severely lacking. Anti-white attitudes are not used to directly control and place extra oppression onto white labor. Conversley anti-black attitudes are used to directly control black urban populations as a sort of reserve labor force and a downward pressure on all working class wages. Anti-white ideas may be a barrier to a united class-based fight back, but that is where it ends - it has no other significant social function.

And frankly your condescension ("we revolutionaries call it..." and "read these books") and constant insistence on arguing against "privilege theory" straw-men are pitiful and obnoxious. You keep claiming to have rebutted my points and yet you did not answer ONE of the direct questions I posed to you, you did not use ONE real historical example whereas I used many to back up my points.

Privilage theory believes that certain groups are not just not-subjected to specific oppressions in society, but that there are racial and gender BRIBES given to workers in order to get them to support the ruling class. On an observational level I can see how one might see that, but I think it turns oppression on its head and ignores that every "benefit" that workers have, the bourgeois rights they have that are respected are due to people struggling and the legacy of those struggles. The main flaw of this set of ideas is that it offers no way forward and involves a lot of idealistic "owning your privilege" stuff that's useless - acknowledging the ways one is not oppressed does jack shit for someone who is oppressed.

But conversely, I don't see how in your definition of racism that is basically just divisive attitudes or organizations leads to anything but another idealist strategy: telling people not to have divisive ideas.

I honestly want to know how your understanding of racism would play out in practice. What are the implications. If racism is an attitude, then really there's not much to be done until the revolution; but if divisive attitudes will prevent us from uniting into a revolutionary force, then there's sort of a problem, eh?

This is why I think we need to focus on the structures and institutions of racism, the police, discrimination in jobs and housing etc. Multiracial and class-based movements against these institutional forms of racism can both challenge the racial attitudes, but more importantly can actually direct class anger at the actual structural elements which are the scaffolding of racial attitudes.

I don't see much to disagree with in this post, except your accusation that my analysis of racism doesn't extend beyond "dividing the working class." I've noted all along that racist practices disproportionately affect people of color, thereby placing them in a different strategic place in the class struggle. All of this is perfectly consistent with my point about racism against "white" people also being *racism*, and also being linked to the preservation of capitalism. My point still stands about no form of racism being more "rational" or "understandable" than other forms.