for whitey when being whitey isnt enough

[bcbm]

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/04/for-middle-class-white-girls-when-being-privileged-isnt-enough/

fuck rich white people

[Os Cangaceiros]

She needs to set her sights lower and stop whining. I was an average student, applied to two state schools (one state of which I was already a resident of) and was accepted to both. Oh wow, you weren't accepted to Yale or Princeton? :rolleyes: Pffff. And that article definitely wasn't "satire". The entire thing was just one long passive aggressive sarcastic diatribe with very little in the way of anything meaningful.

[bcbm]

theres been soe other shit like this recently, stupid crakcers being like 'oh i was denied entrance to the best schools in the country because i am not black' and thn its like 'oh no wait your test scores and everything else about you was middling and people way more qualified than you didn't get in. hmm

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Is there actaully any evidence that she did lose a place due to affirmative action or something?

[bcbm]

no

[bcbm]

and even if she did (which she didnt) who gives a fuck

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

and even if she did (which she didnt) who gives a fuck

Because we are socialists, and we strive to create a society where the individual is free to flourish and reach their full potential, free from religious, racial, and gender concerns. Would be a tad hypocritical if we ignored her plight purely due to the colour of her skin.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Because we are socialists, and we strive to create a society where the individual is free to flourish and reach their full potential, free from religious, racial, and gender concerns. Would be a tad hypocritical if we ignored her plight purely due to the colour of her skin.

As socialists, we strive to destroy oppression, including racial oppression. If this means stepping on the toes of someone from the dominant race (who in any case has much more opportunity than members of other races of equivalent class), so what? We are not legalistic liberals that want to ignore the realities of racial oppression in favour of equal treatment "on paper".

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

As socialists, we strive to destroy oppression, including racial oppression.

I've already said that.


If this means stepping on the toes of someone from the dominant race (who in any case has much more opportunity than members of other races of equivalent class), so what?

So you negate class diferences purely for racial ones? How quaint.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I've already said that.

And then you started complaining about the "plight" of white people due to affirmative action. How do you propose that racial oppression be destroyed? Should we all act as if all races are already equal, until the sheer power of our denial changes reality?


So you negate class diferences purely for racial ones? How quaint.

Which part of "of equivalent class" was unclear to you? Black proletarians are discriminated as proletarians, and they are discriminated for being black. Or are you trying to suggest that the rich daddy's girl that wrote that execrable article was part of the proletariat?

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

And then you started complaining about the "plight" of white people due to affirmative action.

No I didn't.


How do you propose that racial oppression be destroyed?

Autogestion (the first answer to everything), the scrapping of victimless crimes that tend to be solely in place for keeping ethnic minorities under control (drug prohibition, variations of the sus law et cetera), and the implementation of direct democracy.


Which part of "of equivalent class" was unclear to you?

At least in Britain, according to sociological studies I'm sure you will just lanbast as liberal, white and black white proles had the same amounts of economic and cultural capital, and roughly the same life chances. By lumping all whites in together as an elite, and all non whites as an oppressed group you do a diservice.


Or are you trying to suggest that the rich daddy's girl that wrote that execrable article was part of the proletariat?

Not at all, I was just wanting to find out whether she was too stupid for university, or had actually been discriminated against like she claimed.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

No I didn't.

So you didn't post this:


Would be a tad hypocritical if we ignored her plight purely due to the colour of her skin.

right?


Autogestion (the first answer to everything)[...]

Because, of course, racism did not exist in the SFR Yugoslavia and in Spain.


[...]the scrapping of victimless crimes that tend to be solely in place for keeping ethnic minorities under control (drug prohibition, variations of the sus law et cetera)[...]

Alright, but this barely scratches the surface of racial oppression.


and the implementation of direct democracy.

And then? Racial oppression magically disappears?


At least in Britain, according to sociological studies I'm sure you will just lanbast as liberal, white and black white proles had the same amounts of economic and cultural capital, and roughly the same life chances. By lumping all whites in together as an elite, and all non whites as an oppressed group you do a diservice.

I am familiar with the study; it depends on a ridiculous, non-Marxist notion of class and is not really relevant here. And yes, racial and national groups other than the dominant one are oppressed, but this doesn't mean that all members of the dominant group are part of the "elite", just as all men are not part of an "elite", even though women are still oppressed as women.


Not at all, I was just wanting to find out whether she was too stupid for university, or had actually been discriminated against like she claimed.

Again, why does it matter if she was?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Because we are socialists, and we strive to create a society where the individual is free to flourish and reach their full potential, free from religious, racial, and gender concerns. Would be a tad hypocritical if we ignored her plight purely due to the colour of her skin.No, no one is denied an education because they are white, public schools with mostly poor white students are underfunded and neglected because people are poor and part of the neoliberalization of public schools is pushing costs onto parents (and sometimes teachers) to make up for the gaps in supplies, extra-cirriculars, one-on-one education and so on. So if you have some independant means but still go to a public school, that public schools upper-middle class PTA fundraises among parents to get band or sport equipment, new computers etc - induvidual parents send their kids to tutors and SAT classes. If you're poor, you're just stuck with a bare-bones education.

Poor public schools with black students get all of that plus the weight of institutionalized racism. They don't just "lack" - these students are also blamed for the deterioration of public schools: they don't want to learn, their parents care more about partying and sports than about education [/Obama].

I'm not sure about eliete universities like these - I think some privite schools do have afermitive-action-like "diversity" requirements, but in state schools I think it's all been eliminated or gutted for the most part. In the UC system in California, there has been a statistical (and observable) impact:


After California voters approved such a law, black and Hispanic freshman enrollment at the University of California system dropped by about one-quarter in 1998, the first year the ban was in effect. At the system’s most competitive campuses, in Berkeley and Los Angeles, enrollment for those groups fell by almost half.Tuitions have also doubled since then and universities in California are shifting to more out of state enrollment because they charge an even higher tuition for those students. All of this is part of erroding the public part of public education.

So the agitation around anti-affermitive action is ideological: an attack on the legitimacy of the idea of educational equality (which the UC system was founded on in the post-war era). The whole basis for these arguments is that (mostly) black and latino students are undeserving of education and there are all these myths of underqualified minority students displacing overqualified whites, but Affermative Action (at least in the UCs) never functioned like that - you had to be qualified to begin with, under-represented groups only recieved "points" in the admissions process like with considerations of what county you came from, being a first generation college student, high school club activities, etc. So it wouldn't be that a qualified student would be passed over for an underqualified student, it was more that two students with more or less the same qualifications might be impacted by A.A. practices.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

right?

Talking about the *individual* of this story is not me going on about some massive affirmative action conspiracy against white people, as you're trying to spin it.


Because, of course, racism did not exist in the SFR Yugoslavia and in Spain.

I haven't read enough about Yugoslavia to come to an informed oppinion, but Slovenian friends of mine claime that it was never truly implemented.


Alright, but this barely scratches the surface of racial oppression.

No, it goes straight to the heart. The demonisation of minorities is no longer possible at a political and economic level, and the lack of police harrasment dissapears, allowing people to get on with their lives, not feeling that the authorities are constantly out to get them, and allows them to take pride in their community.


And then? Racial oppression magically disappears?

It allows people to voice their concerns immediately, in this case racial prejudice, and address them quickly, rather than waiting years for elections.


Again, why does it matter if she was?

Because she would have been cheated out of a place she worked for.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Talking about the *individual* of this story is not me going on about some massive affirmative action conspiracy against white people, as you're trying to spin it.

That is not the point. The point is that you're drawing a false equivalence between members of an oppressed group and the members of an oppressor group.


I haven't read enough about Yugoslavia to come to an informed oppinion, but Slovenian friends of mine claime that it was never truly implemented.

It was implemented; of course, due to the concurrent restoration of capitalism, the workers ended up managing their own exploitation, but this simply demonstrates that relying on cooperative property, the lower stage of social property, is misguided.

Anyway, the point was that racism was very much alive in Yugoslavia, in Spain, and in other places where autogestion was in vogue.


No, it goes straight to the heart. The demonisation of minorities is no longer possible at a political and economic level, and the lack of police harrasment dissapears, allowing people to get on with their lives, not feeling that the authorities are constantly out to get them, and allows them to take pride in their community.

"Pride in their community!" As if that mattered! No, the question remains: how do you think physical attacks on members of minorities should be stopped, how do you think racist ideology should be smashed, how do you think the economic inequalities will level out? Shouting "autogestion" and "direct democracy" is not enough; in fact implementing these two, ah, let's generously call them policies, in areas where reactionary attitudes are predominant, is a recipe for disaster.


It allows people to voice their concerns immediately, in this case racial prejudice, and address them quickly, rather than waiting years for elections.

But how would they be addressed? This is the question you have meticulously avoided for the last few posts. How?


Because she would have been cheated out of a place she worked for.

And why should that concern us?

[Red Commissar]

I enjoyed the article's take down of the op-ed on the Wall Street Journal. I mean yeah there's a case to be made sometimes colleges expect way too much out of potential students now, but then going into the territory thinking that minorities have it easier to get into college is laughable.

Thankfully the original article linked somewhere that the op-ed was copied too, because Wall Street Journal is paywalled. This is the part that really got me shaking my head


For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.Like the article's author points out when she's making fun of her, is it really that *ideal* to be a headscarved Muslim right now? With all the islamophobia hysteria? I mean god I'm tired hearing of this bullshit. I remember when I was applying to college (over five years ago now) and hearing the people blaming minority policies for screwing them over when they didn't get into some university they wanted. Or throwing the reverse racism bullshit.

I mean really think about it- is their life ending because they didn't get into a college they feel they should have? These kids with comfortable lives? The article closes with this nice takedown



Weiss, in her budding wisdom, exposed the mantle of white privilege for what it should be: Proud, unapologetic and unconcerned with anyone not blessed to posses it. She offered herself up as the scape-goat to be ridiculed. Though she did receive job and internship offers for her take-down of reverse racial discrimination, that was never the point.

The point was to reveal the face of the forthcoming post-racial state of America. A place where white students are rewarded for mocking the tenuous foundation of equality on which this country is built and education remains a coveted club to which only middle-class white students are entitled.

Well done, Suzy. Well done.Good god I mean seriously, how can you claim to be an "average" student if you got your rant published on the fucking Wall Street Journal? Most of the time you get published as a letter but as a full op-ed? I'm sorry but that tells me her parent(s) have connections.

Speaking as someone who'd be considered a "minority" student, I honestly didn't feel that I could've just expected to be accepted just because I was a minority. I applied to several universities and got rejected by several, accepted by some, and could only feasibly go to one. And that was because of my grades. Same case now with graduate school- I've been turned down by so many, so I don't think just being a minority helps my chances tbh... it comes down to your grades and what your particular admissions officer feels their admission pool is like.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Because we are socialists, and we strive to create a society where the individual is free to flourish and reach their full potential, free from religious, racial, and gender concerns. Would be a tad hypocritical if we ignored her plight purely due to the colour of her skin.

Well if we employ a bit of dialectics, we know that "racism" exists as a social construct of whiteness whose purpose is to affirm white privilege, so to abolish racial oppression is indeed to oppress the white man until his privileged position is abolished and we no longer need to speak of whiteness. Likewise, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be the dictatorship of the proletariat over the white "people".

[Althusser]

I see this shit all the time from privileged whites. I even know middle to upper class minorities that spew (in their TV weatherman voices) that same racist crap, completely oblivious to the realities in education inequality pointed out in this article.

Re-education camps and gulags are necessary.

[chase63]

Well if we employ a bit of dialectics, we know that "racism" exists as a social construct of whiteness whose purpose is to affirm white privilege, so to abolish racial oppression is indeed to oppress the white man until his privileged position is abolished and we no longer need to speak of whiteness. Likewise, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be the dictatorship of the proletariat over the white "people".

Why does ending racism involve oppressing other groups of people? And does this explain why so many on this thread seem to be racist against whites? The whole matter honestly confuses me. Privilege is economic, is it not? And economic inequality exist between races largely due to past discrimination, and this economic inequality becomes a cycle, correct? This is not a topic I have much knowledge in. Someone care to explain a more marxist view of this? thank you.

[bcbm]

Why does ending racism involve oppressing other groups of people?

the idea that hundreds of years of oppression can be ended by simply declaring everyone equal is nonsensical


And does this explain why so many on this thread seem to be racist against whites?

there is no such thing as racism against whites, and the point is not really against individual white people per se but against the construct of whiteness that needs to be destroyed


Privilege is economic, is it not?

not exactly

[#FF0000]

Because we are socialists, and we strive to create a society where the individual is free to flourish and reach their full potential, free from religious, racial, and gender concerns. Would be a tad hypocritical if we ignored her plight purely due to the colour of her skin.

Other people got in and she got mad because she felt she was entitled to it and immediately blamed the darks and the poors.

I don't care about her

and you're stupid

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

That is not the point. The point is that you're drawing a false equivalence between members of an oppressed group and the members of an oppressor group.


No I'm not, I'm simply pointing out that if the girl has worked hard it's wrong to rob her of a place she deserves, regardless of whether someone who share the colour of her skin owns a bank.


"Pride in their community!" As if that mattered!

Racism is the result of alienation and a fragmented society, we need consentual and participating societies to avoid social ills such as racism. Check out Arendt on this issue, she makes a fairly convincing case for fascism, Stalinism and racism arising from fragmented societies where the members feel they no longer have a stake in the society.


No, the question remains: how do you think physical attacks on members of minorities should be stopped, how do you think racist ideology should be smashed, how do you think the economic inequalities will level out?

Punish people for assault the same way you would if it was if it was any other scenario, educate people on why racism is stupid, use worker's self management to promote solidarity and a unified society (and avoid the scapegoating of immigrants).


But how would they be addressed? This is the question you have meticulously avoided for the last few posts. How?


Let the people decide, if they feel that a council official is being racist they can call him in for questioning, have a polite discussion to find out the truth of the matter, and then, if guilty, how to remedy the situation.


And why should that concern us?

You might as well ask why we care about the theft of surplus labour that happens under capitalism, because it is inherently unfair.


Well if we employ a bit of dialectics, we know that "racism" exists as a social construct of whiteness whose purpose is to affirm white privilege

Let's avoid the grand overly psuedo-accademic tumblr metanarratives, racism stems from economic issues. A cossack doesn't hate a Tartar due to some omnious cossackness, he and the Tartar simply have built up racial hatreds of each other due to limited resources that need to be fought over.


oppress the white man until his privileged position is abolished and we no longer need to speak of whiteness

And this has absolutely no chance of increasing racism amongst white people against everyone else. To quote a man I often dissagree with, "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love". French attempts to stamp out blackness amongst black immigrants didn't create patriotic French citizens, it just resulted in a huge resentment of the French state.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

there is no such thing as racism against whites, and the point is not really against individual white people per se but against the construct of whiteness that needs to be destroyed

Bull-fucking-shit, racism can be commited by any ethnic group, and can be commited aginst any ethnic group.

[#FF0000]

Bull-fucking-shit, racism can be commited by any ethnic group, and can be commited aginst any ethnic group.

Racism as in a big ol' structural thing. Individuals can be shitty to other individuals/groups on the basis of skin color, sure, but society isn't set up to fuck over white people the way it is for people who aren't white/white enough

pls read books or something pls pls pls

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Racism as in a big ol' structural thing. Individuals can be shitty to other individuals/groups on the basis of skin color, sure, but society isn't set up to fuck over white people the way it is people who aren't white/white enough

This system also fucks over white people pretty well too.

[bcbm]

No I'm not, I'm simply pointing out that if the girl has worked hard it's wrong to rob her of a place she deserves, regardless of whether someone who share the colour of her skin owns a bank.

she didn't deserve it, and not because of the color of her skin. although her belief that she does is part and parcel of whiteness in this country, believing she does deserve it


Racism is the result of alienation and a fragmented society, we need consentual and participating societies to avoid social ills such as racism. Check out Arendt on this issue, she makes a fairly convincing case for fascism, Stalinism and racism arising from fragmented societies where the members feel they no longer have a stake in the society.


racism is the result of europeans needing to enslave non-europeans to profit tremendously from the land they had just stolen through genocide in the americas

[#FF0000]

This system also fucks over white people pretty well too.

Not on the basis of their skin color.

[DarkPast]

Bull-fucking-shit, racism can be commited by any ethnic group, and can be commited aginst any ethnic group.

The term "racism", at least when used among us leftists, normally refers to structural discrimination based on race. When a black guy discriminates against a white guy just because the latter is white, that's called prejudice, because there's no real structural, societal force behind the black guy's discrimination (at least in contemporary American or European society).


This system also fucks over white people pretty well too.

Of course it does. But it doesn't fuck them over because they're white, but because they're poor, women, gay, ugly etc. Or, sometimes it punishes them because they don't act in a way that's considered appropriate for a white person (i.e. when they engage in typically "black" behaviour). This is very similar to how sexism works.

[chase63]

there is no such thing as racism against whites, and the point is not really against individual white people per se but against the construct of whiteness that needs to be destroyed


Well, I agree that all capitalist ideas need to be destroyed, which would include white people as superior. I agree with you.

You also said that privilege is "not exactly" economic, which means racism itself has more implications than economic ones, which is true. It's a mindset, a thought, and a belief for many people. One that often translates into actions. That would mean privilege is also composed of such thoughts, biases, and actions as well.

However, that would mean that minorities can be racist against whites by simply thinking "fuck whitey" and being an asshole to every white person they come in contact with, so while institutionalized racism against white people doesn't exist, it occurs on a personal level.

I guess my next question is does racism on a personal level (meaning between two individuals) pose a real threat to the working class? Or does only structural racism pose a threat to our goals? I personally believe they both would, with structural racism posing more of a threat. Opinions?

Edit:


The term "racism", at least when used among us leftists, normally refers to structural discrimination based on race. When a black guy discriminates against a white guy just because the latter is white, that's called prejudice, because there's no real structural, societal force behind the black guy's discrimination (at least in contemporary American or European society).

I guess my use of the made up term "personal racism" should have been called prejudice. Still, my question stands.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

racism is the result of europeans needing to enslave non-europeans to profit tremendously from the land they had just stolen through genocide in the americas

How does this explain racism in European countries which never had an empire? The other day I overheard some of the most attrocious anti-Russian and anti-gypsy tripe in the pub, and no one took issue with, something I have never witnessed in Britain. Racism is not something unique to western Europe and North America.


When a black guy discriminates against a white guy just because the latter is white, that's called prejudice, because there's no real structural, societal force behind the black guy's discrimination (at least in contemporary American or European society).

How would that kind of analysis work for some of the fairly brutal racial violence in Africa and the Balkans during the latter part of the last century, I think it would almost come off as insulting to call the Gnjilane massacre, or one of the various Rwandan massacres merely prejudice.

[Fourth Internationalist]

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/04/for-middle-class-white-girls-when-being-privileged-isnt-enough/

fuck rich white people

Racism is bad.

[bcbm]

Racism is bad.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:


How does this explain racism in European countries which never had an empire?

ideas spread


Racism is not something unique to western Europe and North America.

who said it was

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

who said it was


racism is the result of europeans needing to enslave non-europeans to profit tremendously from the land they had just stolen through genocide in the americas

Pretty specific, bro.

[bcbm]

read what i said right above what you quoted, bro

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

read what i said right above what you quoted, bro

This?


she didn't deserve it, and not because of the color of her skin. although her belief that she does is part and parcel of whiteness in this country, believing she does deserve it

Their is no definition entailed here.

[bcbm]

This?
Their is no definition entailed here.

no, the much more obvious answer


ideas spread

racism and its categories as we know it today are a product of the european slave trade. you might note that in the time since then european civilization has conquered the entire globe and enforced its aims if not its ideas on it

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

racism and its categories as we know it today are a product of the european slave trade.

Empires and mass slave trades existed whilst Europe consisted of people in huts, you might as well balme the moors or Shang. Anti-miscegenation laws existed in China centuries before they were in Europe, manifest destiny too, and ideas of vile ethno nationalism were quite common in the near east. This is begining to come of as just hysterical anti-Europeanism.

[#FF0000]

This is begining to come of as just hysterical anti-Europeanism.

Er, no. Racism as we know it, with all its neat little categories, literally originated with European colonialism.

[bcbm]

Empires and mass slave trades existed whilst Europe consisted of people in huts, you might as well balme the moors or Shang. Anti-miscegenation laws existed in China centuries before they were in Europe, manifest destiny too, and ideas of vile ethno nationalism were quite common in the near east.

nobody suggest europeans invented empire or slavery or even ethnocentrism, but rather that modern racism is a product of the european slave trade that was created by the ruling class in order to dehumanize and enslave africans to be put to work in the americas and justify imperialist conquest.


“the conception of dividing people by race begins with its slave trade. Thus this [the slave trade] was so shocking, so opposed to all the conceptions of society which religious and philosophers had . . .the only justifications by which humanity could face it was to divide people into races and decide that Africans were an inferior race


This is begining to come of as just hysterical anti-Europeanism.

not my fault they were assholes

[o well this is ok I guess]

Empires and mass slave trades existed whilst Europe consisted of people in huts, you might as well balme the moors or Shang. Anti-miscegenation laws existed in China centuries before they were in Europe, manifest destiny too, and ideas of vile ethno nationalism were quite common in the near east. This is begining to come of as just hysterical anti-Europeanism. The way they are today. I mean, there are a shit ton of different African ethnicities, but they were all brought as slaves and all looked at as once race/people (mongoloid, blacks, you know the drill).

[Poison Frog]

I'm sick to death of hearing these myths about demographic quotas. A guy talking to me about the fire service complained "why should a good white candidate get overlooked for a job because of some not so good Asian candidate?"

Are people who say this stuff so unbelievably stupid they can't see that they have decided the non-white candidate is inevitably inferior to the white one?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

No I'm not, I'm simply pointing out that if the girl has worked hard it's wrong to rob her of a place she deserves, regardless of whether someone who share the colour of her skin owns a bank.

In other words, you want socialists to abandon the standpoint of oppressed groups and take up some bourgeois "universal" "moral" standpoint, thus erasing any distinction between the oppressed and the oppressor.


Racism is the result of alienation and a fragmented society, we need consentual and participating societies to avoid social ills such as racism. Check out Arendt on this issue, she makes a fairly convincing case for fascism, Stalinism and racism arising from fragmented societies where the members feel they no longer have a stake in the society.

Racism in the modern sense postdates alienation, which might be too Hegelian a term, and as for "fragmented societies", I have no idea what those are.


Punish people for assault the same way you would if it was if it was any other scenario, educate people on why racism is stupid, use worker's self management to promote solidarity and a unified society (and avoid the scapegoating of immigrants).

Again, autogestion does not seem to prevent racism, and cooperatives can and do discriminate against immigrants. The rest of this paragraph is a step back compared to even bourgeois standards, and the implementation of these policies does not seem to impact racism.


Let the people decide, if they feel that a council official is being racist they can call him in for questioning, have a polite discussion to find out the truth of the matter, and then, if guilty, how to remedy the situation.

And if the majority of the council is racist?


You might as well ask why we care about the theft of surplus labour that happens under capitalism, because it is inherently unfair.

"Inherently" unfair! Due to some supra-class morality, do doubt. But as Marx points out, the capitalist mode of production is almost fair according to bourgeois ideology. Revolutionary socialists oppose capitalism not because it is "unfair", but because it oppresses the proletariat.


Let's avoid the grand overly psuedo-accademic tumblr metanarratives, racism stems from economic issues. A cossack doesn't hate a Tartar due to some omnious cossackness, he and the Tartar simply have built up racial hatreds of each other due to limited resources that need to be fought over.

So why does the Cossack not hate other Cossacks as much as he despises Tatars? They compete for the same resources after all? No, racism is one of the many ideological instruments of imperial and finance capital, grounded in the necessity (from the standpoint of capital) of dividing the proletariat and enforced through ideological apparatus such as that mentioned by comrade Another_Boring_Marxis.


And this has absolutely no chance of increasing racism amongst white people against everyone else. To quote a man I often dissagree with, "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love". French attempts to stamp out blackness amongst black immigrants didn't create patriotic French citizens, it just resulted in a huge resentment of the French state.

Members of dominant races and groups should be educated about the necessity of formerly oppressed groups having special status. The workers, at least. The racist bourgeoisie and the racist middle strata are probably a lost cause.

[DarkPast]

How would that kind of analysis work for some of the fairly brutal racial violence in Africa and the Balkans during the latter part of the last century, I think it would almost come off as insulting to call the Gnjilane massacre, or one of the various Rwandan massacres merely prejudice.

That's why I said it mostly applies to the USA and Europe. However, bear in mind that the Europeans colonized almost the entire world, and became the ruling class in most of those countries. Or, better said, the ruling class was comprised mostly of white people, or local people who took on white norms.

Of course, this doesn't mean that racism is something inherent in, or limited to white people (or better said, "white" states, for there is no racism without an apparatus of state oppression). But even in cases where there's institutionalized racial violence between non-whites, it can often be traced to the influence of European colonialism. You mentioned Rwanda, so have a look here to see what I mean:

http://umuvugizi.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/consequences-of-racism-3456/

Gnjilane was based on nationality, not race. Both Serbs and Albanians are white, and none of them claim to be "a higher form" of white (e.g. Aryans).

If you want something closer to home (I see you're from, or live in the Czech Republic), then think of how the Roma (Gypsies) are treated in Eastern Europe. They are both considered inferior by the general populace, often vilified in pop culture, and excluded from the best jobs etc. - that is a very clear example of racism, because this discrimination is based on their race, regardless of what nationality they identify with or in which country they live.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Er, no. Racism as we know it, with all its neat little categories, literally originated with European colonialism.

These racial catagories existed before European empires, hence why they could exploit them.


justify imperialist conquest.

Funnily enough it was never racism used to justify empire, usually it was a 'might makes right' mentality, or to spread their ideology that was supposed to benefit the world. Ofcourse their were some empires who justified slavery purely through an economic mindset like the Roman Empire had before.


The way they are today. I mean, there are a shit ton of different African ethnicities, but they were all brought as slaves and all looked at as once race/people (mongoloid, blacks, you know the drill).

The Arab slave trade had done this before, Xhosa and Ghanains were labeled as 'black', and Slavs, Latins, and Nordics were just slapped with the 'white' label.


not my fault they were assholes

Yup, Europeans are all evil and have never done anything right, the world was a perfect utopia before those dastardly bastards found out how to sail. France is literally Mordor.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

In other words, you want socialists to abandon the standpoint of oppressed groups and take up some bourgeois "universal" "moral" standpoint, thus erasing any distinction between the oppressed and the oppressor.

So individual opression is hunky spunky?


"fragmented societies", I have no idea what those are.

Come on, you're a socialist, I know you've read your Adorno and Marcusse.


The rest of this paragraph is a step back compared to even bourgeois standards, and the implementation of these policies does not seem to impact racism.

Fine then, you win, solidarity can't prevent racism, have your red-anti-racist-terror then.


"Inherently" unfair! Due to some supra-class morality, do doubt.

The logic is the same for both scenarios, the individual is not recieving the full value of their labour, whether physical or mental.


But as Marx points out, the capitalist mode of production is almost fair according to bourgeois ideology.

Then how come rabid market types are a minority? If their was some universal conscensus that it was fair I would expect to see Europe dominated by Austro-libertarians, rather than right wing deviations of social democracy.


Revolutionary socialists oppose capitalism not because it is "unfair", but because it oppresses the proletariat.

...and it is opression because the system is inherently unfair.


So why does the Cossack not hate other Cossacks as much as he despises Tatars?

Family bonds, the same way you probably find it a lot more easy to forgive family and close friends than people at work.


No, racism is one of the many ideological instruments of imperial and finance capital, grounded in the necessity (from the standpoint of capital) of dividing the proletariat and enforced through ideological apparatus such as that mentioned by comrade Another_Boring_Marxis.

The how do explain acts of racism present in primitivist societies, capital and hierarchy are not present, yet a racial based hatred of the other tribe is?


Members of dominant races and groups should be educated about the necessity of formerly oppressed groups having special status.

The we have an opressed 'white' group and this entire viscious cycle will continue perpetually.


Of course, this doesn't mean that racism is something inherent in, or limited to white people (or better said, "white" states, for there is no racism without an apparatus of state oppression). But even in cases where there's institutionalized racial violence between non-whites, it can often be traced to the influence of European colonialism. You mentioned Rwanda, so have a look here to see what I mean:

I see your point.


that is a very clear example of racism, because this discrimination is based on their race, regardless of what nationality they identify with or in which country they live.

I think this is mainly down to how national identity tend to be tied up with ethnicity in central and Eastern Europe, a tendancy of not identifying as 'white', but rather Czech, or Serbian, and so discriminating against others becomes fairly mundane.

[hatzel]

These racial catagories existed before European empires, hence why they could exploit them.

You know you could have at least glanced briefly over Wikipedia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people) before trying to have this discussion, even if you have neither time nor desire to read anything more substantial...

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

You know you could have at least glanced briefly over Wikipedia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people) before trying to have this discussion, even if you have neither time nor desire to read anything more substantial...



Go read the works of Avicenna and the Rambam, just two philsophers who explicitly talked about racial catagories, and the superiority of certain races, before Europe stepped into deepest darkest Africa.

[#FF0000]

It's always really, really strange when someone is arguing really really really hard against a point that's not super specialized knowledge or even controversial.

[Tenka]

It's always really, really strange when someone is arguing really really really hard against a point that's not super specialized knowledge or even controversial.

No but they had racial classifications and justifications for slavery during the Islamic Golden Age so y'all can't say European Colonialists originated the racial classifications we have today. This is common sense. ;)1

[Flying Purple People Eater]

there is no such thing as racism against whites

Oh drop this polemic diatribe. If you actually leave a western country for somewhere like, say, Japan, you'll find that this is complete and utter horseshit.

[Tenka]

Oh drop this polemic diatribe. If you actually leave a western country for somewhere like, say, Japan, you'll find that this is complete and utter horseshit.

It's not so much institutional in Japan as it is popular. You'll hear some guy, maybe in a video on youtube, screaming "WHITE PIGGU GO HOME!!!", but nonetheless, it is disturbing the number of Americans who go and live there to "teach English". As well, with the U.S. military base presence, and the unusually high incidence of rapes thereabout, some resentment is perfectly understandable. Is this anti-white racism? I think it is just resentment, and not that warped kind based in willful ignorance you see from whites who think blacks inferior.

EDIT: also Nagasaki/Hiroshima.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Is this anti-white racism? I think it is just resentment, and not that warped kind based in willful ignorance you see from whites who think blacks inferior.

It's also directed against Chinese and Koreans too:

Conservative notions about ethnic purity remain strong. Theodore Bestor, a professor of Japanese Studies at Harvard, told the New York Times: “Japanese tend to have a fairly strong kind of inherent belief that genetics and biology really matter in terms of people’s behavior. So I think Japanese might be much more predisposed to thinking about a kind of genetic basis for personality than most Americans would.”

http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=632

[Tenka]

It's also directed against Chinese and Koreans too:

Conservative notions about ethnic purity remain strong. Theodore Bestor, a professor of Japanese Studies at Harvard, told the New York Times: “Japanese tend to have a fairly strong kind of inherent belief that genetics and biology really matter in terms of people’s behavior. So I think Japanese might be much more predisposed to thinking about a kind of genetic basis for personality than most Americans would.”

http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=632

These are strong in parts of the U.S. and Britain, too. I don't see what's your point. People have stupid racist ideas in general. That doesn't mean there's such a thing as racism against whites, who are institutionally advantaged the world over.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

That doesn't mean there's such a thing as racism against whites, who are institutionally advantaged the world over.

It demonstrates that there are a fair few people who believe in the superiority of the Japanese race of whites, Koreans and the like, and act on it. If that isn't racism I don't know what is:

There are also stories of Japanese getting out of public baths when a non-Japanese enters, standing up or moving away when a foreigner sits down next to them on the subway, and ignoring foreigners who ask them questions in English.”
http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif One foreigner working in Japan wrote in the Daily Yomiuru, “In Japan, I have been banned from dinning establishment, denied service like taxis, snubbed and even physically accosted by strangers. I hear people whispering about me in every city I visit. The public seems to believe that all gaijin are ignorant of Japanese customs and language; that we are all rude and that we are all guilty of some crime we will inevitably commit.”

http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif Globalization and job losses due cheap imports have fueled anti-foreigner feelings. Some places have "Japanese Only" signs. Outside a pachinko parlor in Sapporo there was a sign that read: “Japanese only. Caution: Entering in the foreigner will be held back.” A sign in Aomori Prefecture has a picture of a chubby Statue of Liberty urging citizens to “report suspicious foreigners.”

http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif Jorge Bustamante, a United Nations labor rights expert, told Kyodo News, “racism and discrimination based on nationality are still too common in Japan, including in the work place, in schools, in health care establishments and housing...Japan should adopt specific legislation on the prevention and elimination of racial discrimination” as current laws are not effective in doing so.
http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif Tokyo mayor-governor Shintaro Ishihara used the word sangokujin, a derogatory term that means people from third countries, to refer to the immigrants. The term was used after World War II to tell Koreans and Chinese to leave Japan. He has also blamed Iranians in Japan for dealing drugs and Chinese immigrants for playing a major role in Japan's rising crime rate and warned of “genetic pollution” from China if too many Chinese immigrants were let in. These and other remarks won Ishihara the title of the Le Pen of Japan.
http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif Many foreigners have complained of being denied admission in minshukos and ryokans. A survey in 2008 found that 38 percent of inns didn’t have any foreign guests and 70 percent of the owners of these facilities said that they were unwilling to accept foreign guests.

http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif In a survey with real estate companies 70 percent of respondents said apartment owners were reluctant to accept foreign tenants. About 46 percent said they were concerned about foreigners causing problems while 40 percent to 50 percent were concerned about foreigners obtaining suitable guarantors and if the foreigners could understand the rental rules in Japan.

http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif In a 1996 survey of foreign residents, 36.5 percent of the respondents said they had been refused accommodation on the basis of their nationality. About 40 percent of the Korean and Chinese citizens said they had been refused accommodation while 35 percent of the Latin Americans and 29 percent of the North Americans and Europeans said they had.

http://factsanddetails.com/skins/country/images/pmark.gif There are no laws in Japan to prevent against discrimination against foreign tenants. But when Japan ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination it effectively indicated it would create such laws,

And the latest anti Korean shit, calling for the massacre of Koreans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oOW6QJfeoo

[Tenka]

It shouldn't be news to anyone that some Japanese are racist. I think we're getting a little off-topic here, though, with this slew of anecdotes....

P.S. Of course Japanese, Korean and Chinese nationalists/nazis all despise each other's nations or "races", for obvious historical reasons.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

It directly contradicts your original statement that there is no such thing as anti-white racism.

[Ocean Seal]

No but they had racial classifications and justifications for slavery during the Islamic Golden Age so y'all can't say European Colonialists originated the racial classifications we have today. This is common sense. ;)1
Yes, but I would argue that the modern conception of race at least in the west is based on European colonialism and slavery.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So individual opression is hunky spunky?

What does "individual oppression" even mean? To me it seems like a fairly senseless term, since those social processes that we refer to as "oppression" are - well, they're social, obviously.

My point was that "racism" against a member of the privileged race is no concern of the socialist movement, unless it leads to incorrect tactics in the course of liberation struggles.


Come on, you're a socialist, I know you've read your Adorno and Marcusse.

It has been quite some time since I have visited the Grand Hotel Abyss, as Lukacs put it, and I have never been that convinced by their work. I am asking if you can point out concrete examples of this "fragmentation" of society.


The logic is the same for both scenarios, the individual is not recieving the full value of their labour, whether physical or mental.

So how do you calculate the "value" of "mental labour"?


Then how come rabid market types are a minority? If their was some universal conscensus that it was fair I would expect to see Europe dominated by Austro-libertarians, rather than right wing deviations of social democracy.

There is no appreciable difference either way. Every European politician will piously repeat mantras about "liberty" and the market, whether they are an open reactionary or the last degenerated remnant of social-democracy of the Noske type.


...and it is opression because the system is inherently unfair.

It is oppression because it restricts the proletariat, not because it is unfair according to some arbitrary standard. From the standpoint of distribution relations that obtain in capitalism, communism is unfair; so what?


Family bonds, the same way you probably find it a lot more easy to forgive family and close friends than people at work.

People of same nationality or race do not usually have family ties, and family ties can exist between members of different nationalities or races.


The how do explain acts of racism present in primitivist societies, capital and hierarchy are not present, yet a racial based hatred of the other tribe is?

How do you explain the absence of racism in precapitalist societies? Racist ideology, which includes far more than ethnic hatred, is a fairly recent development.


The we have an opressed 'white' group and this entire viscious cycle will continue perpetually.

Oh, the poor oppressed whites. How will they ever survive the loss of their privileges? The point of progressive privileges for formerly oppressed races and other groups is to destroy racist (nationalist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic) ideology, so there is no "vicious circle".

[bcbm]

These racial catagories existed before European empires, hence why they could exploit them.

the modern concepts of race stem from blumenbach but didn't gain much traction until the slave trade required a justification for enslaving africans, namely that they were not fully human, which is when modern racism was really elaborated and continued to be over the coming centuries with 'scientific racism,' pseudo science like phrenology, etc.

once again, no one is suggesting that europeans were the first to do anything, what is being said is that the modern system of racism is the product of the european slave trade, which is pretty well acknowledged especially among marxist historians like the previously quoted clr james.


Funnily enough it was never racism used to justify empire, usually it was a 'might makes right' mentality, or to spread their ideology that was supposed to benefit the world.

funnily enough, racism was a constant factor in european imperialism in the 19th century. perhaps you have heard the phrase 'white man's burden?'


Yup, Europeans are all evil and have never done anything right, the world was a perfect utopia before those dastardly bastards found out how to sail. France is literally Mordor.

yes this is exactly what i have been saying the whole time, specifically when i acknowledged the specific role of the european slave trade, not all europeans, and mentioned how europeans were not the first to do any of this stuff but rather the ones who brought us the modern form we see today. get a grip

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

What does "individual oppression" even mean?

The arbitrary excercise of power in an unjust manner, equally applicable to groups and individuals, whether a group of Russian workers in Poland, or a journalist critical of the Putin regime in Russia.


My point was that "racism" against a member of the privileged race is no concern of the socialist movement, unless it leads to incorrect tactics in the course of liberation struggles.

So yet again this callous concept of the value of the individual seeps into socialism. Would you be any less deserving of legal recourse if you were the victim of a racist attack, given that you are a member of this supposed priviledge race?


I am asking if you can point out concrete examples of this "fragmentation" of society.


Weimar Germany, 80's Britain, and now Greece come to mind.


There is no appreciable difference either way.

Well there is, otherwise political discourse would be completely meaningless.


It is oppression because it restricts the proletariat,

...and restriction for no justified reason is unfairness itself.


not because it is unfair according to some arbitrary standard.

It's hardly an arbitrary standard to oppose capitalism due to it directly contradicting human freedom and liberty in a meaningful sense.


From the standpoint of distribution relations that obtain in capitalism, communism is unfair; so what?

Fairness transcends economic systems, fairness isn't dependent on the capitalist's conception of it. I will only see socialism as the only 'fair' system due to the balance and maximisation of both positive and negative freedom.


People of same nationality or race do not usually have family ties, and family ties can exist between members of different nationalities or races.

This is a fairly recent thing, for most of our history it was tabboo to mary outside your nationality, the French didn't marry the English, Italians didn't get with Turks. et cetera, if we look at genetic studies we see stark differences between the European peoples themselves.


How do you explain the absence of racism in precapitalist societies?

It's this noble savage myth, south American tribes have been easily capable of dealing horrific acts upon the tribe over the river, the only thing seperating them from Himmler being the level of technology at their disposal. In fact, quite a few anthropologist have argued that racism was more prevalent in hunter gatherer societies than in modern ones, due to the daily struggle of life these people were subjected to, making people extra suspicious of other groups.


Racist ideology, which includes far more than ethnic hatred, is a fairly recent development.

We see vile racism and prescribed state action in the writings of Athenian statesmen and in Talmud entries alike, in Arab philosophers and Tartar captains. Racism isn't something unique to the 19th century.


h, the poor oppressed whites. How will they ever survive the loss of their privileges?

The way you've been phrasing it throughout this discussion you make it appear like they will be directly oppressed, not losing 'privilege, but mundane freedoms we all take for granted. Let's be specific, what will actually happen?


the modern concepts of race stem from blumenbach but didn't gain much traction until the slave trade required a justification for enslaving africans,

Blumenbach never put forward a hierarchy of racial superiority, and the five races system was hardly unique to him Aristoteleans in the latter half of antiquity had already done this, and had organised them into a hierarchy (based on the sophistication of their conception of theology, rather than biological inferioirty).


namely that they were not fully human

The first true justification for the African slave trade was base formulated on religious grounds by Pope Sixtus IV in a couple of Papal Bull I can't be fucked to drag up, where slavery of Africans was justified so long as you converted them to Catholocism, so you were essentially buying their labour through making them aware of the gift of salvation.


funnily enough, racism was a constant factor in european imperialism in the 19th century. perhaps you have heard the phrase 'white man's burden?'

Imperialism didn't start in the 19th century, white man's burden was just a shoddy response to the exporting of French liberalism, in order to make British imperialism seem legitimate and give it a hummanistic gloss, since the might makes right justification seemed rather horrible.


yes this is exactly what i have been saying the whole time, specifically when i acknowledged the specific role of the european slave trade, not all europeans, and mentioned how europeans were not the first to do any of this stuff but rather the ones who brought us the modern form we see today. get a grip

Using pejorative slurs for whites isn't helping your case.

[#FF0000]

Oh drop this polemic diatribe. If you actually leave a western country for somewhere like, say, Japan, you'll find that this is complete and utter horseshit.

oh my god it's like people don't read the threads they post in

[bcbm]

In fact, quite a few anthropologist have argued that racism was more prevalent in hunter gatherer societies than in modern ones, due to the daily struggle of life these people were subjected to, making people extra suspicious of other groups.

it was biologically imperative to these small band societies to 'mingle' outside of the band


We see vile racism and prescribed state action in the writings of Athenian statesmen and in Talmud entries alike, in Arab philosophers and Tartar captains. Racism isn't something unique to the 19th century.

the racial categories and biological/'scientific' aspects of racism are a product of the 18th and 19th centuries

ie, 'racism as we know it today' which someone said at the beginning of the thread


Blumenbach never put forward a hierarchy of racial superiority, and the five races system was hardly unique to him Aristoteleans in the latter half of antiquity had already done this, and had organised them into a hierarchy (based on the sophistication of their conception of theology, rather than biological inferioirty).

the keyword here being biological, this was a new development and whether or not blumenbach laid a hierarchy of race, his work is the base for the modern ideas of racism and racial superiority that came out of europe


The first true justification for the African slave trade was base formulated on religious grounds by Pope Sixtus IV in a couple of Papal Bull I can't be fucked to drag up, where slavery of Africans was justified so long as you converted them to Catholocism, so you were essentially buying their labour through making them aware of the gift of salvation.

the slave trade was not originally entirely based on racial grounds and indentured servitude of whites and others played a significant part in the early triangle trade. racism developed hand in hand with the slave trade, especially by the 18th century, even though by the end of the 18th century slavery was in decline until the cotton gin was invented.


Imperialism didn't start in the 19th century, white man's burden was just a shoddy response to the exporting of French liberalism, in order to make British imperialism seem legitimate and give it a hummanistic loss, since the might makes right justification seemed rather horrible.

it did not start in the 19th century but that was the age of 'new imperialism' which has a decidedly racist bent to it


Using pejorative slurs for whites isn't helping your case.

whitey = the man = the historical construction of the 'white race' as a privileged institution

[Red Commissar]

How is any of this relevant to someone throwing a fit about not getting into college?

I *highly* doubt that the case of the OP was the victim of "reverse racism". It doesn't matter if you can cite an example that "oh man they hate white people over here", it is not relevant in this case. White people don't face institutional racism the way other minorities do. Hell there were several peoples who are considered "white" now that weren't before in the 1800s- for example Italians and Irish- that suffered from the same mess.

This is just another example of someone raging they couldn't get into the college they wanted, as I said in my last post and has already been said several times before by other users.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

it was biologically imperative to these small band societies to 'mingle' outside of the band

It was even more of one to be wary of outsiders, here to steal your food or bring the flu.


the racial categories and biological/'scientific' aspects of racism are a product of the 18th and 19th centuries


With heavy Aristotelean foundation.


the keyword here being biological, this was a new development and whether or not blumenbach laid a hierarchy of race, his work is the base for the modern ideas of racism and racial superiority that came out of europe

You failed to mention biological in your previous post.

racism developed hand in hand with the slave trade

True, but the original justification came from a religious fervour for new converts, scientific racism was avery, very late justification for the slave trade.


it did not start in the 19th century but that was the age of 'new imperialism' which has a decidedly racist bent to it


True.


whitey = the man = the historical construction of the 'white race' as a privileged institution

No. Your using with a specific intention in mind to cause hurt and demonise a certain white person, in order make her seem stupid or whiney before she's even voiced her case. It's no different for all the colourful slurs white nationalists have for Jews and non whites.

[#FF0000]

No. Your using with a specific intention in mind to cause hurt and demonise a certain white person, in order make her seem stupid or whiney before she's even voiced her case.

*After she voiced her case and proved herself to be stupid and whiney


It's no different for all the colourful slurs white nationalists have for Jews and non whites

Yes it is.

[melvin]

theres been soe other shit like this recently, stupid crakcers being like 'oh i was denied entrance to the best schools in the country because i am not black' and thn its like 'oh no wait your test scores and everything else about you was middling and people way more qualified than you didn't get in. hmmare you white?

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

*After she voiced her case and proved herself to be stupid and whiney

...as the title?


Yes it it

It is, replace it whith an ethnic slur for a Jew and you'll see how it's like something Duke could spout out.

[melvin]

It is, replace it whith an ethnic slur for a Jew and you'll see how it's like something Duke could spout out."Replace this word with this word and look how bad it sounds!" type arguments aren't good arguments.

[bcbm]

It was even more of one to be wary of outsiders, here to steal your food or bring the flu.

stealing food wouldn't really have been an issue unless food scarcity was an issue, which it wasn't until more or less before the rise of agricultural with the the former being an important factor in the latter. the flu is a product of sedentary society and animal rearing, something not common among gatherer-hunters.


You failed to mention biological in your previous post.

i mentioned scientific racism, which is racism with a biological base


scientific racism was avery, very late justification for the slave trade.

as i said racism grew out of the slave trade. briefly, before that many slaves or indentured servants were 'white,' the irish being a major population and they freely mixed, married, etc with africans and indians. many of them also had the possibility of becoming free and they were commonly accepted into colonies as full members of the community. as land become held by a smaller and smaller majority towards the end of the 17th century/early 18th, these servants and freed poor became increasingly ungovernable, pushing authorities to began passing laws aimed at separating and stigmatizing africans, who came to be viewed as the ideal slaves for the colonial scheme.


No. Your using with a specific intention in mind to cause hurt and demonise a certain white person, in order make her seem stupid or whiney before she's even voiced her case. It's no different for all the colourful slurs white nationalists have for Jews and non whites.

actually she voiced her case before i said anything and i would say it is quite a bit different than what white supremacists say about jews and non-whites because their ideas are based on a flawed biological conception of race and support for this system of white supremacy while my problem is with the socially constructed entity known of whiteness which confers importance and privilege based on skin color

[bcbm]

are you white?

yes

[melvin]

yesif you talk like that as a white person around ethnic minorities you are going to sound ridiculous.

[Crixus]

I'm not exactly supportive of people who want to get into IVY League universities so they can make crap tons of money. White, Black, Latino, Asian etc. Has anyone seen that commercial with a Latin male talking to his mother about not going to college and it shows what his life would be like if he went to college and if he didnt.

iWAWcDfX7AY

This is so materialistic it makes me sick. It has nothing to do with the goals of communism and everything to do with the mindframe of egotistical "get ahead" that capitalism nourishes. "Do you want that dirty work truck or that nice BMW"....."Do you want that crappy little house or this nice custom home"...."do you want to walk with no pride in dirty coveralls or stand up chest out chin in air with a doctors coat on".

Never mind that whole "from each according to their ability to each according to need" nonsense. Everyone needs a chance to be petty bourgeois. Equality!

[#FF0000]

This is so materialistic it makes me sick. It has nothing to do with the goals of communism and everything to do with the mindframe of egotistical "get ahead" that capitalism nourishes. "Do you want that dirty work truck or that nice BMW"....."Do you want that crappy little house or this nice custom home"...."do you want to walk with no pride in dirty coveralls or stand up chest out chin in air with a doctors coat on".

Being poor sucks (doubly so if you're not white) so I'm all for people going out and being doctors or whatever.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The arbitrary excercise of power in an unjust manner, equally applicable to groups and individuals, whether a group of Russian workers in Poland, or a journalist critical of the Putin regime in Russia.

That is not how the term "oppression" is commonly used, particularly not in the context of the revolutionary left. I am sure you are more than familiar with the standard usage, however, and this "individual oppression" is simply something invented to cover up your attempts to draw an equivalence between the oppressed and the oppressor groups.


So yet again this callous concept of the value of the individual seeps into socialism. Would you be any less deserving of legal recourse if you were the victim of a racist attack, given that you are a member of this supposed priviledge race?

I generally leave matters of desert, justice, fairness, and so on, to priests and to bourgeois moralists. Let them sweat over it. From the standpoint of racial and national liberation, me being attacked by someone that resents my privileged status is not nearly the same as a black person being attacked by a racist. The former is a simple assault, the latter represents a perpetuation of the racist ideology that socialism aims to smash.

Good grief, sots-dem, is that so difficult to understand? You remind me of those people that try to equate some imagined "misandry" with the very real patriarchal oppression and murder of women.


Weimar Germany, 80's Britain, and now Greece come to mind.

What aspects of these societies amount to "fragmentation"?


Well there is, otherwise political discourse would be completely meaningless.

Bourgeois political discourse would, as it seems to be, given that all of the allegedly different parties are pursuing the same course of action.


...and restriction for no justified reason is unfairness itself.

Who cares if it is "justified"? Some moralist fruit loop will always invent "justifying" reasons, no matter what the subject. No, the proletariat is restricted. The most conscious layers of the proletariat want to smash their restrictions; we socialists are those that support them. That is all.


It's hardly an arbitrary standard to oppose capitalism due to it directly contradicting human freedom and liberty in a meaningful sense.

And what is "meaningful" freedom and liberty "in a meaningful sense"? It would be more honest to say freedom and liberty in a sense that you find appealing. And that is fairly arbitrary; the varieties of bourgeois morality espoused by the "ethical socialists" have ranged from pious petite-bourgeois conservatism to full-blown Nazism in the case of de Man and Shaw.


Fairness transcends economic systems, fairness isn't dependent on the capitalist's conception of it.

No, it exists as an unalloyed cloud of nonsense in the land of dreams, where all supra-class social realities exist. Come, now. This is unashamed Platonism.


I will only see socialism as the only 'fair' system due to the balance and maximisation of both positive and negative freedom.

How is that relevant?


This is a fairly recent thing, for most of our history it was tabboo to mary outside your nationality, the French didn't marry the English, Italians didn't get with Turks. et cetera, if we look at genetic studies we see stark differences between the European peoples themselves.

Genetic studies are remarkably easy to misinterpret; anyway, the first part of your paragraph is simply not true. Intermarriage was prominent in most border regions, excepting highly endogamous societies. Hell, most European nations were formed in this manner (intermarriage between Gallo-Romans, Burgundians, Franks and so on in France, for example).


It's this noble savage myth, south American tribes have been easily capable of dealing horrific acts upon the tribe over the river, the only thing seperating them from Himmler being the level of technology at their disposal.

And their ideology; these tribes do not view the world in terms of fixed biological races that determine the social standing of their members. Racism is an articulated ideological system that divides the workers while maintaining the sort of social cohesion that is necessary in the present mode of production, and that would have been impossible in the societies you mention.


In fact, quite a few anthropologist have argued that racism was more prevalent in hunter gatherer societies than in modern ones, due to the daily struggle of life these people were subjected to, making people extra suspicious of other groups.

Because they have a mechanistic, metaphysical notion of "racism" - they view racism as you view morality, as timeless Platonic forms divorced from the concrete processes of social development.


The way you've been phrasing it throughout this discussion you make it appear like they will be directly oppressed, not losing 'privilege, but mundane freedoms we all take for granted. Let's be specific, what will actually happen?

Or rather, what tactics I propose; these include severe punishment of racist statements and acts (again, this means statements and acts by the oppressor groups - "kill whitey" has a sort of naive charm to it, but it doesn't carry the threat that calls for white supremacy do, due to the relations of power in present societies), affirmative action in order to negate accumulated privilege, exclusion of oppressor groups in order to create a safe space for oppressed groups (safe spaces for women where no men are to be admitted etc.) and so on, and so on.

[Crixus]

Being poor sucks (doubly so if you're not white) so I'm all for people going out and being doctors or whatever.
I don't think you understood my point. The way fighting for 'equality' takes form under the framework of capitalism is in full support of the social Darwinist mentality that the smartest should benefit more and their motivation should be to have nicer things than others. This isn't equality. Margret Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer if I'm not mistaken. What a great example of upward mobility! A feminist success story! You too can join the elite class if you just work hard! Watch that commercial and tell me it doesn't sicken you. If it doesn't I'm not sure what you're doing calling yourself a communist. Call me a workerist or what have you I simply advocate cooperation over materialistic individualism and yes I'm poor. Our goals under capitalism shouldn't be upward mobility but to fight for living wages so the working class can have some dignity as is. I'm not for the working class to aspire to be petty bourgeois unless the goal is to use that position to help others but that's not the situation in that commercial now is it? It's all about upward mobility, as in, leaving the working class behind so one can have nice things.

[hatzel]

It is, replace it whith an ethnic slur for a Jew and you'll see how it's like something Duke could spout out.

Well yeah, if you actually did that in this case then you'd see somebody repeatedly dropping the K-bomb to refer to some white girl being unbelievably white about something, and that would indeed be pretty sketch, so technically you're right here. But you're not right for anything like the reason you think you are...

[bcbm]

if you talk like that as a white person around ethnic minorities you are going to sound ridiculous.

i dunno with coworkers and friends we've always had a fun time talking shit

[Os Cangaceiros]

Tribalism, prejudice, "othering" etc has been around for an extremely long time. At least as far back as ancient Greece. But modern racism is a result of the slave trade, more than anything else. I don't think that this should even be a controversial claim. Furthermore the proliferation of knowledge and science added a character to racism which hadn't really been there much previously: the creation of biological racism.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2507363&postcount=24

It's kind of the same thing with anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism (or "Jew hatred" more accurately I guess, as "anti-Semitism" as a term didn't exist back then) pre-Enlightenment (such as Christian, or even further back, Roman anti-Semitism) generally had a different basis of rationale than what would later become biological anti-Semitism. Secular biological anti-Semitism actually turned out to be a lot more lethal than any previous form of anti-Semitism was.

edit: reading the thread above, I can see that these topics have already been touched upon. I think that there's a pretty strong case to be made for it, though. I'm also suspicious of absolutist claims about humans and human societies, ie "primitive societies do this", or "In this epoch humans did this, then they did this, now they do this, and in the future we'll be doing this". So if someone wants to present evidence to the contrary of what I think on this, I'd be happy to consider it...

[#FF0000]

I don't think you understood my point. The way fighting for 'equality' takes form under the framework of capitalism is in full support of the social Darwinist mentality that the smartest should benefit more and their motivation should be to have nicer things than others. This isn't equality.

lol i don't know about all that but everyone knows fighting for "equality before the law" is obviously just not good enough (one doesn't need to be a radical to know that de jure racism/sexism is a thing).

Watch that commercial and tell me it doesn't sicken you. If it doesn't I'm not sure what you're doing calling yourself a communist.A working class mom insists on her kid going to college so he can be a doctor instead of a mill worker or something. Nothing sickening about that (it's not like doctors are investment bankers, dogg).


Call me a workerist or what have you I simply advocate cooperation over materialistic individualism and yes I'm poor.Everyone being poor with no access to an education or better jobs isn't going to make people cooperate more. (plus there are working class jobs that definitely require college degrees, dude)

[Taters]

I'm not exactly supportive of people who want to get into IVY League universities so they can make crap tons of money. White, Black, Latino, Asian etc. Has anyone seen that commercial with a Latin male talking to his mother about not going to college and it shows what his life would be like if he went to college and if he didnt.


This is so materialistic it makes me sick. It has nothing to do with the goals of communism and everything to do with the mindframe of egotistical "get ahead" that capitalism nourishes. "Do you want that dirty work truck or that nice BMW"....."Do you want that crappy little house or this nice custom home"...."do you want to walk with no pride in dirty coveralls or stand up chest out chin in air with a doctors coat on".

Never mind that whole "from each according to their ability to each according to need" nonsense. Everyone needs a chance to be petty bourgeois. Equality!

Reminds me of Kautsky:


The time is near when the bulk of these proletarians will be distinguished from the others only by their pretensions. Most of them still imagine that they are something better than proletarians. They fancy they belong to the bourgeoisie, just as the lackey identifies himself with the class of his master. They have ceased to be the leaders of the capitalist class and have become rather their defenders. Place-hunting takes more and more of their energies. Their first care is, not the development of their intellect, but the sale of it. The prostitution of their individuality has become their chief means of advancement. Like the small producers, they are dazzled by the few brilliant prizes in the lottery of life; they shut their eyes to the numberless blanks in the wheel and barter away soul and body for the merest chance of drawing such a prize. The barter and sale of one’s convictions and the marriage for money are, in the eyes of most of our educated proletarians, two means, as natural as they are necessary, to “make one’s fortune.”

[Crixus]

Reminds me of Kautsky:

Let's go ahead and put that in bold:

The time is near when the bulk of these proletarians will be distinguished from the others only by their pretensions. Most of them still imagine that they are something better than proletarians. They fancy they belong to the bourgeoisie, just as the lackey identifies himself with the class of his master. They have ceased to be the leaders of the capitalist class and have become rather their defenders. Place-hunting takes more and more of their energies. Their first care is, not the development of their intellect, but the sale of it. The prostitution of their individuality has become their chief means of advancement. Like the small producers, they are dazzled by the few brilliant prizes in the lottery of life; they shut their eyes to the numberless blanks in the wheel and barter away soul and body for the merest chance of drawing such a prize. The barter and sale of one’s convictions and the marriage for money are, in the eyes of most of our educated proletarians, two means, as natural as they are necessary, to “make one’s fortune.”

[Comrade Nasser]

Because we are socialists, and we strive to create a society where the individual is free to flourish and reach their full potential, free from religious, racial, and gender concerns. Would be a tad hypocritical if we ignored her plight purely due to the colour of her skin.

I agree with bcbm. Who gives a fuck?

[Crixus]

I agree with bcbm. Who gives a fuck?

I'll take the third option and continue to question what "flourish to their full potential" means. This whole fucking thread reeks of the upward mobility argument in favor of capitalism. Need I remind us communists what we're in this game for. If all it takes is hard work and dedication to 'flourish to our full potential' and transcend poverty then indeed poverty is the fault of the masses of people experiencing it.



I enjoyed this film review, check it out in order to further grasp the point if it's not already obvious:

http://pietothemediaecologist.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/up-your-ladder-working-girl-and-the-ideology-of-upward-mobility/

EkWPloGLodo

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well if we employ a bit of dialectics, we know that "racism" exists as a social construct of whiteness whose purpose is to affirm white privilege, so to abolish racial oppression is indeed to oppress the white man until his privileged position is abolished and we no longer need to speak of whiteness. Likewise, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be the dictatorship of the proletariat over the white "people".I don't think this is accurate from a materialist perspective at all. Racism exists primarily as a system of control of laboring populations and exists ideologically as a justification for that system. Black people are oppressed not to advance white people - why should the ruling class desire to unilaterally give any group of workers benefits (?) - but has developed in the US as one of the ruling class's best tools for advancing the quest for more surplus. This could be directly as in slavery, sharecropping, reducing wages in industry; or more indirectly in the prison system which locks up a large reserve labor force and builds up the state's repressive abilities, in being able to divide the population, etc.

There is no doubt that racial inequality exists, white working class ignorance exists ("privileged attitudes"), and no doubt that many white workers consciously or unconsciously adopt racist attitudes or and many workers generally reject class struggle for fighting over crumbs (ethinc, gender, profession, region, etc). But I don't think the elimination of racism as a system would mean the oppression of whites - in fact this just buys into the "fighting over crumbs" view of groups of workers in capitalism. White workers would not be oppressed by the massive re-funding and rebuilding of education that it would take to make up for racial education inequality; how would white workers be "oppressed" by a lessening of repressive laws and police power and an end to the racist war on drugs? How would white workers be oppressed by jobs programs? By decent public housing and relief for the unemployed? And these are all just initial baby steps; things that a powerful 1960/70s-level anti-racist movement in the US might begin to force from the system even within capitalism.

Modern racist ideology in the US is tied to the neo-liberal push. Racists today - at least the mainstream ones, not the more marginal fascist-types - argue that black "oppression" of whites stems from "irresponsible" blacks forcing "responsible" (i.e. white) taxpayers to foot the bill for their inability to get an education, job, take care of their kids, etc. This modern racist common sense is the type shown in this article. But as we all know is neo-liberalism really about "fairness" in who pays for what, or is it about increasing competition within the workforce, about reducing working class living standards, about pushing social costs off of the rich and onto the working class. So while some racist or just cynical whites might perceived that advancement in rights and less inequality for black workers would hurt those whites, it's a perception. History in the US suggests that when advances have been made against racism, it has weakened the ruling class and allowed for advancements by other non-ruling groups in history.

[black magick hustla]

if you talk like that as a white person around ethnic minorities you are going to sound ridiculous.

not rly

[DasFapital]

Yeah, I'm tired of all the hispanic immigrants who got a free ride to Yale from my hometown. Oh wait, there actually all working for shit wages while being harrassed by confederate flag waving rednecks. I was thinking of all the kids who looked like they were taken straight from Nazi propaganda posters. But fuck Ivy League schools, anyway. I wouldn't want to attend anywhere a member of the Bush family attended.

[vizzek]

i do think affirmative action is a pretty bad program not because of 'reverse discrimination' but because it's just a way for liberal talking heads to make it seem like they care about minorities by allocating them into different spheres of bourgeois life.

but yeah, this idiot definitely didn't get rejected by princeton because they don't want white people. in fact from what i've heard the ivy leauge schools are actually active in bringing in white students and blocking asian-american students from entering. so much for hating on whitey.

[melvin]

not rlyeh, agree to disagree then.

[Invader Zim]

racism is the result of europeans needing to enslave non-europeans to profit tremendously from the land they had just stolen through genocide in the americas

No. While the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the enslavement of non-Europeans, certainly influenced how racism developed, inviting a certain attempt at intellectual justification for slavery, the idea that racism did not pre-date the discovery of the Americas is laughable.

http://www.viewfromtheblueridge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/facepalm.jpg

[#FF0000]

No. While the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the enslavement of non-Europeans, certainly influenced how racism developed, inviting a certain attempt at intellectual justification for slavery, the idea that racism did not pre-date the discovery of the Americas is laughable.

It's been said several times over that we're talking about modern racism, here. As in, racism as it exists today. Xenophobia and bigotry before that time didn't have the scientific (or pseudo-scientific) bent. You could at least read the thread before making a condescending post.

[Invader Zim]

It's been said several times over that we're talking about modern racism, here. As in, racism as it exists today. Xenophobia and bigotry before that time didn't have the scientific (or pseudo-scientific) bent. You could at least read the thread before making a condescending post.

Actually it did, as in that people postulated that there was a link between race and aptitude - the result of environmental conditions. Or, to be more precise, that the colour of a person's skin dictated the limits of their intellect, and that black people were inferior because they, as a group, had been over-exposed to sunlight.

Oh, and thank you for suggesting that I read the rest of the thread - it proves to be most enlightening. Apparently, the notion of 'modern' racism, or scientific racism, characterised by psuedo-scientific disciplines like Phrenology, arose to justify the slave trade. Yet, the conception of science, as we understand it, along with scientific racism, was a product of the 19th century. The Edinburgh Phrenological Society, for instance, among the first and undoubtedly the most influential of its kind, was founded in 1820. The slave trade was abolished in 1807.

In other words, the contention appears to be that scientific, or "modern", racism, a justification for the maintenance of an institution of an earlier period. I guess you learn something new each day.

[#FF0000]

It wasn't a justification for the slave trade, though -- it was an outgrowth of European Imperialism in general, and can be traced back to as early as the 18th century in Spanish South America.

[Invader Zim]

It wasn't a justification for the slave trade, though -- it was an outgrowth of European Imperialism in general, and can be traced back to as early as the 18th century in Spanish South America.

Well, that isn't what bcbm said:

"[modern scientific] racism is the result of europeans needing to enslave non-europeans"

Maybe, you should read the thread before making a condescending post or something?

[Hit The North]

Actually, Christianity was the predominant ideological justification for the slave-trade and colonialism prior to the 1850s. Modern pseudo-scientific racism really piggy-backs on a misapplication of Darwinian evolutionary theory. But all this race theory was debunked years ago and I can't believe that most modern racism utilises it as justification. In fact, in the UK the predominant form of racism is Islamophobia and this is justified through appeals to cultural and political incompatibility (the "clash of civilizations", etc.).

Btw, that other pseudo-science, phrenology, was directed more toward class distinctions than racial ones and used as a means of demonising and disciplining the working class.

[Invader Zim]

Actually, Christianity was the predominant ideological justification for the slave-trade and colonialism prior to the 1850s. Modern pseudo-scientific racism really piggy-backs on a misapplication of Darwinian evolutionary theory. But all this race theory was debunked years ago and I can't believe that most modern racism utilises it as justification. In fact, in the UK the predominant form of racism is Islamophobia and this is justified through appeals to cultural and political incompatibility (the "clash of civilizations", etc.).

Btw, that other pseudo-science, phrenology, was directed more toward class distinctions than racial ones and used as a means of demonising and disciplining the working class.

Precisely right regarding the latter, but regarding the issue of Christianity, it is important not to view 17th and 18th century Christianity as a block. Not all Christians were in favour of slavery, in fact powerful groups (like the Clapham Sect and the Wesleyan Methodists) were arrayed against slavery precisely because they considered slavery incompatible with Christian religion. And Christian dogma was successfully deployed as propaganda in the campaigns of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the campaigns to abolish the slave trade.

There is a good book by Brian Stanley called the Bible and the Flag which examines the motivations and beliefs of the missionaries and their role in empire building.

[Hit The North]

Precisely right regarding the latter, but regarding the issue of Christianity, it is important not to view 17th and 18th century Christianity as a block. Not all Christians were in favour of slavery, in fact powerful groups (like the Clapham Sect and the Wesleyan Methodists) were arrayed against slavery precisely because they considered slavery incompatible with Christian religion. And Christian dogma was successfully deployed as propaganda in the campaigns of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the campaigns to abolish the slave trade.

All of which proves the contradictory and malleable nature of religious belief. Nevertheless, the early European colonial projects were often justified on the basis of a) diminishing the human status of non-Christians and b) missionary zeal in converting the heathen. The colonialism of the British empire was no less ideologically influenced by the essentially Christian notion of the civilising mission of the 'white man's burden', even in its more rational, late-Victorian and Edwardian phase.

But, anyway, I think we probably agree that the notion of a bogus scientific justification for slavery and colonialism is being over-egged, particularly in the C19th. It was one strand of ideological justification for sure, but probably it was more prominent and important in the first half of the C20th.

[bcbm]

No. While the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the enslavement of non-Europeans, certainly influenced how racism developed, inviting a certain attempt at intellectual justification for slavery, the idea that racism did not pre-date the discovery of the Americas is laughable.

the modern concepts of race stem from blumenbach but didn't gain much traction until the slave trade required a justification for enslaving africans, namely that they were not fully human, which is when modern racism was really elaborated and continued to be over the coming centuries with 'scientific racism,' pseudo science like phrenology, etc.

once again, no one is suggesting that europeans were the first to do anything, what is being said is that the modern system of racism is the product of the european slave trade, which is pretty well acknowledged especially among marxist historians like the previously quoted clr james.

and please do not post images.


Apparently, the notion of 'modern' racism, or scientific racism, characterised by psuedo-scientific disciplines like Phrenology, arose to justify the slave trade. Yet, the conception of science, as we understand it, along with scientific racism, was a product of the 19th century. The Edinburgh Phrenological Society, for instance, among the first and undoubtedly the most influential of its kind, was founded in 1820. The slave trade was abolished in 1807.

phrenology was mentioned as an example of the new pseudo-scientific racism that developed out of this new modern racism (specifically stated as something that happened later). the slave trade was certainly not abolished everywhere in 1807, not to mention the institution of slavery. modern science is a product of the scientific revolution that occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries, also the same time as the slave trade began although its racist character took some time to develop.


. briefly, before that many slaves or indentured servants were 'white,' the irish being a major population and they freely mixed, married, etc with africans and indians. many of them also had the possibility of becoming free and they were commonly accepted into colonies as full members of the community. as land become held by a smaller and smaller majority towards the end of the 17th century/early 18th, these servants and freed poor became increasingly ungovernable, pushing authorities to began passing laws aimed at separating and stigmatizing africans, who came to be viewed as the ideal slaves for the colonial scheme.


In other words, the contention appears to be that scientific, or "modern", racism, a justification for the maintenance of an institution of an earlier period.

nope

[Comrade Nasser]

It wasn't a justification for the slave trade, though -- it was an outgrowth of European Imperialism in general, and can be traced back to as early as the 18th century in Spanish South America.

Arab's had slaves before Europeans if i'm not mistaken. Alot of the rich Arab sheiks would have sexual relations and children with the slave women that they had (white European women, Sub-Saharan African women). Alot of Arabs say that this is why some Arabs look white, some black, and some mixed. And that's just fine. We like how we look lol. Scumfront likes to use Arabs to show what a mixed society will look if "races" keep "mixing" funny because i'm pretty sure i'm more attractive than 99% of their userbase. I'm getting really off-topic but I don't care this is fun lol.

We have people like this: (So off-topic but I don't care lols)

images removed

FUCK white privilege! I don't care if i'm getting really off-topic and this post gets deleted. Just had to vent a little bit haha.

[bcbm]

please dont make off topic posts like that full of images, especially when you know they are off topic. this is a verbal warning

[Comrade Nasser]

please dont make off topic posts like that full of images, especially when you know they are off topic. this is a verbal warning

I actually was going to make a thread about the topic I veered into in this post I'll probably do that tomorrow. Feel free to delete that post as I will probably make a thread about that topic after school tomorrow.

[bcbm]

i'd really rather you didnt

[Comrade Nasser]

i'd really rather you didnt

Lol ok

[Invader Zim]

the modern concepts of race stem from blumenbach but didn't gain much traction until the slave trade required a justification for enslaving africans, namely that they were not fully human, which is when modern racism was really elaborated and continued to be over the coming centuries with 'scientific racism,' pseudo science like phrenology, etc.

I'll say it again: Scientific racism, in the form we understand it (though as I noted earlier, you can easily find examples of racism built on pseudo-empirical observation of human ethnicity and anatomy far earlier), is a 19th century phenomenon while the slave trade had been in terminal decline since the 1770s. Precisely how did the ideas of blumenbach [sic] gain traction from the slave trade during the 19th century, an economic institution in the midst of a political, moral and cultural crisis from which it could not recover? In short you are suggesting that scientific racism arose to justify a trade which was abolished just scientific racism was beginning to be taken seriously, and before its chief proponents, like de Gobineau and Galton, were even born.


which is pretty well acknowledged especially among marxist historians like the previously quoted clr james.

And James, Eric Williams, etc. have been out of date for many decades now. Historical scholarship is like any field of knowledge - it is cumulative, just because some Marxist historians, writing before your grandparents were even born, used to think something does not mean that modern historians think that way now. If anything the precise opposite is true, the study of history is a vastly more advanced discipline now than it ever has been in the past. The fact is that the old-school Marxist interpretations of the Slave Trade do not square with the evidence that emerged regarding slavery and the slave trade in the 1960s and 1970s.

Oh, and after that little historiographical excursion, it is worth noting that it is very easy to find examples of people dividing society into races, and discriminating against those races deemed to be of lower standard, before the emergence of the Atlantic slave trade (just to pick another hole in James' contention):

"Some genealogists who had no knowledge of the true nature of beings imagined that the blacks are the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, and that they were characterized by black color as a result of a curse put upon them by his father (Noah), which manifested itself in Ham's color and the slavery that God inflicted upon his descendants. Concerning this they have transmitted an account arising from the legends of the story-tellers. The curse of Noah upon his son is there in the Torah. No reference is made there to blackness. His curse was simply that Han's descendants should be the slaves of his brothers' descendants. To attribute the blackness of Negroes to Ham, shows disregard for the nature of heat and cold and the influence they export upon the air and upon the creatures that come into being in it.

The inhabitants of the first and the second zone in the south are called the Abyssinians, the Zanj, the Sudanese. These are synonyms used to designate the particular nation that has turned black. The name Abyssinians however is restricted to those Negroes who live opposite Mecca and the Yemen and the name Zanj is restricted to those who live along the Indian Ocean. These names are not given to them because of an alleged descent from a black human being, be it Ham or anyone else. Negroes from the south who settled in the temperate fourth zone or in the seventh zone that tends towards whiteness, are found to produce descendants whose color gradually turns white in the course of time.

When genealogists noted differences between the nations their distinguishing marks and characteristics, they considered these to be due to their different descents. They declared all the Negro inhabitants of the south to be descendants of Ham. They had misgivings about their color and therefore undertook to tell the aforementioned silly story.

Distinction between races and nations are in some cases due to different origin, as in the case of the Arabs, the Israelites and the Persians. In other cases, they are caused by geographical location and physical marks, as in the case of the Zanj, the Abysinians, the Slavs, and the Sudanese Negroes. Again in other cases, they are caused by custom and distinguishing characteristics, as well as by descent, as in the case of the Arabs. Or they may be caused by anything else among conditions, qualities, and features peculiar to the different nations.

We have seen that Negroes are in general characterized by levity, excitability and great emotionalism. They are found eager to dance whenever they hear a melody. They are everywhere described as stupid.

Masoudi took it upon him to look for the cause that produces by the Negroes that light handedness, the constant pleasure they radiate, but for all solutions there is only a word from Galen and Al-Kendi after whom their character goes towards a feeble brain, from where comes feeble intelligence. Their words do not prove anything and are without value.

The black nations are as a rule, submissive to slavery, because ( blacks) have little (that is essentially) human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated."

- Ibn Khaldun (http://www.geocities.ws/derideauxp/khaldun.html) (1332-1406)

But, of course, though these attitudes certainly hold a lot of similarities, this is not the same thing as scientific racism, which sought to find specific impetuous for this view through the drawing of false conclusions from alleged differences in the physiology of different groups of human beings. This, what you describe as modern racism, did not emerge as a major intellectual strand until decades after the slave trade had been formally abolished in law, and transgressors faced the full weight of British military might, which in the mid-19th century was a fearsome force indeed.


phrenology was mentioned as an example of the new pseudo-scientific racism that developed out of this new modern racism (specifically stated as something that happened later).

Indeed, you describe scientific racism as being based on the writings of Blumenbach, and that this developed "over the coming centuries with 'scientific racism,' pseudo science like phrenology, etc." Of course, this isn't true either, and is just as historically illiterate as everything else you have said in this thread. Firstly, Blumenbach classified humanity into four different groupsin 1785. So, your contention that over 'centuries' this developed into scientific racism is clearly wrong. We are talking about three or four decades here. Secondly, eleven years earlier, in 1774, John Wesley published the famous pamphlet 'Thoughts Upon Slavery' which, aside from a few early voices from political radicals and the work of the Quakers, effectively launched the abolition movement. In other words, the campaign against slavery, which would bring the slave trade to its knees and then outright abolish it, was already in full swing on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, before the first intellectual seedlings of scientific racism had been planted, and decades before those seeds actually germinated into a serious intellectual body in the mid-19th century. Therefore the claim that scientific racism emerged to justify the slave trade is utterly unsustainable, the slave trade was an illegal practice, and its practitioners were chased the length and breadth of the Atlantic ocean by the most powerful navies in the world like common criminals, by the emergence of scientific racism as a serious intellectual movement.


the slave trade was certainly not abolished everywhere in 1807,

While on paper this is true, in reality it is false. While Brazil, for instance, did not formally abolish the trade until the 1830s (around, ironically enough, the time that scientific racism starts to become a serious enterprise), it was effectively abolished across the Atlantic Ocean in 1807 and 1808, for the very simple reason that it was in the interests of the British ruling class to prevent other countries engaging in a trade which they, themselves, were not able to engage in. The Royal Navy, at that time by far the most powerful military force on the face of the planet, was ordered to classify slave traders as pirates. While there remained an illicit trade, by people willing to try to outrun the Royal Navy, it was no more as a legal formal institution.


modern science is a product of the scientific revolution that occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries

To quote the foremost expert in the world right now on the scientific revolution:

"There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it."

Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, p.1.

And Shapin is absolutely right about that. What people mean when they talk about the Scientific Revolution is a gradual shift of ideas and attitudes towards the natural world and knowledge which occurred during the Renaissance and, more prominently, during the Enlightenment. This period was indeed key in the development of how human beings have come to 'create' knowledge, but 'science' did not suddenly cease to continue developing in 1776. What we have today is still very much a product of the post-Enlightenment, as well as pre-Enlightenment, era. The term 'science' itself is simply derived from the Latin for 'knowledge'. And, of course, in the early modern period, people who studied the universe around them did not consider themselves 'scientists' they thought of them selves as philosophers of the natural world - hence natural philosophy. That is why, even today, most academic doctorates are PhDs - doctorates of philosophy.

Similarly, 'Wissenschaft', the German word often translated as science, and has had a huge impact on how people have intellectualized concepts of knowledge, translates perhaps more literally to 'scholarship'. The idea of science, as it is today, is a 19th, and arguably even 20th century, product. The formulation of systematic method and indeed the term 'scientist', as in someone who generates empirical knowledge through systematic experimentation according to strict methodology, is owed to individuals like William Whewell. Indeed, historians of science and technology often refer to the developments of the late 18th century and 19th century as a 'second scientific revolution'.

And that is why 'scientific racism' emerged in the 19th century - because that is when knowledge, in of itself, to employ a metaphor, 'industrialized', expanded and became a fashion. It is no coincidence that just about every academic discipline in the 19th century also underwent the precise same professionalisation - history being an excellent example.

And scientific racism has far more to do with Victorian imperialism, and the justification of colonialism via racial paternalism, than it does with the slave trade.


briefly, before that many slaves or indentured servants were 'white,' the irish being a major population and they freely mixed, married, etc with africans and indians. many of them also had the possibility of becoming free and they were commonly accepted into colonies as full members of the community. as land become held by a smaller and smaller majority towards the end of the 17th century/early 18th, these servants and freed poor became increasingly ungovernable, pushing authorities to began passing laws aimed at separating and stigmatizing africans, who came to be viewed as the ideal slaves for the colonial scheme.

Who and/or what told you that?

[bcbm]

I'll say it again: Scientific racism, in the form we understand it (though as I noted earlier, you can easily find examples of racism built on pseudo-empirical observation of human ethnicity and anatomy far earlier), is a 19th century phenomenon while the slave trade had been in terminal decline since the 1770s. Precisely how did the ideas of blumenbach [sic] gain traction from the slave trade during the 19th century, an economic institution in the midst of a political, moral and cultural crisis from which it could not recover? In short you are suggesting that scientific racism arose to justify a trade which was abolished just scientific racism was beginning to be taken seriously, and before its chief proponents, like de Gobineau and Galton, were even born.

racism that is the division of people by race specifically in law came out of the slave trade which later became a more evolved system and eventually became a pseudo-scientific once which was no longer reliant on its original reason for existing




The fact is that the old-school Marxist interpretations of the Slave Trade do not square with the evidence that emerged regarding slavery and the slave trade in the 1960s and 1970s.

that evidence being


Oh, and after that little historiographical excursion, it is worth noting that it is very easy to find examples of people dividing society into races, and discriminating against those races deemed to be of lower standard, before the emergence of the Atlantic slave trade (just to pick another hole in James' contention):

for the 15th time no one is suggesting that europeans were the first to do anything


Therefore the claim that scientific racism emerged to justify the slave trade is utterly unsustainable,

except this isnt what i claimed



While on paper this is true, in reality it is false. While Brazil, for instance, did not formally abolish the trade until the 1830s (around, ironically enough, the time that scientific racism starts to become a serious enterprise), it was effectively abolished across the Atlantic Ocean in 1807 and 1808, for the very simple reason that it was in the interests of the British ruling class to prevent other countries engaging in a trade which they, themselves, were not able to engage in. The Royal Navy, at that time by far the most powerful military force on the face of the planet, was ordered to classify slave traders as pirates. While there remained an illicit trade, by people willing to try to outrun the Royal Navy, it was no more as a legal formal institution.

slavery itself remained legal


To quote the foremost expert in the world right now on the scientific revolution:

"There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it."

Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, p.1.

And Shapin is absolutely right about that. What people mean when they talk about the Scientific Revolution is a gradual shift of ideas and attitudes towards the natural world and knowledge which occurred during the Renaissance and, more prominently, during the Enlightenment. This period was indeed key in the development of how human beings have come to 'create' knowledge, but 'science' did not suddenly cease to continue developing in 1776. What we have today is still very much a product of the post-Enlightenment, as well as pre-Enlightenment, era. The term 'science' itself is simply derived from the Latin for 'knowledge'. And, of course, in the early modern period, people who studied the universe around them did not consider themselves 'scientists' they thought of them selves as philosophers of the natural world - hence natural philosophy. That is why, even today, most academic doctorates are PhDs - doctorates of philosophy.

Similarly, 'Wissenschaft', the German word often translated as science, and has had a huge impact on how people have intellectualized concepts of knowledge, translates perhaps more literally to 'scholarship'. The idea of science, as it is today, is a 19th, and arguably even 20th century, product. The formulation of systematic method and indeed the term 'scientist', as in someone who generates empirical knowledge through systematic experimentation according to strict methodology, is owed to individuals like William Whewell. Indeed, historians of science and technology often refer to the developments of the late 18th century and 19th century as a 'second scientific revolution'.

ok, i get it now, science and racism both just popped into existence in the 19th century and it is safe to ignore all of the developments before that


And scientific racism has far more to do with Victorian imperialism, and the justification of colonialism via racial paternalism, than it does with the slave trade.

yes i believe i mentioned that earlier, but this is not the origin of modern racism, full stop, is it?


Who and/or what told you that?

american history

[Invader Zim]

racism that is the division of people by race specifically in law came out of the slave trade which later became a more evolved system and eventually became a pseudo-scientific once which was no longer reliant on its original reason for existing

OK, but that doesn't tally with this:

"the modern concepts of race stem from blumenbach but didn't gain much traction until the slave trade required a justification for enslaving africans, namely that they were not fully human, which is when modern racism was really elaborated and continued to be over the coming centuries with 'scientific racism,' pseudo science like phrenology, etc."

We are talking about fifty years here, between Blumenbach's writings on race and the development of scientific racism.


that evidence being

That the decline, and by extension the maintenance, of the slave trade was solely tied up in economics. And that it is economics, and economics alone, that motivated attitudes towards race. As Hit the North noted above, ephemeral beliefs and intellectual fashions had a lot to do with this.


for the 15th time no one is suggesting that europeans were the first to do anything

Well, you certainly have said that several times, but the quote you provide from James explicitly states the opposite.


except this isnt what i claimed

Well, you may not have meant it that way, but that is what this quote certainly seems to suggest:

"the modern concepts of race stem from blumenbach but didn't gain much traction until the slave trade required a justification for enslaving africans, namely that they were not fully human, which is when modern racism was really elaborated and continued to be over the coming centuries with 'scientific racism,' pseudo science like phrenology, etc."


slavery itself remained legal

You specifically spoke of the slave trade, not merely slavery. And the development of modern racism, as you have identified it, was primarily developed in the Old World where slavery had indeed, largely, been abolished. And once the slave trade had been abolished, slavery as an institution was on borrowed time.


ok, i get it now, science and racism both just popped into existence in the 19th century and it is safe to ignore all of the developments before that

I didn't suggest that at all, what I suggest that it is anachronistic to point to the slave trade as the justification for modern concepts of race, in particular scientific racism, when the slave trade ceased to exist before these conceptions of race crystalised. the issue isn't that I'm ignoring what came before that you are ignoring everything that came in between.


american history

This is a bit America-centric, given that we're talking about an institution which involved numerous countries, continents and thousands of miles of ocean. And what historians have written this history? I know a fair bit about the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, i did a masters degree on it, and I've not read the argument that the rise of African slavery was tied to the decline of indentured servitude. So, I'm genuinely interested where you got that idea from.

[bcbm]

i am tired and kind of burnt out this evening, will try to get back to you sometime tomorrow evening or this weekend, depending.

[bcbm]

We are talking about fifty years here, between Blumenbach's writings on race and the development of scientific racism.

youre right i had my dates wrong on blumenbach. while he developed the modern categories for race, the origins of the modern racist system go back further in colonial law regulating specifically the status and interactions of africans but also others.


That the decline, and by extension the maintenance, of the slave trade was solely tied up in economics. And that it is economics, and economics alone, that motivated attitudes towards race. As Hit the North noted above, ephemeral beliefs and intellectual fashions had a lot to do with this.

i am not seeing how this is a counter-argument to anything being said. obviously slavery was based on economics, but economics frequently find justification outside purely monetary concerns.


Well, you certainly have said that several times,

great. lets move on.


Well, you may not have meant it that way, but that is what this quote certainly seems to suggest:

see above


You specifically spoke of the slave trade, not merely slavery.

oh good grief


And the development of modern racism, as you have identified it, was primarily developed in the Old World where slavery had indeed, largely, been abolished. And once the slave trade had been abolished, slavery as an institution was on borrowed time.

i said it developed out of the slave trade which was a fairly significant factor in the 'new world,' and this is where you can find most of the beginnings of modern racism with laws governing behavior of slaves by race, etc


I didn't suggest that at all, what I suggest that it is anachronistic to point to the slave trade as the justification for modern concepts of race, in particular scientific racism, when the slave trade ceased to exist before these conceptions of race crystalised. the issue isn't that I'm ignoring what came before that you are ignoring everything that came in between.

what i am saying i that just like professional history or biology or whatever came into bloom in the 19th century while being based on earlier work particularly developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, so it is with racism.

and lets just hammer this out one more time: i specifically said 'scientific racism' was a later development, not the beginning.


This is a bit America-centric, given that we're talking about an institution which involved numerous countries, continents and thousands of miles of ocean.

well yes the trade did cross both americas and was a crucial part of it, so i guess it is being 'america-centric.'

(i get your point, but 'america' as in the us didn't exist at this point and the conditions there were similar to those elsewhere, with obvious regional variations. but all developed systems of racial hierarchy.)


And what historians have written this history? I know a fair bit about the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, i did a masters degree on it, and I've not read the argument that the rise of African slavery was tied to the decline of indentured servitude. So, I'm genuinely interested where you got that idea from.

http://www.understandingrace.org/resources/pdf/disease/smedley.pdf

[Narodnik]

I don't if to open a new topic, so I'll just post in the topic that has "whitey" in it's name x)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9993264/Black-workers-banned-from-Gare-du-Nord-during-Israeli-president-visit.html

wtf?

[Aleksandr Karelin]

Trying to figure out if you prefer the smell of liberalism or napalm in the morning. Seriously. Why can you say fuck whitey but I can't say fuck a muslim. I might be exploited as a low wage worker by rich white duded, none of them ever told me to my face I was subhuman, muslims have. Can I now call you a whiteaphobic idiot, despite that word not being an actual word like islamophobia inst.

Where is the consistency?

[Narodnik]

There is none. If minds of much marxists, the muslim didn't think you are subhuman because he's a muslim (even though that was probably his explicit motivation, with the quote from the Quran that says kufar are vile animals), he said you're a subhuman because of the social/ material conditions that have determined him to say so, or something like that.

[bcbm]

Seriously. Why can you say fuck whitey but I can't say fuck a muslim.

whitey = the man = the historical construction of the 'white race' as a privileged institution. 'a muslim' = someone who is a follower of islam.

spot the difference


I might be exploited as a low wage worker by rich white duded, none of them ever told me to my face I was subhuman, muslims have.

a muslim telling you you are subhuman is an unfortunate occurrence but has no structural element.

whiteness is a social construct determining a hierarchy of racial superiority that is a real, structural power.


Can I now call you a whiteaphobic idiot, despite that word not being an actual word like islamophobia inst.

except i don't hate 'white people,' i hate the historical social construction of 'whiteness'


Where is the consistency?

use your noggin