Left-Wing Nutjob
11th December 2015, 21:37
So I was thinking about how racism, sexism, and other forms of social discrimination work as systems of power and oppression, rather than the all-too-common view of these "isms" being driven by personal prejudices or even moral failings/character flaws of individual people.
To put it another way, "racism" isn't just about individual racists. Likewise for sexism and all the other forms of social discrimination. It is about how a society's economic, political, legal, educational, and all of its other systems and institutions are - fundamentally - at their deepest, historical foundations, based on discriminatory access to power and resources. And it is about how the dominant ideology of the culture, country, society, etc. reinforces those foundations.
How, then, does this relate to class? Well, as it turns out, the ideology of the bourgeoisie infects all levels of class society. The bourgeoisie as it historically developed in the United States, for example, stole the land of Native peoples and then built its wealth and power on the backs of slave labor from the African continent, along with with many indentured servants, poor immigrants, and working-class people of a wide variety of ethnic and national backgrounds.
The American bourgeoisie (which were largely - but not exclusively - men of English/British origin) sought to rationalize and justify their wealth, power, and status. The social relations and hierarchies of pre-capitalist Europe carried over to the capitalist era, albeit in new forms. Thus, you have new manifestations of racism, sexism, and other forms of social discrimination within capitalist societies that have continued to be reinforced, adapted, or even changed altogether in certain cases, depending on historical, social, and political context.
Anyway, I guess I don't really know what I'm trying to say with this post...maybe some of you could help me out, based on what I've written above? How would you flesh out or clarify this?
Thanks for reading...apologies for the rambling.
To put it another way, "racism" isn't just about individual racists. Likewise for sexism and all the other forms of social discrimination. It is about how a society's economic, political, legal, educational, and all of its other systems and institutions are - fundamentally - at their deepest, historical foundations, based on discriminatory access to power and resources. And it is about how the dominant ideology of the culture, country, society, etc. reinforces those foundations.
How, then, does this relate to class? Well, as it turns out, the ideology of the bourgeoisie infects all levels of class society. The bourgeoisie as it historically developed in the United States, for example, stole the land of Native peoples and then built its wealth and power on the backs of slave labor from the African continent, along with with many indentured servants, poor immigrants, and working-class people of a wide variety of ethnic and national backgrounds.
The American bourgeoisie (which were largely - but not exclusively - men of English/British origin) sought to rationalize and justify their wealth, power, and status. The social relations and hierarchies of pre-capitalist Europe carried over to the capitalist era, albeit in new forms. Thus, you have new manifestations of racism, sexism, and other forms of social discrimination within capitalist societies that have continued to be reinforced, adapted, or even changed altogether in certain cases, depending on historical, social, and political context.
Anyway, I guess I don't really know what I'm trying to say with this post...maybe some of you could help me out, based on what I've written above? How would you flesh out or clarify this?
Thanks for reading...apologies for the rambling.