TC
6th May 2007, 16:09
Oppression, discrimination, and inequality vs bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism,
I think there is a conceptual problem in discussing issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, and so on, that is so pervasive that its difficult to have a categorically consistent discussion of these topics. The problem is that people are conflating the concepts of oppression, discrimination and inequality, with the concepts of bigotry, chauvinism (of all sorts), prejudice and intolerance. The former exist on a structural level, the later exist on a personal level.
One of the biggest sources of confusion is implied in the belief that the “personal is political”, which, like most slogans or sayings allows the speaker to assert their position with authority, as if it were a given, without making a real attempt to rationally justify the position. It’s from this sense that liberals (including people with leftist economic views but liberal or post-modernist social views) will believe that anything that they (or potentially, a ‘member of an oppressed group’) find alienating, disturbing, or upsetting is somehow also ‘oppressive’, a reflection of the power structure, etc.
For instance, a “radical feminist” woman might upon seeing nude pictures of other women articulate this as somehow “oppressive” to her, and extrapolate this as a product of patriarchal culture and a power structure that favors men over women. This is quite obviously however, not at all an empirically valid conclusion because it relies on an inconsistent method, she would of course not see nude photos of men as being oppressive to particular men she knows, so it is not a view that takes the same conclusions from same data, rather it imposes ideological conclusion on any available dataset.
In reality though, photos don’t oppress anyone, that’s just not what oppression categorically is; rather this is a case of someone equating their personal embarrassment with oppression. This is not dissimilar with, on the other side of the liberal political spectrum, conservatives equating their personal embarrassment with immorality or even sin.
But this is not to say that people *ought* to be expected to tolerate things that make them feel uncomfortable when it impairs their ability to engage in activities that they’re entitled to either. The fact that a creepy guy couldn’t possibly oppress or be in any position to discriminate against a random girl by making some sexual comment as she walks by, does not mean that its perfectly acceptable. It is possible to be chauvinist (or even merely offensive) without being oppressive. It is also perfectly possible to be oppressive and discriminatory along demographic lines, without being personally bigoted towards those demographics. In order to have any politically honest discussion of these concepts and materially different social interactions we need to make these distinctions clear and clarify our vocabulary.
Oppression is not anything that makes a self-defined oppressed group or person feel bad, rather it is the specific disadvantage of the weaker party in a relationship where a real power differential exists. Real power in society is not an abstract thing but something with a specific material basis: organized coercive force. Between states organized coercive force is an issue of military balance, and between individuals within a state (where social oppression takes place), organized coercive force is the understood threat that gives relations based on laws and money power. This is important to remember, in that, when one says that ‘all oppression is really economic oppression’, that is nearly the case in liberal capitalist states because almost all relationships where real power differentials exist are based not laws that enforce unequal relations based on demographics, but on financial relationships that create unequal relations that are then enforced by laws against theft.* Slavery was an oppressive institution because it used state power to enforce an unequal relationship between the slave master and the slave, allowing the slave master to compel their slaves to do things against their will**. The patriarchal family with a husband/father who earns the bulk of the income that supports the wife/mother and their children is also oppressive, because the husband/father’s control of the others finances allows him to make demands more easily since severing the relationship would result in an immediate decline in the standard of living of the dependents, so the dependency creates the potential for coercion (and even polite requests of someone are coercive when they know that they can be compelled).
Discrimination in general is being denied access or services or positions, and when done so on the basis of demographics is social discrimination (which is the only type of discrimination people frequently talk about). There is simply no such thing as “discriminatory” language, this is a misuse of the term or a misunderstanding of the concept; language cannot deny access on its own. Discrimination can be oppressive when it involves real power relations, but it is not necessarily oppressive. For instance, if universities systematically shut people out on an arbitrary basis (such as sex, religion, race, class, etc) they are being truly oppressive if those qualifications are required to attain entry in professions that provide economic advantages. However, if what someone is being shut out of (a golf course, unaccredited Christian “university”, sports team, restroom, nightclub, all-women’s man-hating radical “feminist” caucus, clergy, imperialist special forces unit, muslim women’s swimming session, gay men’s choir, jewish prudish singles speed dating, etc) cannot lead to any financial or otherwise physical disadvantage, it remains discriminatory, and depending on how important it is, a real injustice with a material basis, but it can hardly amount to oppression. Being denied access to a homeless shelter because you’re not a Christian is oppressive (if you’re homeless); being denied access to an unaccredited “university” because you’re not a Christian is probably not oppressive if you have alternatives but its still discriminatory. Not all discrimination is oppressive, and social oppression is a much more fundamentally important problem than non-oppressive forms of discrimination, and while as leftists and materialists we should want to end all forms of arbitrary discrimination, we should not equate discrimination with oppression and instead consider whether or not, and if so where, structural oppression exists within a particular type of discrimination. If one exists than it needs to be understood as a type of oppression, but if none exist than it ought to be funded with public funds (as this amounts to unequal redistribution) but there is also less imperative to surpress it forcefully and other issues like rights of free association and privacy might need to be weighed.
Inequality is the general state of being uneven and in the socially relevant sense it is an uneven distribution of power seen in either an unequal distribution of money or unequal protection under the law. Inequality is different than oppression or discrimination in that oppression and discrimination are what prevents an individual from exercising their personal autonomy and what denies a person access to something in particular, respectively. Inequality however is not about differences in the extent that ones freedom of action is restricted but differences in ones ability to do or have what they want. Everything that is oppressive requires an inequality of power, and everything that is discriminatory entails inequality of access, but not everything that is unequal is either oppressive or discriminatory. For instance, in early capitalism, there is inequality between a bourgeois worth 100 million US dollars in the Canadian toy industry and a bourgeois worth 50 million US dollars in the Japanese decoration industry, in that the Canadian bourgeois can buy more stuff, do more things, have less impediments to what they want to do, than the Japanese bourgeois, however the Canadian bourgeois isn’t oppressing the Japanese bourgeois in any way, nor is the Japanese bourgeois being discriminated against; because they have no financial ties and are in no legal relationship, they don’t really affect the other in any physical way (clearly the situation is more complex in late capitalism, this was just an example to illustrate a point). Inequality is (for leftists anyways) undesirable, and clearly has extensive overlaps with oppression and discrimination, but it is conceptually and categorically distinct and should not be used interchangeably because while oppression and discrimination entail inequality, inequality need not entail oppression and/or discrimination.
Oppression, discrimination, and inequality separate but related concepts, and they have a structural, material basis, and where no material basis exists, the concepts are being misapplied. This is important for Marxists because Marxists understand that what is relevant in history and social structure is the material conditions that exist and not some abstract idealist concepts that are simply imposed on those material conditions. This is often forgotten when people confuse non-material, non-structual concepts found in the thought, speech, and behavior of individuals, for these structural social problems, and this is especially true among liberals and postmodernists who either believe that personal expressions and reactions imply and could only come from underlying structural problems, or they simply equate the two and think that personal thoughts expressions and behaviors amount to social problems. In a lot of ways liberals want to get people to talk about the personal issues rather than the structural issues because they can avoid talking about class that way and this serves to misdirect people to concentrating on things that are comparatively insignificant and
There are a number of concepts that concern categories of interpersonal social interaction that are often conflated with the social structural categories discussed earlier:
Bigotry is personal hatred towards a group of people as a group or to an individual for characteristics that entail or are very closely associated with a category of people rather than what they’ve done as an individual. The context in which racism and homophobia are most often discussed is when they are a type of bigotry. Hate crimes, when they’re truly hate crimes, are motivated by bigotry not by institutional oppression (unless of course, they’re not prosecuted as a result of institutional oppression). Obnoxious comments perceived as racist or homophobic are believed to be racist or homophobic when they’re believed to be motivated by bigotry (or less often prejudiced).
Prejudice assumptions are when someone bases their judgment on someone based on their demographics or group affiliation or other associations rather than anything they’ve gathered from them directly, and the term is almost only used when these assumptions are negative ones. Someone who experiences prejudice need not be experiencing oppression (if power relations aren’t involved) discrimination (if they aren’t being prevented from doing or joining anything) or inequality, or even bigotry if the prejudice isn’t motivated by hatred.
Chauvinism is the implied belief in superiority or superior entitlement of oneself due to group membership or perceived group membership. Most things described as ‘sexist’ are not bigoted or prejudiced but chauvinist. For instance, a creepy old guy who demands attention from younger more attractive girls, cannot be said to be bigoted or prejudiced towards women in general since his behavior isn’t a response to them being female (since he doesn’t respond that way to most women) but to them as individuals but he still feels sexually entitled to harass them even though they clearly wont get anything out of it. This behavior can’t be said to be ‘misogynist’ but rather it is male chauvinist. Likewise many “radical feminists” don’t necessarily say anything negative about men in general (though obviously many of them truly do hate men) but they describe women as morally and/or spiritually superior and elevate (or, ‘celebrate’ I think is the preferred term) their own physical, sexual and social characteristics (take the vagina monologues as an example, its less bigoted towards men as it is female chauvinist). The notion of supporting ‘gay civil unions’ but not ‘gay marriages’ isn’t bigoted or prejudicial against gay people, a real homophobic bigot wouldn’t want gay civil unions either as that clearly condones gay sex, rather the demand for civil unions but not marriage is heterosexual chauvinist in that it requires an acknowledgement of greater centrality for heterosexual relationships. Likewise national pride and patriotism is typically national chauvinism (except in cases where those concepts are defined entirely in opposition to someone elses nation as in the case of colonial nationalism). Among leftists it seems like there is a funny sort of “worker class” chauvinism, where being members of a cultural “class” is seen as morally or politically superior to people in a cultural “middle class” (which, is incredibly silly since both tend to labour aristocrats and not industrial proletariat or bourgeois anyways, in terms of Marxian economics they are probably the same class).
Obviously there is considerable overlap in that a lot of things that are bigoted are also prejudiced and chauvinist, but these are distinct concepts and there are instances where something fits into one category but not the other two. But just because these concepts are not mutually exclusive does not mean they are not distinct.
Because leftists are materialists we know that bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism are irrational, and because leftists seek to reduce or eliminate interpersonal and social alienation (not simply oppression), we believe that bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism are undesirable and that people should be persuaded not to take such positions...but we cannot equate these forms of personal interaction with any of the structural social problems, nor can we assume that they are evidence of structural problems (as there are numerous counterexamples) nor can we declare without explanation that they cause, contribute to or reinforce structural problems as this is idealist. No matter how much someone might think that another group is inferior, that thought cannot magically actualize itself in a groups material inferiority. It is however reasonable to think that while personal bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism does not create, contribute to or ‘reinforce’ social oppression or inequality, oppression creates alienation and bigotry prejudice and chauvinism are symptomatic of alienation...so they may then be symptomatic of oppression...but there are also other reasons why people experience interpersonal alienation that do not necessarily have anything to do with oppression.
When people recognize how these categories are distinct and how they’re related they can also see how they can be dealt with rationally. Oppression in the proper sense is something that needs to be confronted with force, either through legal reform (which is a type of force) or revolutionary violence; for leftists, ending oppression is not only a vital issue it is the totality of our political agenda (the demand for human emancipation, for unexploited labour, is identical to the demand to end all oppression). Discrimination and inequality are also materially alienating so they are problems that need to be confronted where they are serious, but there is not the same imperative or urgency to do so. Bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism however, are clearly undesirable and the reflect poorly on the political and social development of people who engage in them and people need to be educated against them (from a Marxist not liberal perspective) but it would be disproportional to confront them with force because they are not themselves forceful. Thoughts and words should be met with thoughts and words not violence, and utilizing oppression or discrimination to stop bigotry or chauvinism is not an equal trade off.
The problem with talking about sexism, racism rather than patriarchal oppression, gender inequality, male and female chauvinism, sexual bigotry, and racial discrimination, racial inequality, racial chauvinism and racial bigotry, is that the distinctions between the structural and personal are lost and the dialogue is often confused. When deciding on what’s sexist or what’s racist*** or whether something is sexist or racist, the question can either be (and often is) understood either as to whether something is sexist or racist on a structural level or whether something is sexist or racist on a personal level, and to what extent the personal level is a valid one for meaningful and reasonably objective interpretation.****
Given this, I think its important than when considering social issues people learn to disentangle the different categories of social interaction being discussed. Otherwise there is no way to have a conceptually coherent understanding of what is actually going on, and these discussions become matters of whose opinion one prefers rather than what analysis makes the most sense.
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*There is of course a major exception to this, in that children are universally oppressed under the law, not merely under financial dependency (although it is of course the incredible extent of their financial dependency that makes their legal oppression possible). Black people and women tend to be more oppressed than white people and men because black people tend to be in lower classes than white people and women tend to be either in a very low class (unpaid domestic labourer) or in a lower class strata than a male to whom they are financially attached, creating a (smaller) but still real power differential...but this doesn’t mean that every black person or every woman is oppressed for being a black person or oppressed for being a woman, because the higher rate of oppression found in black people and women is due to individually negotiated financial relations, not laws applied to the demographics as a whole.
Condi Rice is a full member of the ruling class vastly more powerful than an average white man (or, even an average white male full bourgeois), both because of personal wealth and a privileged relationship to state power, it would be absurd to think that she is somehow oppressed for being black or female, or possibly more oppressed than Madeline Albright as an official of the same status but black, or more oppressed than Colin Powell as an official of the same status but female, because those demographic categories are socially irrelevant when they don’t adversely affect power relations...however the rare independently wealthy unemancipated minors are oppressed for being minors because the state restricts their activities based on demographics not just based on financial relationships correlated to demographics. Likewise all women are oppressed in Saudi Arabia for merely for being women.
** whereas, consensual BDSM “slaves” are not oppressed, even if they want to be, because no power compels them to participate.
*** I wont even go into issues that arise from discussions of ‘what’s homophobic’ since its not clear that there is structural oppression, discrimination or inequality on the basis of sexual orientation in all western countries, except of course with regards to children and teenagers (obviously there is considerable oppression in say, Iran, and discrimination in the United States). There are however, obvious structural reasons why the ruling class would want to encourage heterosexual chauvinism as it promotes the patriarchal family and there are some structural reasons why powerful institutions would want to encourage homophobic bigotry and prejudice; because bourgeois electoral politics depend on people arguing over economically irrelevant issues because they’re all economically on the same side.
****any post-modernists who want to “reject the notion of objective truth” have clearly given up on any serious intellectual and political discourse and an insistence on subjectivity can only lead to, at best, self-serving self-satisfying explanations that are totally unverifiable and therefore irrelevant. Or, worse if they go the rout of assigning privileged positions to certain subjective perspectives, where serious debate is replaced with preaching in the form of a political monologue (such as self-defined ‘oppressed people’, the most hilarious causality loop ever seriously considered in politics, whereby only an oppressed person can tell you what oppression and what should be considered oppression, so the only way you can know who is oppressed is if someone self defines themselves as such, so anyone can participate in the discussion but only if they declare themselves a victim, but if you don’t declare yourself a victim you can’t participate even to scrutinize this process.)
I think there is a conceptual problem in discussing issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, and so on, that is so pervasive that its difficult to have a categorically consistent discussion of these topics. The problem is that people are conflating the concepts of oppression, discrimination and inequality, with the concepts of bigotry, chauvinism (of all sorts), prejudice and intolerance. The former exist on a structural level, the later exist on a personal level.
One of the biggest sources of confusion is implied in the belief that the “personal is political”, which, like most slogans or sayings allows the speaker to assert their position with authority, as if it were a given, without making a real attempt to rationally justify the position. It’s from this sense that liberals (including people with leftist economic views but liberal or post-modernist social views) will believe that anything that they (or potentially, a ‘member of an oppressed group’) find alienating, disturbing, or upsetting is somehow also ‘oppressive’, a reflection of the power structure, etc.
For instance, a “radical feminist” woman might upon seeing nude pictures of other women articulate this as somehow “oppressive” to her, and extrapolate this as a product of patriarchal culture and a power structure that favors men over women. This is quite obviously however, not at all an empirically valid conclusion because it relies on an inconsistent method, she would of course not see nude photos of men as being oppressive to particular men she knows, so it is not a view that takes the same conclusions from same data, rather it imposes ideological conclusion on any available dataset.
In reality though, photos don’t oppress anyone, that’s just not what oppression categorically is; rather this is a case of someone equating their personal embarrassment with oppression. This is not dissimilar with, on the other side of the liberal political spectrum, conservatives equating their personal embarrassment with immorality or even sin.
But this is not to say that people *ought* to be expected to tolerate things that make them feel uncomfortable when it impairs their ability to engage in activities that they’re entitled to either. The fact that a creepy guy couldn’t possibly oppress or be in any position to discriminate against a random girl by making some sexual comment as she walks by, does not mean that its perfectly acceptable. It is possible to be chauvinist (or even merely offensive) without being oppressive. It is also perfectly possible to be oppressive and discriminatory along demographic lines, without being personally bigoted towards those demographics. In order to have any politically honest discussion of these concepts and materially different social interactions we need to make these distinctions clear and clarify our vocabulary.
Oppression is not anything that makes a self-defined oppressed group or person feel bad, rather it is the specific disadvantage of the weaker party in a relationship where a real power differential exists. Real power in society is not an abstract thing but something with a specific material basis: organized coercive force. Between states organized coercive force is an issue of military balance, and between individuals within a state (where social oppression takes place), organized coercive force is the understood threat that gives relations based on laws and money power. This is important to remember, in that, when one says that ‘all oppression is really economic oppression’, that is nearly the case in liberal capitalist states because almost all relationships where real power differentials exist are based not laws that enforce unequal relations based on demographics, but on financial relationships that create unequal relations that are then enforced by laws against theft.* Slavery was an oppressive institution because it used state power to enforce an unequal relationship between the slave master and the slave, allowing the slave master to compel their slaves to do things against their will**. The patriarchal family with a husband/father who earns the bulk of the income that supports the wife/mother and their children is also oppressive, because the husband/father’s control of the others finances allows him to make demands more easily since severing the relationship would result in an immediate decline in the standard of living of the dependents, so the dependency creates the potential for coercion (and even polite requests of someone are coercive when they know that they can be compelled).
Discrimination in general is being denied access or services or positions, and when done so on the basis of demographics is social discrimination (which is the only type of discrimination people frequently talk about). There is simply no such thing as “discriminatory” language, this is a misuse of the term or a misunderstanding of the concept; language cannot deny access on its own. Discrimination can be oppressive when it involves real power relations, but it is not necessarily oppressive. For instance, if universities systematically shut people out on an arbitrary basis (such as sex, religion, race, class, etc) they are being truly oppressive if those qualifications are required to attain entry in professions that provide economic advantages. However, if what someone is being shut out of (a golf course, unaccredited Christian “university”, sports team, restroom, nightclub, all-women’s man-hating radical “feminist” caucus, clergy, imperialist special forces unit, muslim women’s swimming session, gay men’s choir, jewish prudish singles speed dating, etc) cannot lead to any financial or otherwise physical disadvantage, it remains discriminatory, and depending on how important it is, a real injustice with a material basis, but it can hardly amount to oppression. Being denied access to a homeless shelter because you’re not a Christian is oppressive (if you’re homeless); being denied access to an unaccredited “university” because you’re not a Christian is probably not oppressive if you have alternatives but its still discriminatory. Not all discrimination is oppressive, and social oppression is a much more fundamentally important problem than non-oppressive forms of discrimination, and while as leftists and materialists we should want to end all forms of arbitrary discrimination, we should not equate discrimination with oppression and instead consider whether or not, and if so where, structural oppression exists within a particular type of discrimination. If one exists than it needs to be understood as a type of oppression, but if none exist than it ought to be funded with public funds (as this amounts to unequal redistribution) but there is also less imperative to surpress it forcefully and other issues like rights of free association and privacy might need to be weighed.
Inequality is the general state of being uneven and in the socially relevant sense it is an uneven distribution of power seen in either an unequal distribution of money or unequal protection under the law. Inequality is different than oppression or discrimination in that oppression and discrimination are what prevents an individual from exercising their personal autonomy and what denies a person access to something in particular, respectively. Inequality however is not about differences in the extent that ones freedom of action is restricted but differences in ones ability to do or have what they want. Everything that is oppressive requires an inequality of power, and everything that is discriminatory entails inequality of access, but not everything that is unequal is either oppressive or discriminatory. For instance, in early capitalism, there is inequality between a bourgeois worth 100 million US dollars in the Canadian toy industry and a bourgeois worth 50 million US dollars in the Japanese decoration industry, in that the Canadian bourgeois can buy more stuff, do more things, have less impediments to what they want to do, than the Japanese bourgeois, however the Canadian bourgeois isn’t oppressing the Japanese bourgeois in any way, nor is the Japanese bourgeois being discriminated against; because they have no financial ties and are in no legal relationship, they don’t really affect the other in any physical way (clearly the situation is more complex in late capitalism, this was just an example to illustrate a point). Inequality is (for leftists anyways) undesirable, and clearly has extensive overlaps with oppression and discrimination, but it is conceptually and categorically distinct and should not be used interchangeably because while oppression and discrimination entail inequality, inequality need not entail oppression and/or discrimination.
Oppression, discrimination, and inequality separate but related concepts, and they have a structural, material basis, and where no material basis exists, the concepts are being misapplied. This is important for Marxists because Marxists understand that what is relevant in history and social structure is the material conditions that exist and not some abstract idealist concepts that are simply imposed on those material conditions. This is often forgotten when people confuse non-material, non-structual concepts found in the thought, speech, and behavior of individuals, for these structural social problems, and this is especially true among liberals and postmodernists who either believe that personal expressions and reactions imply and could only come from underlying structural problems, or they simply equate the two and think that personal thoughts expressions and behaviors amount to social problems. In a lot of ways liberals want to get people to talk about the personal issues rather than the structural issues because they can avoid talking about class that way and this serves to misdirect people to concentrating on things that are comparatively insignificant and
There are a number of concepts that concern categories of interpersonal social interaction that are often conflated with the social structural categories discussed earlier:
Bigotry is personal hatred towards a group of people as a group or to an individual for characteristics that entail or are very closely associated with a category of people rather than what they’ve done as an individual. The context in which racism and homophobia are most often discussed is when they are a type of bigotry. Hate crimes, when they’re truly hate crimes, are motivated by bigotry not by institutional oppression (unless of course, they’re not prosecuted as a result of institutional oppression). Obnoxious comments perceived as racist or homophobic are believed to be racist or homophobic when they’re believed to be motivated by bigotry (or less often prejudiced).
Prejudice assumptions are when someone bases their judgment on someone based on their demographics or group affiliation or other associations rather than anything they’ve gathered from them directly, and the term is almost only used when these assumptions are negative ones. Someone who experiences prejudice need not be experiencing oppression (if power relations aren’t involved) discrimination (if they aren’t being prevented from doing or joining anything) or inequality, or even bigotry if the prejudice isn’t motivated by hatred.
Chauvinism is the implied belief in superiority or superior entitlement of oneself due to group membership or perceived group membership. Most things described as ‘sexist’ are not bigoted or prejudiced but chauvinist. For instance, a creepy old guy who demands attention from younger more attractive girls, cannot be said to be bigoted or prejudiced towards women in general since his behavior isn’t a response to them being female (since he doesn’t respond that way to most women) but to them as individuals but he still feels sexually entitled to harass them even though they clearly wont get anything out of it. This behavior can’t be said to be ‘misogynist’ but rather it is male chauvinist. Likewise many “radical feminists” don’t necessarily say anything negative about men in general (though obviously many of them truly do hate men) but they describe women as morally and/or spiritually superior and elevate (or, ‘celebrate’ I think is the preferred term) their own physical, sexual and social characteristics (take the vagina monologues as an example, its less bigoted towards men as it is female chauvinist). The notion of supporting ‘gay civil unions’ but not ‘gay marriages’ isn’t bigoted or prejudicial against gay people, a real homophobic bigot wouldn’t want gay civil unions either as that clearly condones gay sex, rather the demand for civil unions but not marriage is heterosexual chauvinist in that it requires an acknowledgement of greater centrality for heterosexual relationships. Likewise national pride and patriotism is typically national chauvinism (except in cases where those concepts are defined entirely in opposition to someone elses nation as in the case of colonial nationalism). Among leftists it seems like there is a funny sort of “worker class” chauvinism, where being members of a cultural “class” is seen as morally or politically superior to people in a cultural “middle class” (which, is incredibly silly since both tend to labour aristocrats and not industrial proletariat or bourgeois anyways, in terms of Marxian economics they are probably the same class).
Obviously there is considerable overlap in that a lot of things that are bigoted are also prejudiced and chauvinist, but these are distinct concepts and there are instances where something fits into one category but not the other two. But just because these concepts are not mutually exclusive does not mean they are not distinct.
Because leftists are materialists we know that bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism are irrational, and because leftists seek to reduce or eliminate interpersonal and social alienation (not simply oppression), we believe that bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism are undesirable and that people should be persuaded not to take such positions...but we cannot equate these forms of personal interaction with any of the structural social problems, nor can we assume that they are evidence of structural problems (as there are numerous counterexamples) nor can we declare without explanation that they cause, contribute to or reinforce structural problems as this is idealist. No matter how much someone might think that another group is inferior, that thought cannot magically actualize itself in a groups material inferiority. It is however reasonable to think that while personal bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism does not create, contribute to or ‘reinforce’ social oppression or inequality, oppression creates alienation and bigotry prejudice and chauvinism are symptomatic of alienation...so they may then be symptomatic of oppression...but there are also other reasons why people experience interpersonal alienation that do not necessarily have anything to do with oppression.
When people recognize how these categories are distinct and how they’re related they can also see how they can be dealt with rationally. Oppression in the proper sense is something that needs to be confronted with force, either through legal reform (which is a type of force) or revolutionary violence; for leftists, ending oppression is not only a vital issue it is the totality of our political agenda (the demand for human emancipation, for unexploited labour, is identical to the demand to end all oppression). Discrimination and inequality are also materially alienating so they are problems that need to be confronted where they are serious, but there is not the same imperative or urgency to do so. Bigotry, prejudice and chauvinism however, are clearly undesirable and the reflect poorly on the political and social development of people who engage in them and people need to be educated against them (from a Marxist not liberal perspective) but it would be disproportional to confront them with force because they are not themselves forceful. Thoughts and words should be met with thoughts and words not violence, and utilizing oppression or discrimination to stop bigotry or chauvinism is not an equal trade off.
The problem with talking about sexism, racism rather than patriarchal oppression, gender inequality, male and female chauvinism, sexual bigotry, and racial discrimination, racial inequality, racial chauvinism and racial bigotry, is that the distinctions between the structural and personal are lost and the dialogue is often confused. When deciding on what’s sexist or what’s racist*** or whether something is sexist or racist, the question can either be (and often is) understood either as to whether something is sexist or racist on a structural level or whether something is sexist or racist on a personal level, and to what extent the personal level is a valid one for meaningful and reasonably objective interpretation.****
Given this, I think its important than when considering social issues people learn to disentangle the different categories of social interaction being discussed. Otherwise there is no way to have a conceptually coherent understanding of what is actually going on, and these discussions become matters of whose opinion one prefers rather than what analysis makes the most sense.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*There is of course a major exception to this, in that children are universally oppressed under the law, not merely under financial dependency (although it is of course the incredible extent of their financial dependency that makes their legal oppression possible). Black people and women tend to be more oppressed than white people and men because black people tend to be in lower classes than white people and women tend to be either in a very low class (unpaid domestic labourer) or in a lower class strata than a male to whom they are financially attached, creating a (smaller) but still real power differential...but this doesn’t mean that every black person or every woman is oppressed for being a black person or oppressed for being a woman, because the higher rate of oppression found in black people and women is due to individually negotiated financial relations, not laws applied to the demographics as a whole.
Condi Rice is a full member of the ruling class vastly more powerful than an average white man (or, even an average white male full bourgeois), both because of personal wealth and a privileged relationship to state power, it would be absurd to think that she is somehow oppressed for being black or female, or possibly more oppressed than Madeline Albright as an official of the same status but black, or more oppressed than Colin Powell as an official of the same status but female, because those demographic categories are socially irrelevant when they don’t adversely affect power relations...however the rare independently wealthy unemancipated minors are oppressed for being minors because the state restricts their activities based on demographics not just based on financial relationships correlated to demographics. Likewise all women are oppressed in Saudi Arabia for merely for being women.
** whereas, consensual BDSM “slaves” are not oppressed, even if they want to be, because no power compels them to participate.
*** I wont even go into issues that arise from discussions of ‘what’s homophobic’ since its not clear that there is structural oppression, discrimination or inequality on the basis of sexual orientation in all western countries, except of course with regards to children and teenagers (obviously there is considerable oppression in say, Iran, and discrimination in the United States). There are however, obvious structural reasons why the ruling class would want to encourage heterosexual chauvinism as it promotes the patriarchal family and there are some structural reasons why powerful institutions would want to encourage homophobic bigotry and prejudice; because bourgeois electoral politics depend on people arguing over economically irrelevant issues because they’re all economically on the same side.
****any post-modernists who want to “reject the notion of objective truth” have clearly given up on any serious intellectual and political discourse and an insistence on subjectivity can only lead to, at best, self-serving self-satisfying explanations that are totally unverifiable and therefore irrelevant. Or, worse if they go the rout of assigning privileged positions to certain subjective perspectives, where serious debate is replaced with preaching in the form of a political monologue (such as self-defined ‘oppressed people’, the most hilarious causality loop ever seriously considered in politics, whereby only an oppressed person can tell you what oppression and what should be considered oppression, so the only way you can know who is oppressed is if someone self defines themselves as such, so anyone can participate in the discussion but only if they declare themselves a victim, but if you don’t declare yourself a victim you can’t participate even to scrutinize this process.)