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I often hear of how iraq is called a racist war well from what i can see iraq has nothing to do with race its about money. Slavery of Africans was not done out of racism but out of geography the first slaves in the new world were natives or white the idea of white sepremicy came from the capitalists need to seperate the working class the point is racism has never been about race ist about money.
We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can't stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the October Revolution.” -James P. Cannon.
http://www.themilitant.com/
Taking people out of Africa was based on race. The settlers in the United States could not use white slaves because they could walk away and not be noticed. The Native Americans knew the land to well. Africans, because of their skin color, could easily be noticed if they were to run off the plantation.
Yeh, not to mention it was easy to present them as 'savages' and 'primitives' because msot people at the time were too ognorant to know better.
I think though reds point is that they weren't doing it because they werent taking slaves because they were black. They were taking slaves becuase they watned them on the plantaition to make money.
In what relations do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
-Karl Marx
It is only by strengthening ourselves ideologically, inculcating in ourselves the values and ideals of the struggle and building up the ranks of the revolutionary party that we will make it.
- Ta Power
Yes and no. I think what you said about racism as a tool to divide working class is right-on, but I think there's also an ideological reason behind racism... you can't write the bill of rights and still support slavery without first dehumanizing black slaves.
Modern rascism is similar: they want to project capitalism as a meritocracy, so how do you explain all the poor people? It must be their fault if this is a meritocracy so it must be that mullets on white people make them poor and corn-rows on black people make them poor and so on. That's a slight exaggeration, but the most accepted and common racist steryotype is that poor proplr (especially poor blacks) are poor because their "culture" makes them lazy or prevents them from "picking themselves up by the bootstraps".
With the war, I think that racism was an important part of how the government tried to sell the war and is stil a basis for their explainations of "staying the course". Even liberals will say "you can't 'cut and run'" because of racist assumptions that Iraqis are incappable of governing themselves.
Additionally, "racial profiling" of arabs is a huge part of the "war on terror". In addition to that is anti-islamic sentiments that are accepted.
I don't think you can seperate the war in Iraq or the "war on terror" from racism because they are interlinked. And since racism against arabs became more or less mainstream and acceptable, it has oppened the floodgates of racism against other groups.
I feel racism has gotten much worse since "the war on terror" and the results are the mainstreaming of anti-immigrent groups like the minutemen who justify being the KKK of the border by saying that "terrorists" are trying to come through Mexico.
When you have a capitalist nation like the US that claims to uphold bourgois ideals and rights, but then there are glareing gaps where these rights don't apply, then racism is the first tool our rulers employ to try and cover up that gap and place blame on the victims themselves: all men are created equal except for these people because their religion, genes, or culture prevent them from being equal.
Wasnt it also because the black man, as in the African race were physically stronger than the Indians? Them being send to America wasnt just only because their skin would be noticable, but also because of their strenght. Which makes me curious...why werent there large numbers of black slaves employed in Europe itself?
"Tell your mom, that your joining the Nation of Islam and that you can no longer associate yourself with her, see how she reacts to that."
-Codyvo
"The kids may go hungry...but the village priest always eats well."
-redstar2000
I don't think it was physical strength that necisarrily made the slave-trade... if that were the goal, cramming a ship for the middle passage was a poor choice because slaves undoubtedly were much worse off physically when they arrived.
I think it's probably closer to what someone else said:
1) European endentured servants could run away and be identified and they wern't very cost effective because you didn't own their offspring and you had to let them go when the contract was up.
2)Native americans were used in many places at first, but they were dieing from old-world diseases and could run away or other native americans could attack the colonizers and free the Natives who were being forced into labor.
3) Africans didn't speak the language, were put together with other people of different cultures and languages and were taken away from anyplace resembling their home, so they were totally vunerable and defenseless in the New World... or moreso than whites and natives anyway.
Of corse, no repression or opression can happen without resistance and african slaves still ran away and created maroon colonies or joined native american tribes or had all-out revolutions like in Haiti.
Slaves wen't used as much in europe because there was already an impoverished labor force there. In order to get people to do sh**ty work, basically for free, they needed no alternatives. Where would a european surf or apprentice run to? Where would an african run to in a land he wasn't familiar with?
The Road Not Taken by Lerone Benner, i was just reading that
I have to say, your comments seem extremely ignorant. Slavery was definately based on race, with the beliefs that Africans were somehow 'inferior' to Europeans and therefore should be subjected to extremely poor living conditions and back breaking labor (not to mention the torture and deaths aboard the ships and when they got there). It wasn't based on geography, it was based on ones' skin color. The capitalist may have his hands in other things, but I think racism was born out of extreme human ignorance and intolerance.
It's easy to see
Evil as entity
Not as condition
Inside you and me
-Eugene Hutz
i totally agree
May I point out that the many of the slaves were made slaves by other african tribes. I would also like to show some examples of my theroy from a later time around 1870-1910
there were many attempts to disenfrachise blacks in this time period now since the US constitution bans this they had to be very sneeky passing literacy laws and what not howerver many of these laws were not just for blacks but also poor whites which was a common idea in the high class former slave owning societys this shows there true agenda not race sepremacy but class sepremacy. Now I am not saying that racism does not exist I am sure that many of the the ruling class whites and unfortunatly lower class whites had actual racist feeling towards black,hispanics,natives,ect.
We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can't stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the October Revolution.” -James P. Cannon.
http://www.themilitant.com/
Rascism is more of a capitalist conspiracy to get us to seperate ourselves and I also believe that other races just use it as an excuse as to why the majority of their people are in poverty or why they are in a particular situation
It is not a conspiracy first off, it's not some sort of boogeyman or Big Foot. It is a real thing that happens everyday to a lot of people all over. And yes, while it may be overused at times, it is not the reason why a "majority of their people" are in poverty. I'm not sure who "those people" you are reffering to, but in America you can easily see who is the poorest because they have always been at the bottom. It is not their fault that this country did to them what they did and never gave them anything for it and why they have never really been to intrested in making them equals or even semi-equals to the majority of the country.
Racism is a real thing, and sadly, I hear more people complaing that it is being overused and misused that they ignore when it really exists and how it is effecting millions of people everyday.
But tell me, since being discriminated against because of your skin is a myth, why are those people in poverty? Because they like it?
This is shows one of the majory problems of the capitalist system it take money to make money and the newly freed slaves hade non now neather do there decendants who still belong to the pooer class which is often the most exploted.
We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can't stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the October Revolution.” -James P. Cannon.
http://www.themilitant.com/
The Iraq war is basically about controlling the global oil supply, but it's justified by racism. Similarly, slavery was fundamentally about making money, but it was justified by racism.
Different biological "races" don't exist. There's one race--the human race.
Racism, however, is ALIVE AND WELL.
Racism is the idea that one group of people is biologically or culturally superior to another group. In the US, racism takes the form of white chauvinism.
Where does racism come from? If you ask the liberals, they'll say that racism comes from ignorance and intolerance, and that the way to overcome it is through education. Some even go as far as to say that racism is eternal--that it's natural for human beings to hate what's different.
What Marxists understand is that racism, like any other idea, is not natural. It arises a material base: real economic and political inequalities between nations, which are the result of colonialism and imperialism.
The oppression of Black people in the US can't be reduced a "race" issue (though racism is used by the white oppressor nation as an ideological justification).
It's a national-colonial issue. African American people are an oppressed NATION in the southern Black Belt and a national minority in the rest of the country. When people compare New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to Haiti or Palestine, it's much more than an analogy.
"I learned during [the fight against the colonial war in Algeria] that political conviction is not a question of numbers, of majority. Because at the beginning of the Algerian war, we were really very few against the war. It was a lesson for me; you have to do something when you think it's a necessity, when it's right, without caring about the numbers." - Alain Badiou
were they slaves or prisoners of war? there's a difference.
I belive it was a mixture of both. lets get away from slavery for the moment one of the tactics becoming popular for the ruling class these days is the idea of convinsing people that there is reverse descrimanation that the evil black man hates you becase your white is this a fair veiw of whats happening in the west.
We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can't stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the October Revolution.” -James P. Cannon.
http://www.themilitant.com/
