[Peace-discuss] Anti-racism

[C. G. Estabrook]

I get something because my Irish great-grandfather was an exploited laborer in
19c. Pennsylvania?

There is (practically) no legal discrimination or popular prejudice against
Irish-Americans today (altho' I could tell you stories from New England...).


Robert Naiman wrote:
> I have no problem with making a distinction between legal structures and 
> popular attitudes. I was making a different point: that the categories of 
> "legal structures" and "popular attitudes" don't cover "racism," unless one 
> expands the categories of "legal structures" and "popular attitudes" to 
> include the absence of redress, since there are tendencies for disparities 
> created in the past to be self-perpetuating, even in the absence of legal 
> discrimination and popular prejudice.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 2:53 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> 
> wrote:
>> It's worthwhile to distinguish between legal structures and popular 
>> attitudes, even if there are areas where they shade into one another (e.g.,
>>  the non-enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, or prejudicial police 
>> practice). The same is true of night and day.
>> 
>> The civil rights movement ended legal segregation and contributed to 
>> conscientization of some regarding racial prejudice. For others, it 
>> increased racial prejudice (e.g., whites who concluded "the government does
>>  everything for black people!").
>> 
>> The latter reaction was encouraged by the long-standing elite strategy of 
>> playing upon divisions in the working class -- and race was always a potent
>>  division, as limited success of 20th-century union organizing in the South
>>  shows.
>> 
>> Jay Gould, American financier at the turn of the last century, remarked, "I
>>  can always hire one-nalf of the American working class to kill the other 
>> half."  He was not referring specifically to race, but it helped. --CGE
>> 
>> 
>> Robert Naiman wrote:
>>> "legal" seems too narrow. economic discrimination can persist in the 
>>> absence of laws enforcing discrimination. in fact, discrimination can 
>>> persist without being strongly reinforced by censorious attitudes, 
>>> through customs and practices that may seem nominally neutral but have 
>>> the effect of reproducing existing disparities.
>>> 
>>> for example: a legacy of British colonial policies in Northern Ireland 
>>> was that Protestant workers disproportionately held factory jobs. a 
>>> foreman comes before the workers and says,"we have a few openings." 
>>> workers tell friends, neighbors, cousins. as a result, the applicant pool
>>>  is all Protestants, and only Protestants get the jobs. no law said only 
>>> Protestants would get the jobs. and censorious attitudes didn't have to 
>>> be particularly strong for people to spread the news to their social 
>>> circles which happened to be overwhelmingly Protestant. in such a 
>>> situation, you would need affirmative action for redress. it isn't 
>>> sufficient to say, there are no discriminatory laws, and the censorious 
>>> attitudes aren't so bad.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 8:23 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> 
>>> wrote:
>>>> [Racism refers to legal structures that penalize groups defined by 
>>>> descent. Racial prejudice refers to censorious attitudes towards groups
>>>>  defined by descent.  Both are present in Israel. Racism, but not
>>>> racial prejudice, is now largely absent in the US (altho' some, like
>>>> native Americans, may justly not think so).  --CGE]
>>>> 
>>>> March 4, 2009 SEGREGATION IN ISRAEL
>>>> 
>>>> Israeli Association for Civil Rights
>>>> 
>>>> Some 55 percent of Jewish Israelis say that the state should encourage
>>>>  Arab emigration;
>>>> 
>>>> 78 percent of Jewish Israelis oppose including Arab parties in the 
>>>> government;
>>>> 
>>>> 56 percent agree with the statement that 'Arabs cannot attain the 
>>>> Jewish level of cultural development'
>>>> 
>>>> 75 percent agree that Arabs are inclined to be violent. Among 
>>>> Arab-Israelis, 54 percent feel the same way about Jews.
>>>> 
>>>> 75 percent of Israeli Jews say they would not live in the same building
>>>>  as Arabs.
>>>> 
>>>> http://prorev.com/2009/03/segregation-in-israel.html 
>>>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing 
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>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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