[Peace-discuss] [Discuss] [sf-core] Fwd: yesterday's article on massive racial inequality in wealth

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

It's been suggested that "racism" be distinguished from "(racial) prejudice" - 
the former referring to legal structures and the latter to social attitudes. 
Thus Israel is a racist state, in that people have substantial legal privileges 
based on descent; South Africa used to be a racist state but is no longer. But 
prejudice in both states has probably waxed and waned as a complex social 
phenomenon.  (You'd get varying answers over time to the questions, "Do you hate 
Arabs/Jews?"; "Do you hate blacks/whites?")

The recent conflation of race, class, and gender - the suggestion that they 
"can't be separated" - has probably contributed to muddled thinking about all 
three.

For example, one would think that the election of a "mixed-race" president (the 
term already has something of an archaic quality to it) would work against the 
reification of race in the US. (Is BHO black or white?)  But instead liberals 
are insisting on the essentialization of the categories - now capitalized Black 
and White - in order to have a self-protective account of social conflict:  it's 
all racism...

(BTW it might be noted that, if Obama is in any way descended from slaves, it's 
not on his father's [Black] side but on his mother's [White] side. His father's 
Luo people seem never to have been slaves, but his maternal 
great-great-great-grandfather was - as an Irish indentured servant.)

Neoliberalism - the ideological and political counterattack against the social 
upheaval of the third quarter of the 20th century - has been in place in the US 
for a generation, dominating "both" political parties.  It's the genius of 
neoliberalism to suppress all but incidental reference to class while insisting 
that inequalities in society - of the sort you eloquently describe - are owing 
to prejudice.


On 5/22/10 12:08 AM, Marti Wilkinson wrote:
> You simply can't use the very small baby steps that have been accomplished by
> the civil rights and other movements to pooh-pooh the very real social
> constructions that class, privilege, and racism still play in society. It's
> about as ignorant as suggesting that the abolition of slavery somehow
> magically translated into equal treatment for free blacks. It was a
> progressive step, but the racism surfaced in other ways such as in the rise
> of the KKK. Now we have conservatives who are forming tea parties and
> targeting organizations like ACORN. How much funding did ACORN lose as a
> result of some selective editing of video and a full scale witch hunt by the
> GOP?  Perhaps it's easy to ignore what some conservatives are advocating in
> the form of "citizenship" tests (not unlike the old literacy tests of Jim
> Crow) so people can earn the right to vote?
>
> If you really believe that we need to give class constructions more
> consideration than issues of racism then you are fooling yourself. As
> Roediger and others have pointed out racism and class-ism cannot be
> separated. California's proposition 209, which was an anti-affirmative action
> measure, garnered a lot of support from white women. Proponents of
> proposition 8 have worked hard on appealing to both Black and Hispanic
> demographics. We can look at the lessons of history from when former
> indentured servants were convinced that freeing blacks would threaten their
> own standing in the American colonies. How about when Native Americans were
> richly rewarded for returning runaway slaves to the plantations? What
> policies that prevented free blacks from traveling in Native American
> territory? It wasn't that many generations ago that it was illegal for a
> person who had dark skin to be able to read and write, now Arizona wants to
> ban ethnic studies programs.
>
> Fast forward to today....how many black people have lost their homes due to
> predatory lending practices? It's just another version of the same financial
> practices from the 30's and 40's that encouraged 'white flight' and resulted
> in segregated communities. How many white kids in Champaign have been issued
> citations for public spitting or have gotten stopped for walking on the
> street? What about the population of Blacks and Latinos in the prison systems
> instead of the justice system? A white kid attending the U of I who is caught
> with a bag of weed may be charged with a felony, while a black kid on the
> "north end" is likely going to face felony charges. Having a female
> representing this county as the States Attorney sure hasn't helped much in
> that regards. The power structures in this society depend on racial
> inequities in many ways in order to sustain itself.
>
> Speaking of war, African Americans are still the most heaving targeted
> demographic for military equipment. Now, if racism really wasn't as bad as it
> used to be then AWARE (Anti War Anti Racism Effort) could just simply be in
> AWE (Anti War Effort).
>
> If racism really wasn't as bad as it used to be then there would be as many
> African Americans, Latinos, and Women pursuing PhD's and directing the
> curriculum in university environments. I've heard from people who have taught
> at the U of I that the institution can be a hostile work environment for
> minorities and it's no picnic to be a part of the system of higher education
> there. But, since black students are now allowed to live south of University
> Avenue it can be argued that racism at the U of I really isn't as bad as it
> used to be.
>
> I guess we can take these small baby steps as a sign that things really
> aren't as racist or sexist as it used to be. After all, only in the United
> States can we have a Phyllis Schlafly clone as a vice presidential candidate,
> and Hillary Clinton (who only took her spouses name /after/ he entered
> politics) as a presidential candidate. On her own two feet I doubt that
> Hillary would have even managed to have gotten a senate seat, or have been
> considered as a potentially viable candidate for the democratic nomination.
> HRC's "power" comes from her association with a powerful man, but since
> sexism really isn't as bad as it used to be then I guess we can forget that
> little fact.
>
> Having been brought up during the 1970's and 1980's I certainly was taught
> that the civil rights and the feminist movements gave both people of color
> and women an amazing range of choices that had been previously closed to
> them. Jim Crow was just one of those chapters in the history of the USA that
> happened  before my father had lustful thoughts towards my mother.  I am
> perhaps amongst the first generation of women who were raised to be something
> other than wives and mothers. But I also have seen my fair share of gender
> discrimination, and sometimes I wonder if things will be much better for my
> own daughter.
>
> I have also seen how some of my black neighbors have been treated by members
> of the local police department, and I can't dismiss the death of a 15 year
> old boy as being something that resulted from the 'accidental' discharge of
> an officers weapon. Why is it that when the wife of surgeon brutally stabbed
> her two boys, the police response did not involve the use of a SWAT team?
> However, the SWAT team came out to my neighborhood and blocked off a
> significant portion of the area, in response to a suicidal black man with a
> gun. I live one block south of where Mr. Stewart took his life. I know
> someone, who has a daughter working in law enforcement, who noted that if
> Ellen Feinberg had been a black woman on the North End her ass would probably
> be sitting on death row. But since things aren't as bad as they used to be I
> suppose we don't have to consider these things at all.
>
> The comfortable thing for me to do would be to sit on my laurels and look at
> history and contemplate how much 'better' things are today in regards to
> gender and race. Unfortunately, some semblance of critical thinking usually
> gets the better of me.
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 8:17 PM, C. G. ESTABROOK <cge at shout.net
> <mailto:cge at shout.net>> wrote:
>
> If the US were "still just as racist as it was 40 years ago" BHO would never
> have been elected president; if it were just as sexist, Clinton and Palin
> would never have been serious candidates.
>
> You can't simply ignore two generations of victories by the civil rights and
> related movements.
>
> At a time when class difference in the US is as high as it’s been in the last
> hundred years, we’re being urged not to talk about what we never talk about
> (the inequalities produced by capitalism) and to talk lots more about what we
> always talk about (the inequalities produced by racism). Why?
>
> One answer, of course, is the absolutely central role race and racism have
> played in our history. But it’s not a very good answer. The growing (and
> accelerating) inequalities of the last 40 years were not caused by racism and
> the catastrophic consequences of the current crash will not be alleviated by
> anti-racism.
>
> Neoliberalism has quite brilliantly encouraged the response to more
> inequality to be a call for more diversity; neoliberalism insists that the
> only inequalities we need to do anything about are the ones produced by
> prejudice. Whose purposes does that serve?
>
>
> On 5/21/10 1:25 PM, Marti Wilkinson wrote:
>
> /Defenders of the administration (and its filthy war) are eager to brand its
>
> critics as racists. If they all aren't racists, then their complaints that
> Obama is working against the popular interest and for an economic elite - on
> the war, on healthcare, on the banks, etc. - might not be able to be
> dismissed so easily./
>
>
> Where did I defend the administrations involvement in the war in my previous
> statement?  What I'm SAYING is the US is still just as racist as it was 40
> years ago, but it surfaces in far more subtle ways. I haven't read the
> latest by Roediger, but there is a book called "The wages of whiteness: Race
> and the making of the American working class" which also addresses both race
> and class. There is also "Whiteness: The communication of social identity"
> edited by Thomas Nakayama and Judith Martin and that is also a good
> resource.
>
> FYI: Greg Brown was developmentally disabled and one of the things that does
> not get discussed is how often the mentally and developmentally disabled can
> be harassed/mistreated by police officers.  My brother is disabled and, when
> he was younger, he was targeted by a police officer until my father
> confronted the cop and put a stop to it. Mr. Brown could very well have been
> my brother.
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 11:25 AM, C. G. ESTABROOK <cge at shout.net
> <mailto:cge at shout.net> <mailto:cge at shout.net <mailto:cge at shout.net>>> wrote:
>
> Are you *denying* that "US society is much less racist - and much more
> unequal - than it was 40 years ago"?
>
> Defenders of the administration (and its filthy war) are eager to brand its
> critics as racists. If they all aren't racists, then their complaints that
> Obama is working against the popular interest and for an economic elite - on
> the war, on healthcare, on the banks, etc. - might not be able to be
> dismissed so easily.
>
>
>
> On 5/21/10 10:53 AM, Marti Wilkinson wrote:
>
> "US society is much less racist - and much more unequal - than it was 40
> years ago"
>
> http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/a-critique-of-walter-benn-michaels/
>
>  I really think a lot of white intellectuals like Walter Benn Michaels are
> truly out of touch with the way things are in this culture today. While we do
> have a black president, we also have a tea party and birther movement that
> reflects the ingrained racism that is still prevalent today. The problem with
> focusing on class differences alone is it gives white self-described liberals
> a free pass to avoid looking at how their own whiteness (and privilege),
> plays a role here.
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 10:36 AM, C. G. ESTABROOK <cge at shout.net
> <mailto:cge at shout.net> <mailto:cge at shout.net <mailto:cge at shout.net>>
> <mailto:cge at shout.net <mailto:cge at shout.net> <mailto:cge at shout.net
> <mailto:cge at shout.net>>>> wrote:
>
> US society is much less racist - and much more unequal - than it was 40 years
> ago.
>
> In 1970 the election of a black president was unthinkable, but in that year
> the distribution of wealth (Gini index) was at its least unequal in the 20th
> century. Today it's back to where it was in the late 1920s, and the
> concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands is not only continuing but
> accelerating.
>
> "...anti-racism today performs at least one of the same functions that racism
> used to — it gives us a vision of our society as organized racially instead
> of economically — while adding another function — it insists that racism is
> the great enemy to be overcome. But all the anti-racism in the world won't
> take any money away from the rich and won't give any of it to the poor."
> [Walter Benn Michaels]
>
>
>
> On 5/21/10 9:47 AM, Ricky Baldwin wrote:
>
>
>
> Very interesting article. Good points. It's always good for Americans to see
> this kind of discussion and realize we don't do too well when it comes to
> this kind of basic economic "fairness," no matter how much the blowhards talk
> about the "land of opportunity." Our system just doesn't serve most people
> too well - but then, we know that. It's just good to have the numbers.
>
> On the numbers, I have to take issue with the "typical" white/black family
> stats, though - and not just to be picky with words. I think it gives a false
> impression.
>
> The article doesn't say, but if what's meant is "average" (mean) then it
> isn't "typical" at all in an economy with vast inequalities like the kind
> described in the article. We can, and do (as the article points out), have a
> small number of extremely wealthy people and a huge number of people
> essentially left out of that massive accumulation. What that amounts to is
> the "average" (mean) is skewed upwards - making it look like more people are
> better off than we are.
>
> "Typical" here could also be median, a.k.a. the middle number if you arrange
> all the wealth from highest to lowest, but I doubt it. It seems too high
> given the inequality the article describes. Even if so, I'd argue that if the
> range of wealth is very wide, then the median isn't very "typical" either.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something. I'm not 100% awake yet.
>
> Ricky
>
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>
>

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