[Peace-discuss] [sftalk] The seduction of Neoliberal "anti-racism"

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Perhaps these remarks will encourage more of our friends to read Walter Benn Michaels; a recent interview is linked below. 

His account of the discussion of race and its relation to neoliberalism - beginning with his 2006 book, "The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality" - seems to me far from nonsense, much less "ridiculous on its face," as inequality in America grows at an accelerating pace. He's certainly right that we need to ask questions other than, "What color are the rich kids?"

<http://jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/>

--CGE

On Jul 12, 2013, at 8:16 PM, "Roediger, David R" <droedige at illinois.edu> wrote:

> No brief on these matters for Tim Wise and I've never, minus  15 minutes of love for Harold Washington, supported a Democrat in my life, least of all these ones now on offer. (Nor it seems necessary to add in this context, a Republican). But the Benn Michaels nonsense that talk about white supremacy is now mainly just a prop for neoliberalism is ridiculous on its face. E.G.
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/12-2
> and
> http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bet.com/news/national/2012/05/16/photo-what-if-trayvon-were-white/_jcr_content/featuredMedia/newsitemimage.newsimage.dimg/051612-national-trayvon-martin-what-if-he-was-white.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bet.com/news/national/2012/05/16/photo-what-if-trayvon-were-white.html&h=353&w=628&sz=104&tbnid=t5BEq7w52KeWpM:&tbnh=69&tbnw=122&zoom=1&usg=__v593iHaWu3OewaIzpgaRWQTxGzg=&docid=bZ_EWLaxQmhcHM&sa=X&ei=kKjgUdWlMq254AP93oFo&ved=0CEwQ9QEwBg&dur=2979
> 
> freedom now, dave roediger
> 
> From: sftalk at yahoogroups.com [sftalk at yahoogroups.com] on behalf of C. G. Estabrook [carl at newsfromneptune.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2013 12:40 PM
> To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net
> Cc: sftalk at yahoogroups.com; <occupycu at lists.chambana.net>
> Subject: [sftalk] The seduction of Neoliberal "anti-racism"
> 
>  
> Champaign-Urbana's local anti-war group, AWARE, has been from its founding a dozen years ago concerned with racism (AWARE = Anti-war Anti-racism Effort), principally for three reasons:
> 
> [1] the overt and covert employment of racism - anti-Arab, anti-Iranian, and anti-Muslim [sic] - by the Bush-Obama administration in order to build support within the US public for imperial war in the 'Greater Middle East'; 
> 
> [2] US support for Israel, a state based on racism, as its "cop on the beat" in the generations-long American attempt to dominate Mideast energy resources; and 
> 
> [3] the US economic draft ("volunteer army") - instituted after the revolt of the US conscript army in Vietnam - which coerces into a criminal war a disproportionate number of non-white Americans.
> 
> But the rise in the 1970s of 'Identity Politics' - parallel to and connected with Neoliberalism, the counter-attack by the 1% on social progress in the US from the New Deal to 'the Sixties' - has led today to a reactionary anti-racism. Here John Halle anatomizes a few of its practitioners - race-fakers who might be compared to the labor-fakers of the Great Depression:
> 
> <http://lbo-news.com/2013/07/12/1938/#comment-9643>.
> 
> With thanks to Doug Henwood's LBO News. --CGE