[Peace-discuss] [sftalk] Re: Racism and sexism [CORRECT URL]

[C. G. Estabrook]

Mike--

Unless we distinguish between racism as (a) a structure of law and government, and (b) popular attitudes, it's difficult to describe what the Civil Rights movement accomplished. You and others have suggested that racial prejudice among whites in America is not substantially today different from what it was two generations ago. 

But of course the Civil Rights movement did have great success in removing the "legal racism" of school segregation and the programmatic exclusion of blacks from voting rolls. The success of Nelson Mandela in South Africa is even more striking, in removing the legal structure of apartheid - although there's no proof that there's been a sea-change in the attitudes of white South Africans.    

On the other hand, Israel would remain a (legally) racist state - "the state of the Jewish people worldwide" - regardless of the attitudes of Israeli Jews toward Arabs. (Of course, a vast change in those attitudes might eventually lead to a change in the legal basis of the state, but I don't think we can expect that any time soon: I expect Israel to remain a racist state in both senses, while modern South Africa is so in only one.) 

This distinction - similar I think to the one made in the article cited below - may seem like "faux-intellectual drivel," but it makes a difference whether "fighting racism" is seen as changing laws and governmental practice - or unleashing the diction- and thoughtcrime-police to stamp out racist attitudes (at which you seem to agree they've been singularly unsuccessful).

Then there's the further and perhaps greater problem described by W. Benn Michaels, Adolph Reed, the Fields sisters et al. Can we really accept the growing (and accelerating) economic inequality in America - if and only if the ratio of blacks to whites among the 1% is the same as that among the 99%? (See Walter Benn Michaels, "The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality.") Benn Michaels maddens some who "think of themselves as being on the Left, and they think it’s especially inappropriate for people to come along and tell them that the thing they like best about themselves, their anti-racism, is not in and of itself a left-wing commitment." But I think he's correct.  

I have of course personal reasons to be opposed to racism in all its forms, as I am: half of my family is black. And that's one of the reasons I think we should think about it seriously - politically and historically.

Regards, Carl 


On Jul 24, 2013, at 7:35 AM, Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 
> Carl wrote:
> "...racism - taken to refer to legal and governmental practice..."
> 
> Well, maybe by you -- and a whole bunch of Republicans and Libertarians who don't really want to have an honest discuss about race at all. 
> 
> So I guess you've joined that crowd by embracing an implicit association with it? I'm not sure who you believe is persuaded by such faux-intellectual drivel, but your assertion that racism is an entirely gov't-sponsored project was only possible to even fake beginning with Jim Crow and, thus, is laughable. 
> 
> I know we've had discussions about your ahistoricality before, so I'm sure you'll have some interesting spin on how I'm wrong in coming to the conclusion that you should stay away from invoking anything with much of a history to it given it seems to only weaken the basis for your argument when you do.
> Mike
> 
> On 7/23/2013 1:47 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> Thea article appears at <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/07/201371483756428989.html>.
>> 
>> 
>> On Jul 23, 2013, at 1:19 PM, "C. G. Estabrook" <carl at newsfromneptune.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> "Are Arabs sexist? The institutions, perhaps, but not the people
>>> Institutions, and not popular beliefs, cause the political and economic inequalities faced by women in the Arab world."
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The distinction offered here between "institutions and power relations" on the one hand, and "popular preferences" on the other, is parallel to that proposed between racism - taken to refer to legal and governmental practice - and racial prejudice. 
>>> 
>>> The former refers to the crimes of public policy - the latter to thought-crimes - and so the former is far easier to eliminate. 
>>> 
>>> --CGE   
>>