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

[Mike Lehman]

Carl,
So you've got the state and the individual covered. I guess there's 
nothing else involving humans that's relevant here???

How about culture, custom, economics, social structures, education, even 
class, which you seem to elevate in importance over everything else, but 
which seems very difficult to interrogate in a strict state vs 
individual dichotomy? Personally, I'm not going to bother picking out 
any one of these as more important, given we're dealing with the 
complexity of humans. And maybe I'm a bit picky about your reducing 
everything to gov't and individuals because I'm a historian, but I think 
your definitional discourse leaves out far more than it explains.

As for racism being different than two generations back, I suspect you 
live in a more sheltered world than mine. In fact I know that's so, if 
you define racism as solely the official expression of racial prejudice. 
Yep, no more Jim Crow, and that made things all better and post-racial 
exactly how? Anyone who thinks that was the last step and not the first 
in defeating racism is living on a different planet than I am. The only 
difference I see is in the subtlety of expressing racism, but my 
definition is far broader than your conveniently constrained one. I 
don't expect gov't to stamp out what you characterize as a "thought 
crime" -- I suppose because the only way you seem to consider it as 
thinking. People can think all they want, but once they start 
communicating and acting to foster and encourage their racial 
prejudices, then I think there is plenty of room for gov't to 
legitimately act.

BTW, I'm aware of your diverse family and feel they must love you a lot, 
given they know your propensity to stir up ire for the sole purpose of 
engaging in conversation. I suspect that many of those reading your 
missives before and in the future are not. They'll draw their 
conclusions based on a more spare set of facts about you, where I am 
inclined to at least give you the benefit of the doubt when I see you 
parading in public with your head in your posterior from your own unique 
spin on things.

Frankly, I tire of your tendentious and tangential  lack of engagement 
with the concerns of those around you, not to mention your rather 
stunning lack of political tact given your passionate feelings that 
things should somehow be persuaded to come out different. It's not a 
mark of moral certainty, rather a symptom of self-defeating political 
dysfunction. You know where you want to go, but I think your moral GPS 
has some rather unfortunate glitches that take you down some rather 
bizarre paths, distracting you from the possibility of ever arriving at 
your destination. Mostly I skim the Subject line and the first few 
sentences and decide it's not worth the struggle to respond. But if you 
really believe what you say about racism, there's obviously no help 
needed here from me. You're a lost cause more in love with the argument 
than with the reality all around us.
Mike

On 7/24/2013 8:46 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 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.
>
> SNIP
> 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).
>
> SNIP
>
> 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
>
>
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