Re: denny's

[Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kelley,

If one person doesn't seat blacks because he hates them, then this is an
example of individual expression of racial prejudice-discrimination, sure.
My grandfather didn't come out of the basement when we brought black
friends over for dinner. He was a bigot. But if restaurants the country
over give priority seating and service to whites then this is structural.
That is what I am talking about. Just because there is some level of
intentionality--which I already stressed there sometimes is--my argument
about structure is not in danger. After all, people aren't ants. What
definition of "structure" are you operating with? Could you provide the
list with an example of something that is patterned and systematic that is
not structural. This is sort of a trick question since structure is
defined as patterned and systematic thought or behavior. But I would
still be interested in understanding what definitions you are operating
with since you did claim that my argument (which is the standard one)
contradicts "every definition of structure you have ever seen."

We might want to emphasize at this point, before we disappear into some
abstract realm, that individual expressions of racial prejudice and
discrimination are tied to the structures that form individuals and their
expressions. What are individual thought and action shorn of the social
forces and situations in which they are expressed? Empty abstractions. The
individual level does not operate independent of the structural level.
Your language, Kelley, appears to reify the conceptual apparatus bourgeois
social scientists use to explain social phenomena. That is what I am
criticizing. Why is my critique wrong?

Andy Austin