Re: denny's

[kelley <kcwalker@xxxxxxx>]

carrol worries:

>This is circular. Where do those stereotypes come from? I don't
>think you can separate institutional racism from individual attitudes
>this sharply or cleanly. Both need to be historicized.


carrol,  we don't disagree wrt historical materialist analysis or the
connection between beliefs, practices, institutions, social structure.
what's been missed, tho, is that there are two different kinds of
structural racism.  most of the examples andy and katha provided are
systemic, yes.  i'm calling for another approach.  let me illustrate w/ the
following example which you might find trivial but i think it might be
productive as a heuristic device.  i was going to use racial stacking in
baseball but i realized that i was indulging my need to therapeutically
work thru the psychic pain inflicted on me by my son who wondered if i'd
been around to watch the first world series!  but alas i really ought not
use the list for such therapy, it's so borougeois eh yoshie?!  so onward.

recently i read two comments asserting the superiority of certain
approaches to email communication.  someone suggested, quite eloquently,
that using all lower-case letters was a half-baked form of revolution
against the tyranny of capital letters.   another person gently chided a
former listmember for their perrenial typos.

had marta russell been paying attention and concerned enough, she might
have informed us that such claims may be ableist in so far as those 'sins'
might be the result of disabilities like arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome
or learning disorders.   the comments naturalized the superiority of caps
and typo free, grammatically- and style-correct writing.  those  who said
these things weren't being malicious toward the disabled and, in fact, they
may do plenty to promote the disability rights movement.

nonetheless, these two assumptions about capital letters and typo-free
email  sometimes create difficulties in the lives of the disabled.  not
only might such claims hurt and marginalize them, but they may also harm
them materially.  this is b/c it is generally assumed that the disabled
should  compensate for their disability.  they should proof-read more
carefully and purchase software that will enable them to speak instead of
type.  and yet, what goes unquestioned are the very assertions about the
assumed natural benefits of using capitals and avoiding typos.  are
capitals necessary?  in what sense is the insistence on error free typing
necessary to email communication?

the answers to those questions aren't important, the point is the different
inflection  that is demanded.  a similar analysis of structural racism
directs our attention to dominant practices that are assumed to be correct,
natural, good, superior, not harmful to blacks and/or women.   my original
point was not that katha and andy were wrong to point out pervasive,
systemic practices embedded in everyday interactions which reproduce
racism, but rather that i thought the examples didn't capture another kind
of structural racism that i think also needs our attention.

andy, you're right  i mucked things up b/c i was speaking to denny's in so
far as they were exposed as being overtly racist in their organizational
culture.  the systemic nature of racism comes into play when lots of people
act on unspoken racist beliefs like restaurant employees or social workers
when they attend to whites first or, as katha pointed out, who don't work
as hard to assist blacks likely b/c they belief that blacks are less
deserving than whites.  i was wrong to say it's individual-level racism,
even though relying on and perpetuating racist beliefs and practices.

when i say that some oppressions operate today without any direct
connection to racializing or sexist beliefs i am offering an historical
materialist analysis.  futhermore, i am asking that we direct our
attention, our anlayses, and thus our consideration of political practices
toward the ways in which groups achieve and continually sustain their
hegemony by upholding the naturalness of certain social practices.
illustrations that i've already given which don't depend, today, on racist
stereotypes in order to be perpetuated would include:

1.  the assumption that IQ and SAT scores reflect intelligence and ability
to do college level work.  Even when attempts are made to attend to racial
and gender bias in these testing, the assumption that tests are 'good'
things is still a problem, imo.
2.  even when uni's give less weight to standardized testing and gpa's,
they often assume that other criteria such as student involvement in
extracurricular activities like sports, student gov't, volunteer work makes
them well-rounded people who will contibute to campus culture.
3.  the assumption that there is a relationship between student
intelligence/competence/ability and the prestige of uni institution.  the
assumption, indeed, that college education is an indicator of potential
ability on the job when in fact so much of our job skills are obtained
through o.j.t.
4.  the assumption that standard english ought to be taught and those who
excel at using standard english are more intelligent and better educated
than those who don't excel.
5.  the assumption that managerial competence can be measured by cultural
capital which, for mgrs, is a proxy for quality of education and "good" and
"decent" family background.
6.  the widespread use of networks in hiring practices.

all of the above largely originate in and were designed to perpetuate
racist/sexist beliefs.  today, though, they no longer depend on
racist/sexist beliefs necessarily.  they have become embedded in
institutions/ practices which uphold and assume norms about what makes for
a 'good' student or employee.  yes,  the above contribute to the
perpetuation of racism, racist beliefs and racist stereotypes because they
mean that fewer people of color are accepted at prestigious unis and/or
hired in professional/mangerial jobs.  but the above, today, aren't
necessarily practices with the intention of harming white women and men and
women of color nor need anyone be racist/sexist in order to engage those
practices.  indeed, they might even believe that the above are objectively
good things for all sorts of reasons that need not be racist/sexist.

wojtek can correct me if i'm wrong, but i've always assumed that this is
what he's meant by his claims that 1. racism has taken on a decidedly
different character today than that in the past and 2. that our efforts
ought to concentrate on zeroing in on ways to address the material basis of
racism and sexism.