Re: denny's

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxx>]

kelley, i do not want to test my luck with overposting, but i try...  (in
case i'm yanked off this list, i cc you a copy directly)


you write:

>NO KIDDING?!!!!!   i am simply at a loss as to why we have to explain this
>on a marxist-FEMINIST list.  this is such a standard feminist critique of
>structured gender inequality that i'm just floored that anyone questioned
>it.  so i have to wonder what is at stake.


are there any agreed upn standards among free wheeling lefties? no
third-person guessing what the writer meant to say?  rather than making
those dubious assumptions, i'd rather explicitly say what i think - sorry
for being such a vulgar literalist...



>NO KIDDING!!!!!  but where i take exception with you is that we can call
>these racializing systems of inequality.  {NOT stratification doug b/c that
>has a structural-functionalist history bad bad bad].  in real stark terms,
>then:  1 as capitalism undergoes its various permutations white bougeois
>men move in response in order to pre-empt threats to their power, to adapt,
>to redefine their self-understandings and identities and the institutional
>norms and taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin them.  2.
>concomitantly their racialized Others may shift, not only in terms of the
>characteristics that are the focus of othering but also potentially in
>terms of which groups are targeted.  this means, in other words, that
>capitalism may well survive without racism against blacks because there
>will be new racialized groups to target.   the reason why i think it's not
>a good idea to dismiss the need USers have to define those who don't "make
>it" as others--to racialize them iow--is because we have the language of
>rights and equality that must always be addressed.  these inequalities have
>to be seen as legitimate, as having authority or good reasons for existing.
> so, while the very structure of schooling is, itself, an institution
>premised on the task of producing and reprducing inequality it does so
>primarily by defining positions as limited.


all i argued is that higher education is the major source of hierarchies
and inequalities, and does not need any external sources to create them.
Stated differently, if you take a perfectly homogeneous society in every
respect (just a thought experiment, ok?) and introduce a nice educational
institution to it, say, jhu, or syracuse u., you will end up with a
stratified society in a rather short term, and the main dividing lines
between social groups will be 'intellectual merits'.

however a larger point i'd like to make is the us-centrism of this entire
'racialization' debate.  race might be an important aspect of the us social
stratification and the us capitalist development but it is quite marginal
in other places.

for example,  if you compare capitalist development of different countries,
you will find that colonialism (anmd presumably racism) was a factor in
some (e.g. great britain, spain) but not in other e.g. germany, whose
industrialization project was driven mainly by the fact that germany was
denied access to colonies.  Moreover, france or belgium have always
remained second-rate capitalist powers, especially vis a vis germany, even
though they had access to colonies and germany did not. japan's
industrialization project (meji restoration) was in response to a colonial
threat not a result of it - japan became capitalist industrial power before
it became a colonial power, but even then its colonial project lacked the
racist element, because japan colonized peoples of the same race.

moreover, countries that relied on colonial/racist exploitation alone did
not do that well as capitalist powers as the countries that relied on
domestic industrialization.  in fact, over-reliance on colonial/racist
exploitation was a recipe for a defeat.  a contrast between england and
spain, and us north and us south are cases  in point.


moreover, anyone familar with the european scene would know that class
rather than race has been a big thing there.  you may see plenty of
inter-racial dating in places like london - but the social distance
between, say, and oxbridge graduate and a blue collar worker is greater
than between races here.  that is even more true of eastern europe where
racism is virtually absent and class, residence (urban versus rural) and
higher education are biggest dividing factors.  again, this illustrates a
seemingly obvious to a sociologst point that social status hierarchies can
be based on virtually any, oftentimes imperceptible to outsiders,
differences among people, not just the skin color (as it has been the case
of the us).

so i find the claims of the centrality of race in capitalist development
and social stratifications it creates as yet another example of
us-centrism, seeing the entire world through the cognitive prism of us
values and experiences.  not that it surprises or bothers me in any way, i
hear that crap on almost daily basis,  but would not you agree that the
self-styled anti-cultural-imperialism left should be a bit more
self-reflective in this respect than the rest of the pack? is it so
difficult to accept the fact that the us is not unique or special, neither
super-good nor super-bad?

wojtek