RE: "Negros," "African-Americans," and Black Immigrants

["Austin, Andrew" <austina@xxxxxxxx>]

How is racism purely or even for the most part ideological, if it is
institutional or, especially, structural? If every single person were to
stop thinking racially today, patterns of discrimination that we would now
see as clear instances of racism would continue. One does not need to engage
in thought problems to assess the soundness of this point; objective
analyses of social arrangements perpetuating racism relatively independent
of racial thinking abound. By reducing racism to "ideology," and by failing
to connect racial thinking with the sociomaterial system, namely social and
physical segregation, the conclusions advanced in several of these posts are
(probably unintentionally) consonant with the more subjectivist versions of
social constructionism. The central premise for such construction is, to
paraphrase the Thomas theorem, "If people perceive a situation is real, then
it is real in its consequences." Such a problematic premise is simply
inadequate for historical materialism and is inconsistent with the holistic
method Marx developed.

Andrew Austin
Green Bay, WI


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