RE: [Marxism] White Skin Privilege

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 -----Original Message-----
 From: Mark Lause
>
>
> I'm certainly not saying--as has been implied--that racism
> can be ignored, etc.  (How can anyone read what I've written
> and say that?)

The same way they read that I am calling Louis a Zionist racist.

So people just let their preconceptions get in the way of what one is
actually trying to say.


> I would suggest that, as Marxists, we
> understand racism as a reflection of top-down ruling class
> policies, but that ideas, attitudes, etc. fostered over many
> generations tends to fester at the base of society.  There
> can be no socialism without solidarity, and no solidarity
> without our contesting racism and all its effects.
>
> That said, the old SDS idea of "white skin privilege" does
> not help us do any of this.

It is not SDS.

It is actually based on the Abolitionists ideas of the 19th Century. In
fact, the John Brown adventure was propelled by an utopic, and somewhat
nihilistic denial of his white skin privilege. (This is why the
"neo-abolitionists" use that name.)

It was also propelled by an awarness of how class and race intermix in the
context of the USA, then and now:

"Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been
fairly proved --- (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater
portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case) --- had I so
interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the
so-called great, or in behalf of their children, or any of that class, and
suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been
all right, and every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of
reward rather than punishment."

John Brown, November 2, 1859

>  Worse, I've rarely seen the
> concept not used to obscure the responsibility for racism and
> shifts responsibility for it from the capitalist class, its
> institutions and its policies. Worst still, as an analytical
> tool, it sharpens our understanding of nothing and actually
> fuzzies politics into ever-fresh world of "feelings."

Actually, the above response is the one the goes into "feelings".

Hey, maybe an asshole or two hide behind racism to be assholes, but so do a
lot of assholes who hide behind marxism to be assholes. Yet, I don't see
protesting Marxism.

>
> Craig responded that "I don't think it can be so easily
> brushed aside." I assume that he means what I did suggest we
> brush aside--not the recognition of race as an issue but a
> stupidly formulated concept that cripples our ability to
> address much of anything.

I believe dismissing the existence of "white skin privilege" is actually
what cripples our ability to address much of anything.

I do admit many of the intellectual formulations for it are problematic from
a point of view of Marxism, but so are many of the formulations made in
defense of the class struggle, and again I don't see you protesting the
class struggle as a "stupidly formulated concept that cripples our ability
to address much of anything", like liberal academics do with Marxism or we
do with class-struggle anarchists.


>
> Let me apologize in advance to Craig, because I don't mean to
> be picking on him=--he seems to be a bright enough fellow to
> use an analytical tool if it works at all--but let's see how
> well this concept works...
>
> 1. Craig describes "white skin privilege" as "those
> attitudes, reactions, and social behaviors which are the
> result of my social and economic positions within a
> stratified working class; which effect in very concrete ways
> my interactions with people from other strata and my
> comprehension of their perspective."
>
> The words ("white skin privilege") describe the very real,
> objective and tangible privileges of being white...which
> white people get those regardless of attitudes, reactions and
> behaviors.  The only thing the use of the term has done here
> is to smudge our understanding of the language, muddle our
> thinking, to refocus on vaguely non-political sense that
> somehow connects "white skin privilege" to our own
> "attitudes, reactions, and social behaviors."

Alas, this is a very un-marxist of view.

It is true that white skin privilege "describes the very real, objective and
tangible privileges of being white...which white people get those regardless
of attitudes, reactions and behaviors."

First, you left out a part, and this is a key part, is the marxist
understanding that privilige generates tangible, discrete, "attitudes,
reactions, and social behaviors." that while not subjectively homogenous,
adquire a certain objective homogenity.

Hence Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxembourg, you name it, talk about "proletarian
values", "bourgeoise values", "petty bourgeoise values", not because every
proletarian, bourgeoise or petty bourgeoise people has those values, but
because class positions affect the hegemonic values of each class. This view
opens up Marxism to accusations of "economic determinism". Yet it is not, in
marxist terms, linked *only* to economics, but to the possesion of privilege
and power. It is a political economic phenomenon. The base determines the
superstructure, but the superstructure also transforms the base, this is
dialectics 101.

Second, "white skin privilege" is a phenomenon that adquires more importance
in multi-cultural nations, such as the USA. It is actually an explanation of
racism that goes beyond the simplistic, conspirationalist "a scheme to
divide the working class" and it is also an explanation of racism that fits
objective sociological data much better than "its all class" views on
privilege. In States such as the USA, white skin privilege has become the
sole manner by which you can both have an open admissions policy, and a
meritocratic ideal, and not devolve capital accumulation to your former
slaves. It is racialized class struggle.

Sure, times a'changing, but while leftists no longer speak that their
position on women is prone, or of some rival group being a bunch of faggots,
they still openly speak that the struggles of certain people of color don't
matter and are actually in contradiction with larger, more white, struggles,
without regard to what those people have to say and act around those issues.

>
> 2. Craig acknowledges that "white skin privilege" does
> involve "privilege," which he specifically defines as "a
> primary effect of my position as a white male within a
> stratified working class."
>
> On the surface, I don't see how women with white skin can't
> have "white skin privilege."

Oh, they do. Just less so than males because of patriarchal privilege, which
we both enjoy. Just compare how much Fortune 500 CEOs are women (8) and how
much are men (492), how much are black (3) and white (497) and then how much
are white women (8) and how much are black women (0).

If that is not white skin AND male privilege I don't know what it is.

> As an analytical tool, this
> term is fully capable of smudging our thinking into a
> misunderstanding of half the people we are supposed to be
> discussing.

So has marxist class analysis, specially among academics who tend not to be
from proletarian backgrounds. That a term is controversial cannot be prima
facie evidence it is wrong.

>  More importantly, we again see the term as a
> kind of advertising slogan ("new and improved") that invites
> the consumer to read into it their own hopes, fears,
> aspirations, and--in this sense--guilt, that sneaking
> suspicion that we are somehow complicit in the racist
> structure of American civilization.

Again, this are comments related to "feelings" and not analysis. Can't have
it both ways. Either you coldly and decry the concept of "white skin
privilege" as a poor tool of analysis because of the emotional content it
might provoke, or you say that it makes you feel bad. But I cannot accept
you using emotionalist

And yes, all white people, by not concretely questioning and becoming
concious and concentious objectors to race and the privilege that stems from
it, become complicit in that structure. But there is no reason to feel
guilty about it, as this is not a concious decision to be complicit. You
where born into.

Likewise, I am complicit in fomenting sweatshops, oppressing women, and a
whole other lot of things. I feel no iota of guilt, although I struggle
every day to build a different world.

Anti-racist guilt, in many senses, is the worse form of racism, and it is an
expression itself of existense of white skin privilege. Why feel guilty over
something that doesn't exist?

Non-whites don't need paternalism, they need solidarity.

>
> 3. Craig's conclusion is that "white skin privilege" comes
> from "both discrete human interactions with those who have
> concrete power over me (teachers, employers, police), as well
> a cultural, institutional and policy biases such as
> standardized testing, uniformity of language, concepts of beauty."
>
> I admittedly have trouble following this formulation, partly
> because all these things seem to be manifestations of the
> same top-down standards. However, his chosen emphasis on
> "both" reflects a predisposition to see "white skin
> privilege" as the result of a collaboration between the
> masters and those whites who are not masters.

As an Afro-American iman said:

"I have the unique privilege of driving while black and flying while
muslim."

And this is supported not by emotionalist, empiricist, impressions.
Objective, quantitative data sustains this.

If the only form of oppression in the USA where top-down class oppression,
then objective data on a number of things, such as poverty levels,
educational achievement, health access, jail occupancy, and other such data
in which class plays an objective role in all human societes, then the data
would be proportionally the same across the board regardless of race.

Yet, across the board, non-whites fare much worse than whites, and the gap
widens the lower you go in class (ie, poor blacks fare worse than poor
whites, and their gap is wider than that between rich blacks and rich
whites).

This indicates that race is an important factor of the Usonian body politic.

You couple this hard reality based, quantitative data, with the same data
from other periods on US history, and you see that the only ethnic group in
perpetual disadvantage is blacks. Waves upon waves of immigrants from Europe
have arrived into the USA, faced top-down class-based oppression, and then
fully integrated into the society of the USA. Paddy became JFK. And the
*only* factor that separates these immigrant groups from blacks in white
skin. Period.

All of their capital accumulation happened here (hell, the Irish came here
dying of hunger!), they are as industrious and as lazy, as smart or as dumb,
etc. The only concept I can see that explains this discrepancy is the skin
color. I cannot explain how can the Irish rise in less than 150 years from
ignomy to rulers of the land, while blacks, who have lived here for almost
400 years, can at best hope to be inneffectual puppets for war presidents.

Even Jews who arrived here where of generally poor or PB stock, as rich Jews
stayed in Europe where progroms didn't touch them.

(Someone commented on the Jewish experience, of which I have first hand
knowledge, might sound like a "no homo", but my best friend growing up is
jewish, and I got an early education in Brooklyn Reform Ashkanazim
idosincracy, such as blond, white, blue-eyed people talking about "those
whites")

Coventional views on racism are insufficient here, because forms of racism
not related to skin color, such as anti-Japanese or anti-Semite views, have
not translated into such a stark difference.

Even recent data support this.

Lets use the official US census poverty data (they have it updated until
2003):

<http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty.html>


Specifically:
<http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty03/table4.pdf>

Here you see that not only are non-whites almost between 2/3 and 3/4 higher
than whites in the poverty index.

(I would just love to see white hispanics vs non-white hispanics. I bet ya
20 bucks, that the white hispanics fare better)

You need further proof to know that "white skin privilege" is a reality, you
worse than blind, you don't want to see.

Which is different from providing a critique of specific forms of thery
around "white skin privilege" which is something I do, in particular when
approachign the matter from the point of view of marxism.

To equate "white skin privilege" with say, MIM or the Neo-Abolitionists or
the SDS, or to equate their observations with their conclusions is as
anti-marxist as it gets. Marx enjoyed Blazac, and Engels used Morgan...


> In short, it seems quite demonstrable that, even in the hands
> of its defenders, "white skin privilege," is as an analytical
> tool, is sharpened to cut entirely on the wrong end (the
> handle) and is blunted on what should be its business
> end--the one that should help us understand politics,
> society, economics, culture, etc.

So please demonstrate it. I have provided compelling, non-empirical samples
that point in an entirely different direction.


>
> One of the arguments in the Old South was that racial
> privilege reflected the concerted choice and interests of all
> white people--and that all whites were united in defending it
> and must remain so.  It was on that basis that the pre-civil
> rights Democratic Party always appealed
> to white voters.   Frankly, the intellectual underpinnings of the idea
> of "white skin privilege" seem very much to me like a
> subtler, corporate liberal version of the same thing.

And talk about "feelings"!

Your logic here I think is somewhat amiss. The bourgeosie in the USA
sustains that capitalism and imperialism are "the concerted choice and
interests of all" American people, and this is why both ruling parties
debate the Iraq war not in terms of ending it, but in terms of how to better
pursued.

Does this mean that a critiqe of capitalism and imperialism has the same
intellectual underpinings and is but a "subtler, corporate liberal version
of the same thing"?

I know you don't believe that, but using your logic we could reach that
conclusion.

Also, I could twist around your logic and argue that denial of white skin
privilege actually leads to a slippery road that seeks to explain
discrepancies between members of the same class but different races and
having a bbiological component, but I will not do so, because I know it
isn't true that is what you mean to do, and because I don't want to sink as
low as you do when calling me dismissively in agreement with the SDS.

All said and done, your critique is much less serious than the body of
evidence that supports an approach to the question of race in the USA from
the perspective of white skin privilege. It also denies a neccesary
self-criticism on the partinalism the white left assumes with non-whites and
their political causes, which simply forces non-whites into self-impossed
ghettoes of racial affinity or to be allied with white groups who are not
always the best ones in the white melieu.

sks


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