Re: [Marxism] White Skin Privilege

[Josh Saxe <joshsaxe@xxxxxxxxx>]

I read through this whole lengthy thread on white-skin privilege.  I'm
not really familiar enough with the "white skin privilege" (but tend
to side with those who think it's a useful construct) but I just
wanted to note a few things:

1)  Nobody has brought in the relatively recent academic literature on
whiteness and US labor history like David Roedigger - "The Wages of
Whiteness" or Noel Ignatiev (I think his is "How the Irish Became
White" or something like that).  This new literature I believe draws
upon W.E.B. DuBois's notion that white workers in the U.S. have
received a "psychological wage" from the fact of their white skin that
draws them closer to an identification with the ruling class and its
political system.

It also revolves around the idea that whiteness is a _political_ term
(as opposed to one really signifying an ethnic, racial or religious
group) saturated with the categories of 19th century liberalism.  To
be "white" in America one can be Jewish, Irish, Italian, etc, but
regardless the term includes one in the family of American democracy
in which cops protect us from badguys, the military defends us from
(terrorism/communism/etc) and we peacefully elect our leaders and make
free economic choices.  That's the hegemonic meaning of the term, not
to say white people (especially working class white people) don't
often rebel against its definition but maybe rarely break completely
free of it.  In contrast millions of black and other non-white people
really see that they don't have a voice in the political system, and
correctly view themselves as outsiders to U.S. bourgeois politics.

2)  What about the (problematic) notion of race, at least in many U.S.
contexts, as in some ways a relationship to the means of production? 
Anyone who has taken the public transit system into Malibu in the L.A.
area and has seen the thousands of Latino domestic workers making
their morning and evening commutes, or knows a bit about hiring
practices in urban service economies (drawing on immigrant/family
networks) can see this quite readily.  Also in consumerist societies
in which clothes, body language, hair styles, etc, become objects of
free choice for members of all classes and cease to (reflexively at
least) signify class, skin color can be a quick reference point for
determining social class.  So those are some intersections between
race and class that should be considered.

3)  All of this goes back to the assumption that the working class
exists in the United States.  Yes at the barren structural level and
no on the level of mental and material culture and actual social
relationships and interconnections above the base.  Yes there are
millions of proletarians who sell their minds and bodies on the labor
market to gain the means of subsistence. Yes we have relative and
constant capital and surplus value.  But the materiality of the
culture of sellers of labor-power in the U.S. suggests anything but
"proletarian" behavior and identity -  working people congregate in
spaces in which class status is hidden (bars, sports stadiums, parks,
etc), people find housing based on their race, income, sexual
orientation, interests, not their relationship to the means of
production.  People join clubs and participate in social activities
not through class-based organizations as in the past (unions,
social-democratic organizations) but within forums in which class
status is hidden and membership in the working class is often a taboo.
 I'm exaggerating a bit to make my point.

But at any rate if we abandon the assumption that class exists as a
"thing" on anything but the most barren economic-structural level we
can start over again and take race much seriously.  Like it or not
most people see themselves as "white" "black" "asian" latino" etc,
before seeing themselves as workers (I'd bet 100 bucks nobody on here
could find a non-leftist worker who says she's a "worker").

This needs to be not written off as a manifestation of "false
consciousness" but to be taken seriously as a description, for X
individual, of reality.  Black people who go to black churches,
congregate with black friends and black families, wound up in X
situation because of the historical experience of black people, were
hired at X workplace based on racially structured hiring practices,
earn less and are pulled over more frequently because of their skin
color of course see their blackness first.  Their blackness is not
ephemeral, it is embedded in the materiality of their existence above
proletarian status which is taken for granted.  This needs to be taken
seriously and dealt with as a central aspect of the social structure
of the U.S.  Same thing goes for white people and that would lead us
to some theoretical tool resembling "white skin privilege."

Josh


2005/7/9, Mark Lause <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Ethan,
> It's really not me that injecting what Ethan call "a 35-year old
> windmills" into this discussion.
> 
> The reality is that I am a historian of abolitionism and the American
> movement.  I regularly write articles and books and give papers and
> talks on how "a system of racial privilege is intrinsic to class
> relations in the US."  Yet, it is asserted that I don't want to discuss
> how "a system of racial privilege is intrinsic to class relations in the
> US" simply because I don't think "white skin privilege" as a theory that
> did anything new or good for us.
> 
> Rather than to simply misrepresent my tangible and material record in
> addressing these things, wouldn't it be more helpful for proponents of
> the theory to tell us what they think it did or does that hadn't already
> been done?  Just a suggestion.
> 
> Solidarity!
> Mark L.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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