Re: [Marxism] "white privilege" vs "white supremacy" - can someone please explain?

[Ethan Young <ethanyoung@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

spencer asks: 'while i am familiar with the "white privilege" critique as 
developed by T. Allen and N. Ignatiev, I don't understand the distinction from 
"white supremacy" - which seems to be referring to a substantially different 
perspective, possibly a particular Third World Marxist notion with a long shelf 
life - ??

'Also - bonus points for anyone who can also explain to the origin of the 
"white skin privilege" idea, and how this is different from "white privilege".'




Allen & Ignatiev [nee Ignatin] were struggling with the obvious contradiction 
between a lionized working class cast as the historic agent of liberation, and 
intense racist attitudes held and openly expressed by most whites in the 
workong class. 'White supremacy' is a category referring to both [1] the 
relation of whites as a whole to blacks/people of color as a whole within US 
capitalist society, and [2] the active political institution of this relation, 
eg slavery, jim crow laws, lynch-mob terrorism, de facto segregation, racial 
profiling etc. 

The race/class contradiction has been traditionally sidestepped by the 
organized left, I believe due to the stronger identification with the 
white-dominated labor movement [which transformed working class political roles 
in the CIO period] over such powerful, but less overtly class-identified black 
community movements as the Garvey movement and the early NAACP. Socialist and 
populist hostility to black nationalist tendencies - which were a part of 
American opposition movements throughout history - was a reflection, 
intentionally or otherwise, of deep-rooted white supremacist/racist attitudes 
among the white majority of American workers.

The economist argument against workers' racist attitudes promoted by the main 
organized left parties is summed up in the slogan 'Black and white, unite and 
fight.' The argument has it that racist thinking and expression are dangerous, 
above all, because they divide the class - and are the result of a conscious 
conspiracy by the capitalists to set brother against brother, thus delaying the 
day of reckoning. A poorly paid lower tier in the workforce drags down wages; 
therefore whites have an immediate interest in opposing racism. Persuade whites 
to abandon race hatred, and blacks to see their common enemy not as the white 
man but as the capitalist class, and the main obstacle to overthrowing 
capitalism is overcome.

This view did little to expose the reality of structural racism at all levels 
of American society. After the CIO heyday, postwar labor reneged on its 
proposed challenge to jim crow in the south, leaving the task of fighting 
racism once again to the black community in isolation. The power of the civil 
rights movement and the tidal wave of revolt that arose in its wake forced the 
racism question on the New Left. By the late 60s, black nationalism was 
replacing the integrationist ethic advanced by King and the SP and CP, even as 
the workerist Progressive Labor Party made a bid to take over SDS, declaring 
black nationalism 'reactionary'. SDS leaders who opposed PL and supported 
nationalists like SNCC and the Black Panther Party needed an argument to 
counter both the more liberal and the more super-revolutionary versions of the 
'black and white unite' position.

This was provided by Ignatiev and Allen, who argued that while white workers as 
workers had a longterm interest in black-white class unity, white workers as 
whites enjoy a privilege that serves as the material basis for their racist 
attitudes. Recognizing this privilege, and repudiating it, is the first step 
for radicals to make the break from social interests as whites to class 
interests, bringing the fight against racism to the center of the politics of 
all social movements arrayed against capitalism. 'Privilege' was just one, 
albeit crucial, aspect of an over-arching system of white supremacy that 
coexists and is interconnected with capitalism. The term 'white skin privilege' 
simply reflected Ignatiev's and Allen's concern that their theory provide no 
justification for arguments that racial categories have a scientific basis.

This position was embraced and reinterpreted by various groups, including RYM 
II SDS, the Weathermen, Sojourner Truth Organization, Prairie Fire, Proletarian 
Unity League, Line of March, James & Grace Boggs's National Organization for an 
American Revolution, the journal Race Traitor, and among existing groups, 
Freedom Road and Bring the Ruckus.

ethan young

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