[PEN-L:8279] Re: Re: Whites and Capitalists

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob,

The fact that we are discussing the issue rather than denying it is progress.
I admit that I, as an Asian non-white, have a special prospective, although
such perspective is not "a priori" based, but rather on Lamarkian experience.
And it is more accurate to call it reactive racism, rather than reverse racism,
because as I have said before, non-white reactive racism toward whites is a
mirror, not a heat source, not oppressive but defensive, not ideological but
experiencial, not voluntarily from us but imposed on us.  It is based on fear
rather than power.
Now, the individuals on the list that you named did not at first accused me of
being a reverse racist.  Their first line of attack was to ridicule Chinese
socialist language as evidence of a collective defect that precludes clear
thinking.  It is when I pointed out that offensive ridicule as culturally
racist that they launched the reserve racist accusation.

Jim Blaut and Andy Austin and Yoshie F. have all pointed out in their own
language, the need for caucasians to stop identifying themselves as "white"
which is a term with heavy historical and political racial meaning.
I think that is a very important point and it contributes insightfully to this
debate.  When I think of you, Rob Shaap, as a Caucasian Australian, I do that
with neutrality, even a bit of fondness, but if I think of you as a whiteman,
it is not possible to deny any association of hostility.  I am not unique in
this respect among non-whites.  As you know, all over former British colonies
in Asia, while the socio-political tension between Australians and the English,
(or the Irish, or Scots and the English,) tends to render these also oppressed
Britisher more sympathetic to indigenous native aspiration for equality and
independence, the British victims of in-group prejudice tend instinctively to
close rank with their home society oppressors as fellow "whites" against
non-whites.  To this day, the residual self-image of white Australia has worked
against Australia's national interest by denying the need to view itself as an
Asian economy, not on racial terms, but geo-political terms.

Of course, the issue is highly complex and is full of exceptions. Fortunately,
humans, time and again, do rise above their social conditioning.  But those
exceptions testify only to the nobility of the human spirit rather than to the
absence of racism in society.

Henry C.K. Liu

Rob Schaap wrote:

> A rambling response to some aspects of this conversation that seem, well,
> ambiguous to me, Henry ...
>
> >The term "whites" remains a very valid
> >social scientific category and generalization. The fact that something is
> >socially constructed does not make it indefinite or invalid as a
> >generalization. Nor does the complex interaction with class make this
> >generalization inaccurate or unclear.
> >Henry's use of the generalization regarding whites frequently treating
> >people of color as lesser humans (racism) , e.g. sending  into danger
> >zones in war or in mines as human fuses is not at all casual , but every
> >bit as valid as all kinds of other social and economic generalizations
> >made on this list and elsewhere.
>
> Complex stuff, this.  Oz didn't send Aboriginees up the cliffs of Gallipoli
> in 1915 because they didn't rate enlistment for front-line duties at the
> time.  And, of course, we didn't send women, either.  And, significantly
> too, it was Australians and NZers who went up those cliffs, sent by the
> same Churchill who later sent Canadians on that daft foray into Dieppe in
> 1942.  Colonials were the bottom of the barrel as far as the imperial core
> was concerned in those days.
>
> And you gauge the ladders in the hierarchy by how (and if) things get
> remembered.  America killed a few white protesters at Kent State in 1970
> and a couple of black ones elsewhere at the same time - Kent State is
> almost forgotten, but the other event is absolutely so - to the extent I
> can't even remember exactly where it happened (though someone here
> mentioned it last month).  But then again, the spectacularly violent death
> of a woman (such as that of Constable Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan
> embassy in London a few years ago) hits most of us harder than that of a
> man (whose 'job' it is to be at the frontline, I guess).  Power manifests
> in very funny ways, eh?
>
> >Some more tolerant whites on the list try to argue that not all whites are
> >racists.  Yet I have heard the expression: a few rotton apples will ruin a
> >>whole barrel, but never a few good apples will save a rotting barrel.
>
> Yep. That's because a few rotten apples will ruin, and a few good 'uns
> won't save.  The barrel has to go.  Fortunately, the analogy is not all
> that apposite.  A materialist gets to posit that revolutionised relations
> revolutionise the people there-in.  But whence come the revolutionised
> relations in this picture?  Perhaps how we define those good 'uns, and how
> those good 'uns define the scope of possible relations, is quite important.
>
> Okay, one problem is that race politics are real and materially grounded in
> experience.  The racialised 'other' can generally point at daily outrages,
> experienced as specifically and entirely racialist events, yet is told
> 'forget that for now; you are proletarian, too.  As proletarian you have
> more potential clout than you do as racial other.'  But this goes against
> their daily imperative altogether.  After all, being the object of race
> hatred is a much much more tangible and obvious thing than being the
> exploited object of a particular (but apparently natural) mode of social
> wealth creation.  Some of the good 'uns don't appreciate this.  If racism
> is not explicitly addressed (complicatedly as materially real yet also as
> based on the untenable category of 'race') at the same status and urgency
> as class (and gender) - we have no way of linking the people we need and we
> have no likelihood of making a better world anyway (not very orthodox of
> me, but I'm with Albert and Hahnel on this).
>
> But.  It's no good telling me ('white') that I've inevitably internalised
> the racism that constitutes the cultures that have constituted me.  To
> begin with, I don't want to be thought a racist, and am not inclined to
> make common cause with people who accuse me of something I think it is so
> important not to be.  I need not be perfect (or perfectly self-knowing) to
> be a useful good 'un.  While 'blackness' or 'browness' can only go when
> 'whiteness' does,  I've been 'white' for 41 years and, to the degree I have
> unwittingly internalised that, am unlikely ever to be otherwise in my
> lifetime.  Just as a socialist revolution must be made by people whose
> identity was formed within capitalism (proletarians), so must a
> deracialising revolution be made by people with 'racial' identities
> ('blacks', 'browns' and 'whites').  The former has happened to a decisive
> degree (enough to prove it can happen, anyway), and the latter can, too.
> If, as many here convincingly argue, humans were once not racist, we can
> also hope to become so again.  But not if we make demands of each other
> that can simply not be met.  More on this below.
>
> >The more hostile whites accuse me of reverse racism, as if my being a
> >racist will absolve White racism.
>
> The relative power of 'white' racism and that of other racisms is a huge
> issue, sure, but ...
>
> I hope I'm not being offensively obvious, but to be a socialist is
> logically to oppose capitalism.  That's the *content* of socialism.  Whilst
> its *form* might be a fight against capitalists, a particular capitalist is
> not necessarily an enemy (go ask Freddie Engels).  Same with rebels within
> whatever patriarchy is.  Same with racist societies, no?  If you are a
> 'reverse racist' (and I wouldn't know - but you can be read that way, as
> Brad and Max point out), would you not be putting form before content and
> antagonising potential allies?
>
> >Reactive racism is a neccessary defense mechanical for survival on the
> >part of the victim in a racist reality, not an oppressive tool used the
> >oppressor to impose racism.
>
> A defence mechanism rather than an oppressive tool, sure.  But 'necessary'?
> Mebbe it's a diabolical liberty on my lily-white part to ask of 'others'
> that they deprive themselves of one of their defence mechanisms, but might
> reactive racism not be seen as one of the conditions under which white
> racism persists?
>
> I don't mean to say the racism of the oppressed is THE problem.  Of course,
> it's not.  Within prevailing power relations, 'white' racism is.  Which
> means ascribed and avowed 'whites' have the logically prior responsibility
> for addressing their behaviours.  But how much hope is there if we're told
> that being white in a white-controlled society makes one a racist by
> definition?  Using 'white' the way I think you're using it seems to add up
> to that.  Whites can't logically transcend this, can they?
>
> >Why is it so difficult for whites to admit that racism is still rampant?
>
> No-one's claiming it's not rampant, Henry.  I just reckon we have to avoid
> definitions that amount to an *a priori* obviation of solidarity, that's
> all.
>
> All offered in good faith and in the full understanding that I may have
> misread you entirely.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.