[PEN-L:8323] Re: racism

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Before I leave this alone, Henry, I find two items are gnawing away at me
on this stuff.

About that 'white' thing.  How exactly do I divest myself of the 'white'
tag?  The tag may be part avowal, but it is surely decisively ascription.
And I'd've thought being white is like being male, heterosexual or
bourgeois.  Decisively, to be these things is rarely to be confronted with
your skin colour, gender, sexuality, relation to MoP - precisely because
you are contemporary society's norm - it is the discursively non-normal who
are daily moved by their world's social dynamics to reflect upon these
categories.  Sure, these categories hurt and alienate, they're all cost and
no benefit to humanity - but what does it mean to say, as Andy and Jim
apparently do, that they're going to stop being 'white'?  How can I refuse
to be what others take me to be?  And how does 'Caucasion' help?  To most
of us, 'caucasion' means 'white', doesn't it?

I reckon a materialist would hold that social relations have to change
before meanings change.  When a 'white' says 'Afro-American' today, she
probably means exactly what she meant by 'black' in 1980, and by 'negro' in
1965 - good or bad.  If changing words changed the world, the progressive's
project would be a lot easier than I, as a materialist, think it actually
is.

By the way, the "Some of my best friends are Chinese" 'defence' always
seemed okay to me as contributory 'evidence'.  Such claims are ever
ridiculed as effectively explicit and unambiguous confessions of racism.
Why?  If my best friend is Chinese, how does that make me a racist?  If I
think the fact that my best friend is Chinese affords evidence that I might
not be racist, would it be that thought that proves I'm racist?  Why?
Surely I'm not expected to be so innocent of identifying categories that I
haven't realised my best friend is Chinese?


Just wondering,
Rob.


>
>Henry
>
>This is just the type of provocative accusation that I am talking about. It
>serves no purpose but to antagonise. If you are accusing me or anyone else
>on this list of being a racist, I demand more evidence that the fact that I
>do not think that Mao-Tse-Tung Thought is the height of Chinese intellectual
>accomplishment.
>
>Racism is a serious charge that should not be thrown around lightly.
>
>Hero-worship is the antithesis of socialism. Perhaps you should read what
>Marx said about Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in
>History.
>
>If your undying faith is not shared, perhaps you should rethink it rather
>that denouncing the heretics and naming the sinners. I have always preferred
>reason to proclamations of faith (but that is of course an enlightenment
>idea that is out of favour today).
>
>
>Rod Hay
>rodhay@xxxxxxxxxxx
>The History of Economic Thought Archives
>http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html
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>
>
>
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