[PEN-L:8324] Re: racism

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

I am glad you have the faculty to recognized a provocative accusation.  Good.
Starting counting them in your own posts.

I posted information, as other also did, about two Napalese Gurkhas blown to
pieces in Kosovo under British command and about Chinese laborers being used as
human detonators in the construction of American railroads in the 19th century.
I suggested that the events are examples of racism.  Some on the list denied
that conclusion and accused me of being a reverse racist for viewing whites as a
cohesive group.  I countered by pointing out that cohesiveness is not a
necessary yardstick as "whiteness" is a social construct.  Others on this and
other lists came to my defense.  A debate started in which one person claimed
that to be excluded from America was worse than being blown apart by dynamite,
therefore there was no racism involved, and another denied collective guilt
(amazing position for a member of a minority that suffered the holocaust).
Someone else posted a serious paper on racism and you attacked it as "crap".
The evidence is in your own post.  When challenged, you dragged my name in as
the justification for your views.  Let's suppose that I am very bit as stupid,
as racist, as whatever as you claim, does that support you incoherent attack on
Jim Blaut's paper?
You said you have some Chinese friends who thinks socialism is irrational. That
is not an intellectual argument.  And I am sure they do not take kindly to
anyone ridiculing the Chinese language as brainless.
I did not provoke you.  I was not even aware of your existence. When you
attacked Jim's paper with a great deal of emotional baggage, I suggested that
you calm down lest you should hurt yourself.  I did not suggest you should shut
up or that you are a racist because you disagree with me.  Those thoughts are in
your own head for which I am not responsible. While racist statements are
generally contradictory to my views, it does not follow that any statement I
don't agree with is racist.  To accuse me of such obviously illogical behavior
only weakens your own point, whatever it is.
You need more rational and coherent polemics if you, for your own psychological
reasons, need to attack me personally, otherwise you just make yourself look
like a fool in public.
It would be less boring for the list for you to attack ideas rather than people,
it you must attack.
I attack DeLong's ideas all the time on subjects that I have some expertise, and
with rare exceptions, he never responds.  It's perfectly fine, because people on
the list will decide each individually which idea makes more sense.  I accuse
globalization as a racist/imperialist policy, among other things, because it
places less value on Third World non-whites as human beings.  DeLong thinks that
it is not racism, because Third World people are worth less because they are
poor.  We disagree and that does not make DeLong a racist in my view although
there is no denying he supports a racist policy.  But when DeLong ridiculed Lin
Biao's preface to the Quotations of Mao, I accused that act to be a racist act
because he concluded from a translation of Chinese linguistics as evidence of
lack of clear thinking in socialist writing.  Many, I am sure, disagree with me.
But you draw the conclusion that I use racism to win all intellectual
arguments.  That is simply insupportable, as I have posted on many subjects on
which racism has not been the issue.  I am not fixated on racism.  But I do
recognize it when I see it because I have substantial experience as a victim,
almost daily. I don't look for it, for I am not a masochist.  But believe me, I
cannot avoid it.  As I have admitted in writing, I am guilty of being a reactive
racist, but I have earned the right.  I am such an expert on racial oppression
from the victim side that I can smell it a mile away.  I am sorry for being such
a surly nonwhite.
But you accused me with quotes that you dreamed up which is neither factual nor
interesting to me or anyone else on the list.
If you must, may I suggest that you print out my posts that offended you, post
it on your wall and throw darts at them and relieve us all of this boredom.

Henry C.K. Liu


Rod Hay wrote:

> Henry wrote:
> "Some of my best friends are Chinese."
>
> 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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