Christopher Niles and Racism

[Paul Henry Rosenberg]

Charles Brown wrote:
> 
> I've been trying to catch up on this thread.
> I have to echo Christopher Niles note of
> amazement below at what seem to be
> several white people quite righteously
> bandying about an analysis of whether
> a Black person is a racist.
> 
> It is still the best understanding of this
> that Black people cannot be reverse
> racists. That is , Black people might be
> prejudice against white people , but
> there is a qualitative difference between
> the prejudice of Blacks against whites and
> vice versa, because, of the group dominance
> of whites over Blacks and its long history.
> This doesn't mean Black prejudice is
> a virtue. It is also basically based on
> a reaction to the history and ongoing
> fact of white supremacy.

This is the standard line, but it's BS.  It takes an important truth,
and expresses it in a rigid manner that instinctively smells fishy to
most Americans.  It's routinely used, as you have used it, to BLOCK OUT
the actually existing text before you, and replace it with another.

If you want to eliminate the white race, then you've got to see that
racism afflicts all of us, both within and without.  Naturally it
afflicts us all differently, but it afflicts us all, nonetheless.  This
SHOULD be a step forward, making it possible to talk about racism and
stare it down, rather than brandishing it like a bloody shirt.


> >>> Christopher Niles <cniles at ricochet.net> 12/04 8:56 AM >>>

MY ERASED TEXT: 


> >How any of this proves that a given post of his isn't racist is beyond
> >me, however.  A good deal of what he writes seems dedicated (consciously
> >or not) to racial mystification (in the name of the exact opposite,
> >natch!)  A racist streak in such thinking is hardly unheard of.  We all
> >know we live in a racist society, and have to struggle against
> >internalized racism on an ongoing basis.  One needn't be playing "holier
> >than thou" to call things as you see them.
> 
> Yet another "white" man accusing a Black man of having "racist"
> tendencies.

"internalized racism," that's what I said.  The evidence of this in
black culture is so wide and various, it takes a truly astonishing act
of denial to ignore it.  It's one of the WORST things that blacks have
had to struggle against.  Pretending it doesn't exist simply denies one
of the most important struggles that black people have waged throughout
their history in America.

-- 
Paul Rosenberg
Reason and Democracy
rad at gte.net

 
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"