Michael Moore

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Doug replies to me:
>>One of the sources of the weaknesses of the working
>>class has been and still is precisely the fact that it's been divided and
>>stratified by race and gender.
>
>Maybe I've been reading too much decadent literature lately, but I have a
>problem with a formulation like this. Doesn't it assume some kind of
>originally "pure" working class, undivided and unstratified, that was
>somehow busted up by some combination of conspiracy and circumstance? But
>hasn't the working class been formed inseparably from race and gender?
>Haven't some forms of work been defined as women's work or black work?
>Hasn't the consciousness of white American workers been shaped for
>centuries by race and ethnicity? Of course, we want the races and sexes to
>see their commonalities, but it's not a matter of recovering some lost
>unity that never was, is it?

I don't posit any unity at the origin. Unity is _to be achieved_, not
recovered. Needless to say, it has never been achieved anywhere in history.
Moreover, as long as self-identified 'leftists' are saying things like that
gender + race are 'surface' issues, matters of 'culture' alone, etc., we
are _very far_ from achieving it.

Yoshie