On treating Racism as an incurable disease.

Charles Brown charlesb at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Fri May 29 08:39:50 PDT 1998


A key aspect of the concept of racism is that it is immutable. As Carrol says, there are several false bases for its unchangeability. Sometimes these have existed simultaneously. The claim that it is immutable is similar to the claim that capitalism is the natural order of things, and that it would be foolish to try to change it.

Part of the qualitatively difference of racism from previous group prejudices in history is that modern racism arose when the bourgeoisie were still a partially revolutionary class overthrowing feudalism. In that struggle the European bourgeoisie were advancing historically relatively progressive ideas of "the equality of all men", as in the Declaration of Independence ("all men are created equal"). This ideology ran into a contradiction with the original European imperialism, colonialism and slavery, wherein the Europeans were robbing and ravishing peoples all over the globe. How was this justified if these beings were "men" and "equal" to the Europeans. Racism was the answer, because it defined these beings as not "men", and therefore nnot due equal treatment.

Charles Brown


>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu> 05/29 10:55 AM >>>
The sophisticated rationales for racism in the United States tend to differ over time. *Currently* the most sophisticated apology is the position that racism has *always* been with us, that racism stems from the very nature of humans. So in a way, the "scientific" argument that blacks are inferior has been replaced with the "scientific" argument that whites are incurably racist.

In either case race is taken outside of history.

All efforts to replace historical explanations of various oppressive or exploitative features of the world are, ultimately, reactionary.

Everyone admits (I believe) that something fundamentally new happened in the late 18th and early 19th centuries: the invention of *biologically* based race. Why are people so damned anxious to subordinate that fact to some alleged racism that goes back and back and back. The hierarchical assumptions of pre-capitalist tributary societies were fundamentally different and had a fundamentally different historical base than do the various attempts of the last 200 years to establish some sort of "scientific" rationale for oppression and exploitation.

Carrol



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