rc-am wrote:
> here's how I would see it: racism here or in the US does not come about
> because there are different races. racism is the attribution of certain
> qualities to particular groups of people. hence, to be a slave is regarded
> as a function of being black, for instance. slavery produces racism, races
> do not.
1. The last point is profoundly true.
2. But racism tends to be nationally specific -- comments about "racism in general" rapidly undercut the principle behind "slavery produces racism" and dissolve historical understanding.
3. Confining oneself only to the first rate material, there is a really large literature on U.S. racism alone, and though there are important disputes among those who have produced this literature, there is little excuse for anyone to make generalized statements about racism without first achieving an acquaintance with some significant sub-division of this literature. I have differences with Ted Allen, but he is probably the place to start. People who ignore this literature fall into all the blunders of the auto-didact or untutored "original thinker."
4. Confident propositions beginning "racism is..." have an amateurish ring. In this whole area people tend to be too confident that they can reinvent the wheel without making errors.
Carrol