>>> Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> 04/28/99 12:53PM >>>
At 11:14 AM 4/28/99 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
>This is not manufactured martyrdom. What is manufactured is the
self-declaration of victimization by such as Kelley, with her hoaky effort
to make her self out as a victim of being criticized for racist arguments.
Wojtek has it completely backward. The problem is not the targets of racism
complaining about racism, but the Reaganite line of Wojtek et al. that the
targets of racism are falsely martyring themselves.
Charles, I do not think this whole discussion has anything to do with the reality of "race" relations in this country. It is about claims.
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Chas.: Yes, I know you don't. I disagree with you. This discussion is about race (no quotes) relations in this country and the discussion itself is a race relation in this country.
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There is a clear distinction, at least in my mind, between victimization and claims of victimization. The former has to be proved as a matter of fact, the latter does not (a distiction that makes all the difference in the world, from a legal point of view). The feelings of those who feel victimized may be real, but their victimization may be not.
Charles: I would use the term "oppression" not victimization. There is widespread actual racist oppression in this country. The targets of this oppression often protest it. Their feelings of oppression are based on experience of actually existing racist oppression.
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In fact, the US is a society that elevated claims of victimization to an art form - regardless of factual basis of those claims. Such claims become standard ammunition in the morality-style politics that prevails in this country.
It is quite pathetic to see any extraordinary event, such as the Colorado shooting, giving birth to numerous victimization claims - liberals, gun owners (poor things feel the heat of persecution such events may spark), blacks, jews, gays, feminists, suburbanites, jocks, geeks, geezers - not to mention the scores of spin doctors and media pundits - everyone tries to appropriate that tragic event as a material for their own claim of victimization/martyrdom.
Charles: Your whole theory of victimization claims is a form of Reaganite denial of oppression, in this case particularly racist oppression. Your idea that most protests or charges of racist oppression are actually not founded in fact, but actually a phony effort to claim being a victim of something does not exist is grossly, empirically wrong. As I say, it is just a particular form of the denial of racism and oppression that the bourgeoisie broadcast and brainwashed masses with starting with Reaganism. Your type of theory is actually the main form of racism today, as the extremists as in Littleton are rare. The average racism in the U.S. today is some version of claiming that racist complaints are not wellfounded but a false claim of racism.
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On the top of it, every voice that calls for a reality check for that claim manufacturing madness is automatically labeled as bigot, or at least being in denial. What is it, a psychotherapy session, an AA meeting, or what? Only in Amerika....
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Charles: This is a political economic e-mail list. Your implication that your call for a reality check results in a conclusion that the reality of Littleton is not racist is wrong. Racism and nazism were significant in causing the mass murder dimension of Littleton. That's reality. The term "denial" is not the private possession of psychotherapy. Politics and economics deals with consciousness, as in class consciousness and the like. Nothing epistemologically inappropriate about using the term "denial"The phenomenon of this denial is new in the history of U.S. racism. Before the civil rights movement , America was openly racist, i.e. didn't deny it. After the civil rights movement , open racism was not acceptable, so the ruling class had to shift to promoting a mentality that can't see or denies racism that is there. This episode illustrates it in the press and on this list. Enormous sweat and energy expended to deny that a nazi fetish indicates racism and that the mass murder dimension is most likely caused by the nazi fetish.
Charles Brown