Chaz,
here's the gist, in a more concise way, and my last post on this:
- I haven't suggested anywhere that you are 'overusing' the charge of racism. I have argued that, when confronted with someone who disagrees with you over whether or not a specific event or issue is racism you accuse them of trying to silence the ability to call things racist. if you were consistent, which I now see you are not, then you would likewise apply the same standard to yourself: you say that I am being too broad in my definitions of racism. why doesn't the same argument apply to you as you have applied it to others?
- I say that you confuse colonisation with immigration, as in: regard the latter on certain occasions as an instance of the former within a model of 'settled' and 'incoming' populations. you say I have imagined it, and when I cite you saying exactly this, your retort consists of accusing me of not taking account of the structures of colonisation within immigration. I'm still waiting for you to apologise for accusing me of 'imagining it'.
- I do take account of the structures of colonisation, for instance as in the ways in which people from colonial countries tend to (try to) emigrate to those countries which were/are the colonisers: Latin Americans to the US, Koreans to Japan, Algerians to France, etc. what you have done in making this claim that I have not taken it into account however is absolve yourself of having to address the ways in which colonial structures actually do influence the patterns and shape of migrations.
- the model of 'settled' and 'incoming' populations, grafted onto a discourse of self-determination, leads invariably to claims that migrants are invaders. this is substantially different from 'taking account of the structures of colonialism on immigration' - which in any case, you fail to do.
- there is a hierarchy of immigrants plotted according to whether they _are seen at the time_ as white. whether they are 'really' white or not is irrelevant, and you tend to reify what 'white' or 'black' means and is. today in australia, Russian, Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants are at the bottom of the rung in terms of poverty and imprisonment rates. immigrants are favored according to whether they are defined as 'skilled' or not. this certainly translates into favoring 'whites' insofar as 'whites' tend to have higher qualifications, ability to speak english, or to buy their way in via the 'investment promise', etc, but a reified 'black/white' depiction does not explain why immigrants from Lebanon and Russia are now regarded as worse in australia than African Americans or black south Africans, does it?
- your statement about 'white immigrants to south africa' is an absurd example. what you call 'white immigration to south africa' was colonisation, not migration, since it wasn't regulated. migration is by definition regulated by the _country of destination_; colonisation is colonisation. that you tend to like these examples only shows that you are unwilling to let go of your confusion for reasons I can only speculate.
- opposition to discrimination within immigration policy according to whether or not that discrimination is seen to be against blacks has the tendency to miss the relation between class and racism in the framing of the internal hierarchy of 'good' and 'bad' migrants. how would such opposition translate into anything more than claims for an increase in the proportions of 'black' immigrants _relative_ to 'others' defined as 'white'? that is, is the difference between the effective meaning of this (as a claim for 'more people like us') and anti-racism? anti-racism is not the same thing as plugging for more for me and mine against an other, is it?
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au