>>> kelley <d-m-c at worldnet.att.net> 06/09/99 12:57PM >>>
Michael Perelman wrote
>I think that I mentioned that the Japanese, from what I know are racist -- at
>least my Japanese friends have told me so -- All Americans smell bad from
eating
>butter .....
i think we need to make an important distinction here. if the japanese think americans smell bad because they eat butter what consequences does that have for the individual and collective lives of americans? does it harm them? how so? i'd call this ethnocentrism, though charles had another word for it, though i don't recall.
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Charles: One word to use might be "prejudice" . The point is not that prejudice is politically ok, but that it is important to take account of the power patterns in all of these issues (political questions are power questions) and racism = prejudice + power. I have no problem with "ethnocentrism", which might bring out other dimensions of this and related questions.
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the point is that such a belief doesn't necessarily have a deleterious effect on an american's or americans' [as a group] lives. this is because there aren't any powerful social institutions and practices that intersect in complex ways with other beliefs and practices which systematically and systemically diminish the lives of americans.
Charles: Right on, Kelley SnitgrrRll.
I'll read the following from Habermas, although I hate to say he has come out in support of NATO's war on Yugoslavia. On the other hand, Brad D. might say to dismiss his evaluation of other matters based on that would be _ad hominem_ argumentation.
Charles Brown
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here's something i mentioned to angela a couple of weeks ago that might be interesting in fleshing out how we might talk about racism as a form of oppression and how it's linked to exploitation and domination. THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE
Habermas' framework is the foundation upon which Iris Marion Young (1990:3) builds a theory of justice out of the conceptual cornerstones of "domination and oppression." While she concedes that Habermas' account of societal rationalization, advanced capitalism, and communicative action should be retained, she believes that critical theory must be strengthened in at least two ways: First, it must construct a detailed theory of oppression and domination and, second, these concepts require a corresponding "politics of difference."
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