NATO Bomb Kills Two Peacekeepers

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 04:44 PM 6/22/99 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
>Starting about 500 years ago, the overgeneralized distinction between
whites and coloreds originated with Europeans, who referred to themselves
as whites. Before the 1960's in the U.S. the overwhelming majority of
whites of all classes used this generalization, quite freely and casually
considering themselves superior to coloreds. The cohesiveness of the group
"whites" came from this internal social , political and economic
construction of self or identity.
---snip


>Henry's use of the generalization regarding whites frequently treating
people of color as lesser humans (racism) , e.g. sending  into danger zones
in war or in mines as human fuses is not at all casual , but every bit as
valid as all kinds of other social and economic generalizations made on
this list and elsewhere. 

Not so fast, Charlie Brown.  There were different shades of whiteness -
Eastern Europeans, Jews, and Italians were hardly above the Blacks and on a
par with Asians on the moral-intellectual hierarchy ladder (cf. Stephen Jay
Gouls, _The Mismeasure of Man_).  The "whites proper" were only of the
anglo-saxon/nordic stock.

I am pretty sure that in those good ol'days you, Henry, and I wound end up
in the same coal mine, regardless of different shades of our skin.

wojtek