>>> kelley <d-m-c at worldnet.att.net> 06/22/99 10:27PM >>>
Why is it so difficult for whites to admit that racism is still
>rampant? Because its not true? Because Henry Liu imagine it?
no one is denying it. however, the understanding of what race and racism are have changed and wer'e tyring to argue two things:
1. any ruling elite (whether racial or whatever) are not and do not act as a homogenous entity completely without contradictions, gaps, fissures. there is ample historical evidence that racism and racialization is a process and that it needs to be analyzed that way.
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Charles: Yet, these contradictions in ruling classes and racist elites do not prevent them from at the same time,contradictorily acting with a very high degree of unity with respect to the classes and races they oppress and dominate.
Not only that the white workers and second class ethnic groups perpetuate their own class oppression by their partial unity with the white ruling class.
White workers' own racism against workers of color is putting their own foots on their own necks. It is the main form of self-oppression, perhaps a la Butler's subjection.
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2. that "whiteness" has a history. that you need to look at both the "racialized" targeted group and the "whites" in order to fully grasp how that history unfolded and how it manifests itself today.
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Charles: Yes, it has a history, but the white/dark :: superior/inferior distinction reprodues itself in different forms throughout that history; and its harshest expression is not in the oppression of dark whites by white whites, but of darks by whites.
Failure to acknowledge this leads to a less rigorous , more "casual" use of the term "white".
Charles Brown