>"If blacks understand our experience in this
>country, then they don't need to be validated by some artificial
construct like class."
doug:
>> Does that imply that race isn't an artificial construct?
annalee:
> So it would seem. Or perhaps in a more sympathetic but no less
irritating
>reading of the phrase, the artificial construct of race is so much
more
>powerful than that of class that class itself becomes meaningless.
How
>convenient for a middle-class person to argue this point.
it's certainly a clunky sentence. but where would class validate anyone other than on lists such as this, where class (for better and worse) is a privileged term?
I read the first sentence as 'we as black people need to understand our experience'. but perhaps the grammar betrays a lot... which might mean that the difference between 'blacks' and 'our experience' in the original sentence might actually signal a real difference of class, one which the author strives to paper over with a 'knowledge of experience' --- but who's experience?
angela