Well, the obvious is often deceptive and wrong. Racial ideas are intrinsic to capitalism and have at different times attached to different races. Racism is not necessarily hostility to blacks. So for example, the racialisation of the East and Southern European immigrants to the US was not related to slavery. Similarly, the racialisation of the original underclass, the British 'residuum' was unrelated to slavery.
You say that racism sublates and preserves slavery. I say that this is a formalistic approach. The rhetoric might be similar, but the economic relation is wholly distinctive.
>
>Both racism and slavery had a critical function of splitting the working class.
>Marx noted this when he said "labor in the white skin will not be free while
>labor in the black skin is branded."
But the difference is that the working class united with the Northern Capitalist class to fight the plantocracy. Northern capitalists did not get the benefit that you suggest.
>
>The U.S. capitalists understand this very well. They are the source of the
>perpetuation of racism as the key divider of the working class. Without ruling
>class efforts to perpetuate racism, it would fade away.
>
You make a mistake in seeing this as a perpetuation, it is a modern creation of capitalism. It is the agricultural collapse of the 1930s that created the contemporary condition of black labour's marginal position, as the only ethnic section of the population that is defined by its expulsion from the production process.
I agree that the ruling class perpetuates racism, and that it is not natural. But that should make it more apparent that this is a modern creation.
>
>Jim:I think you miss the way that apologies for past behaviour have the
>effect of excusing discrimination in the present. Everyone can nod
>sagely about how awful slavery was, because challenging slavery in no
>sense challenges contemporary race discrimination.
>
>Charles: That is not the way it is felt and perceived in current debates on
>current racism. The racists very much see that connecting today's racism to
>slavery challenges today's racism, and so the racists and rightwing take the
>lead in espousing what you are saying here: Don't connect today's racism to
>slavery.
But you are concentrating exclusively on the political right, for whom any expression of white guilt is untenable. That misses out the liberals who wring their hands about racism, but still see black people as a problem to be managed. For them, it is child's play to tut tut at slavery, or even Jim Crow, but still sign up for repressive measures that are justified in terms of fighting crime or drugs.
>
>Charles: Maybe, but that isn't how the connections between slavery and racism
>today in the U.S. are being used.
You don't think so? I see lots of Hollywood films about what a terrible thing slavery is, or even Jim Crow, and yet somehow, I have trouble seeing Hollywood as a bastion of anti-racism. -- Jim heartfield