>>> Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 09/28/99 02:51PM >>>
In message <s7ef9dc7.086 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>Charles: I agree that a dialectical method in history demands that we see leaps
>not just gradual development. However, it is crystal clear in the U.S. that
>today's racism is very significantly a sublation of slavery; it both negates
>and
>preserves it. This is because Black people were the main slave class and are a
>main oppressed racial group. The idea that racism is not in part a hangover
>from
>slavery contradicts the obvious.
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Jim: Well, the obvious is often deceptive and wrong.
Charles: But not most of the time. And in this case it is neither deceptive nor wrong as usual. (((((((((((((((
Jim:
Racial ideas are intrinsic to capitalism and have at different times attached to different races.
Charles: But in racism has not been applied evenly to all "races". Anti-African racism has been the strongest , along with anti-Indian, in capitalist history. Here I am specifically discussing anti-African racism in U.S. history. The continuity between enslavement of Africans and anti-Black racism today is a main aspect that makes your idea on this thread obviously and truly wrong.
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Jim: 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.
Charles: However, in the example of the U.S., as we are discussing here, the main historic racisms have been against Blacks and Reds. With respect to slavery, racism against Blacks is connected to it.
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Jim: 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.
Charles: No the economic historic development is a sublation. Today's racism against Blacks preserves the superexploitation of Blacks during slavery ( See _Economics of Racism_ I and II, by Victor Perlo for calculations of superprofits had based on racism). The sublation is substantive, contra your comment.
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>
>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."
Jim 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.
Charles: "The" working class ? What about the workers who fought with the Confederacy.
After the Civil War, the Northern capitalists reinstituted the split in the class based on race by nurturing Jim Crow segregation ( legally in the South , by custom in the North). This is another direct historical connection. The Northern capitalists were aware of exactly what Marx was talking about, but from the opposite class perspective.
>
>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.
>
Jim 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.
Charles: It is you who make the mistake. You are wrong that Black labour did not have a marginal position before the 1930's and from the time of immediately after the end of slavery. This is an a,b,c of Black economic history. Your suggestion that Black labor achieved equality with White labor from sometime soon after the Civil War until the 1930's and then lost it in the 1930's is empirically false.
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Jim: 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.
Charles: There was no historical break in the U.S. ruling class promoting racism between slavery and the 1930's. It was continuous , and the "modern' promotion is linked historically to the "old" ruling class strategy. It was modified with the end of slavery, but relied on some of the same elements that were used during slavery, primarily conceptions of the inherent inferiority of Blacks to Whites, whether this inferiority is posed as "biological", "religious:", "intellectual", etc.
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>
>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.
Jim: 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: You are a bit out of date on the liberals. They are neo-liberals and they have merged with consevatives in many ways. There are plenty of liberals who take the rightwing position on this. At any rate, the fact that some racism comes in a different form does not refute the fact that a major strain of racism in 1999 is directly linked to the denial of slavery line I mention above. Therefore, racism today is connected to historical slavery. You are wrong on the issue in dispute in this exchange.
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>
>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.
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Charles: Lots ? I don't think so. The predominant monopoly media ( of which Hollywood is an aspect) posture toward slavery is exactly the same as yours: That it has nothing to do with today and that today's White people are not beneficiaries of the slavery and jim crow against Blacks in history. That this historical discrimination has nothing to do with the oveall and average socio-economic lower state , status and condition of African-Americans relative to European Americans.
Furthermore the "problem" you conjure of apologies for slavery being used to avoid racism today is pretty much non-existent from my experience. I have almost never witnesses a White person denouncing slavery and trying to turn around and use that denunciation to avoid the issue of racism. Just bringing up slavery immediately creates a contemporary anti-racist mood. Black people are the only ones who bring up slavery, and most of the time White people are uncomfortable discussing it, because they have more sense than you about it , and know that it immediately implicates today's racism.
Charles Brown