[snip]
> but despite that, we still have structural racism, a difficult thing to
> grasp--difficult enough that you have people running about maintaining that
> they can simple think differently about race (like matt cramer did here
> recently) and that somehow will wipe away racism.
No, you aren't paying attention. It isn't "think differently about race", it is think differently about X, where X is any institution, practice, community, policy, economy, etc. - and the "differently" is 'aware of racism', or if Chris prefers, whiteness.
I think I get the anti-white idea, if for no more than as was pointed out, racism has become a watered-down term to describe a phenomenon that is still virulently destructive. And as uncomfortable as it may be for some to admit it, the real problem is 'white'-on-others oppression.
As for if thinking differently will "somehow wipe away racism", no that is just a strawman you constructed - I never made that claim. But I will claim that changing the way people think *IS* a critical component to fighting racism/whiteness. While I recognize the effects of economic models in the perpetuation of racism, I have yet to receive the Marxist Epiphany that says that if we eliminate capitalism all of society's ills will dissappear with it. Unfortunately there are subtle psychological mechanisms at work that cause people to be racist/white. Race is just a construct anyway, and if we don't address how we think then race will just be replaced by a new *ism. I just a read a paragraph of your's below and see you are basically asserting the same thing.
> the attitude is that
> racism and racialization are all about how we think. it is an
> idealist, platonic, individualist ontology/epistemology which imagines
> that ideas precede and are determinative of action, as if we are beings
> capable of extracting ourselves from the social world in which we live and
> thinking real hard to change things.
No, it is an attitude that imagines that thought precedes actions and that we are the substance of the social world in which we live! Such predispositions you exhibit, oh my!
[snip]
> similarly, elsewhere, at another list, where people are deeply committed to
> the notion of "
> merit" and the idea that there are genetic bases to intelligence and that
> there is the possibility of creating life on another planet,
For the record, what Kel refers to is a discussion about "intelligence" versus "knowledge", where intelligence is a genetic factor and knowledge is a learned trait. Just as I would imagine would happen here, there was much discussion and little consensus about which is more useful and causal and what effect one had on the other.
> racializing
> beliefs are rampant such that people regularly advocate the annihilation of
> people who can't vote properly
I have no idea what you are talking about.
> or who can't figure out how to unsubscribe
> from a list.
Tongue-in-cheek list humour that you appear to take way too seriously.
> sure, it's hyperbole, but i'd say that reading the
> literatures written by people who subscribe to this world view that it's
> not complete hyperbole unattached from any basis in reality. this is
> because these folks have an individualist explanation for what is wrong
> with society: that individual will and belief can be mobilized to change
> the world. and when that fails to happen, they need to explain why people
> don't wake up and smell the coffee and do "the right thing".
Full of rampant individualists that list is. From a favorite novel discussed recently:
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob
from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few
individuals, and the people reverts to a mob.
> what can
> explain the "sheeple" status? well, their answer, obviously, is that those
> "sheeple" were born that way and only an elite few get it.
This is completely false. Being a "sheeple" has everything to do with how one views the world. No one is born a sheeple - they are taught to be that way.
Really, Kel, I thought you understood this. When Chris is talking about the white folks who live their lives demanding the unfair privilege to which they believe they are entitled because they are 'white', a 'race' that is completely an artificial construct, he is talking about what we refer to as sheeple!!!
> those leaders
> should be anointed and lead
...by example.
> or they she be shorn of the burden they
> bear: that is, those sheeple should be corralled and subdued so they stop
> causing problems OR they should simply be eradicated OR they should, in ayn
> randian fashion, plant themselves on another planet, o brave new world.
Whatever - so much straw there. The sheeple are the effect, not the cause. Hence the discussions on things like education, religion, politics, economy, lentil soup, etc.
> like it or not, the above is a form of racialization. it is insisting that
> there is a physical basis for "bad behavior". speaking of race in terms
> that fail to capture that process is problematic, i think.
Your straw man is - reality is not.
dc-stuff is not the anti-LBO you seem hell-bent on inventing. Judging by much of what I read here, I find much consensus between many of the views taken on dc-stuff and some of the more radical, particularly anarchist, positions taken here. This really seems to bother you, and I'm not sure why.
> so, we need to conceptualize racialization differently than we do. the
> specifics of how to do so are elusive, difficult to articulate
Go figure, that's what I said.
Matt
-- Matt Cramer <cramer at voicenet.com> http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/ Damn the rules, it's the feeling that counts.
-John Coltrane