i don't see why you think anyone thinks nazism bizarre while not also thinking the white race bizarre? frankly, i am more convinced that the particular brand of racialization in the US is one in which whiteness is erased while others come to have race. very few people think of the "white race" as a race, but they did and do think of blacks, asians, native american, latinos as a race. and now, when leftists have come to question "race" they question the social construction of other groups and not whiteness conceived of as a race.
the problem with this, as you know, becomes most poignant for me when i teach. my pedagogy and research has drawn on the lessons of black feminist thought*-- to turn the analysis to whiteness, middle and upper middle classness, heterosexuality, masculinity, etc to make those groups uncomfortable, to turn the spotlight on them for a change. such an approach is extremely difficult b/c it does set off a great deal of hostility, as you know.
*(black feminists basically have said: quit asking me what it's like to be black, what racism means for me and start asking yourself how whiteness, etc works).
>a i
> > haven't read one regular contributor who doesn't also realize that nazism
> > and fasicsm were only extreme forms of what was taking place all over.
>
>what do you mean by all over? europe?
i think dennis answered this question pretty much as i would. but yes, guilty as charged for being careless in my wording.
> and
> > i think most folks agree that racialization (that's balibar's and zizek's
> > and others' word for the process through which bodies are marked, etc)
> > should point our analysis to those doing the racializing and not just
> those
> > who have been racialized.
>
>is there anything that i wrote that suggest that it should not?
chris, can you see how this question is unnecessarily seeking out some sort of argument when there is none? that's what i mean. i haven't attacked or challenged you. i was describing what i take to be the position of most folks on this list who've addressed these issues--and we have several times in the past. i remember you from way back when, i'm correct right? but you left in the fall of 98 perhaps? anyway, i was trying to explain that i think we share a similar analysis, it's just that those theorists use racialization to perform the same function: turning the focus on those doing the racializing and also insisting on a class analysis on several different levels, macro, micro, and meso in the parlance of my trade.
> i think that what is going on is that you are
> > reading things into people's posts and assuming they are reading things
> > into yours--and its just not there.
>
>come on, kelly. please don't condescend. i can read. i know when questions
>are being evaded or when straw men are being created. white folks,
>including white leftist, are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with an
>anti-white analysis. my experience in discussing these matters with
>otherwise serious white activist is that they don't listen, or as is the
>case on listserves, they don't read, then become quite defensive.
sure, we're uncomfortable. i don't have a problem with being anti-white or referring to it as anti-white. but that's because i don't think it matters what you call it. i also don't think dennis's or anyone's else use of the word racism is indicative of their fear. nor do i think that the use of that concept means that they don't share an analysis very much in line with yours.
in sociology, we try to deal with the same phenom, by talking about structural racism and individual level racism, disentangling them for the purposes of analysis, but also examining them as they work in tandem, though sometimes even at odds with one another.
i don't think, say, my use of the concept of racialization is somehow expressing my desire to evade the analysis you ask of others, nor do i think it is because i am afraid of destroying whiteness.
similarly, i don't think that calling feminism or womanism (which is how i used to identify myself b/c i hated feminism, but appreciated womanism) anti-maleness is going to do the trick. i don't think abolishing maleness is the answer to the oppression against women. for one thing, the oppression i experience as a white woman when mopping floors or waitressing is not like the oppression i experience as white woman while adjunct teaching at the local university, and both of those are strikingly different when doing so in the south where i now live, as opposed to upstate rural/suburban new york, where i used to live. indeed, my experiences in the south vary depending on whether i'm working at a uni on the coast of florida, as opposed to one in the bible belt heartland of florida. my womaness--how i'm perceived and treated by others, how they gauge whether i conform to the ideal of womaness--shifts in terms of other identities, norms, institutions and practices bound up with class and race relations/race consciousness.
i'm not sure how calling my and other women's and men's struggle anti-maleness will change things or address the issues above. i have an especially difficult problem with it because we are only now, in the context of feminism, insisting on analyses that examine whether the discourse of oppression of women qua women has been detrimental to feminist struggles that have largely spoken from the position of white, upper middle class women, shutting down the voices and experiences of women of color and working class women who've objected to mainstream feminist analyses.
oh, and also, this is what i meant in my first post to you about how complex it is, from my view, one informed by a reading black and latina feminists.
> it's what might explain why the
> > disconnect in these conversations.
>
>i've explained my position fairly clearly. the disconnect is that some
>folks don't wanna engage this issue directly. it's that simple.
well, i've been doing so, to the best of my ability. perhaps i think too highly of myself--which is often the case. :)
kelley