Max Weber's Genteel Racism

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Dec 7 10:55:25 PST 2000


Michael Pollak wrote:
> > >He argued that race was entirely socially constructed.
>>
>> Yes, but here lies the difference between "social constructionism"
>> and historical materialism.
>
>Perhaps. The original question was whether or not he was a racist. And
>I'm arguing that no, theoretically he was not.

In my first post, I wrote: "For Weber, so-called 'Europeans' were 'rational,' and so-called 'non-Europeans' were either 'irrational' or less 'rational,' and he attributes the origin of capitalism to this alleged difference: 'European rationality.' In Weber, one cannot but see one of the founding fathers of what might be called cultural racism." To me, cultural racism is different from but derivative of what is called biological racism. Today's racism is mainly cultural racism, I think, though via IQ debates, DNA obsessions, etc., biological racism is making a come-back of sorts.

Yoshie



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