>However, as with pornography, one runs into
>the problem of definition: the democratic government will
>probably be required to define not only racism but race and
>to assign individuals to races and prescribe rules for behaviors
>across racial boundaries. This would negate the possibility
>of nonracism, perhaps permanently.
Since the original post concerned Yugoslavia, I think it pertinent to discuss the politics of ethnic classification in Yugoslavia. Miranda Vickers writes in _Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo_ (NY: Columbia University Press, 1998):
***** In both the 1971 and 1981 censuses Albanians and Turks pressed Roms to declare themselves respectively as Albanians or Turks, while Serbs wanted them to declare as Roms (Gypsies) in order to reduce the number of Albanians in Kosovo. In an article published in 1984, the internationally respected Rom activist, Slobodan Berberski, accused (in the indigestible jargon of the time) the 'Albanian nationalistic-chauvinistic, reactionary, anti-self-managing, couner-revolutionary forces' of putting pressure on Roms to declare themselves as Albanians. He mentioned the names of some Albanians from Mitrovica, and claimed that during the census Roms had been threatened that unless they declared themselves as Albanians they would be forced into exile.... (p. 220) *****
Perhaps, more than any other countries on earth, Yugoslavia tried its hardest to balance the Yugoslav unity with group rights of each constituent ethnic group, alternately trying relative measures of political centralization and decentralization, but in the end the coincidence of economic disintegration and political devolution doomed its efforts.
One of the paradoxical truths about Yugoslavia that are seldom mentioned is that what Kosovo Albanians needed to improve their lot economically was *less* autonomy for each republic, *not* more (certainly *not* secession or the Greater Albania); to put it differently, *not* federalism but a strong unitary state and *more power* for Albanians within it to redistribute wealth from richer republics and invest it in Kosovo for more social development. *More autonomy* for each republic meant a *widening gap* between rich and poor regions.
Yoshie