kelley wrote:
>
> this was NOT a claim equating their experience with blacks more
> generally.
Then why bother. Several times since I begin hanging out in maillists I have encountered posts which out of the blue want to discuss "Bourgeois feminism" -- not in reference to specific positions raised on the list or in any context which properly places that concern, or with any attempt to establish why that particular bourgeois ideology should occupy pride of place, but simply as an isolated point in itself. I have always interpreted such ungrounded "concern for bourgeois feminism" to be in fact concern for any kind of feminism whatever, as in fact (even if not intentionally) a support for male supremacy,.
In reference to racism (and *all* racism in the United States is derivative from racism focused on blacks), quibbles are objectively defenses of racism. There was and is absolutely no reason to bring up the obvious but uninteresting fact that some "whites" are treated like "blacks." So What?
You and I have been friendly lately, and I would like that to continue. But I'm not going to be friendly in specific response to any intellectual position which has any tendency to blur the analysis of racism and its source in the objective position of "black people" in the United States. As you go on to say, "race" is "socially constructed" (which is not quite true -- this formulation blurs history), but just for that reason the focus must be on the social relations which ground the myth of "black race." The category of "white trash" is one of those categories which, regardless of the user's intentions, fortifies the ideology of racism. "White trash" doesn't exist either. It's only *real* purpose (again, probably not intentional) is to blur the question of "race." It sets up what have been called "pissing contests" over who the worst victim is. Poor whites (whether or not included in the mythical category of "white trash") have a hard time of it just like most of the world's population under capitalism. But to talk about that in specific terms of a "white" group is sheer superstition. The position black people in the United States constitutes a social fact which is (politically and socially) *different* from the position of any other group -- and politics that don't recognize this are reactionary politics.
Carrol