> Relative goodies that go to whiteness can't be studied without
> looking at the segmented labor market; social & geographical
> segregation; cultural hierarchies (e.g., standard English vs. black
> English); wars on drugs & crimes; etc. at the same time.
True, but i think the aggregate result is quite the same if ever-rapidly evolving and, therefore, never entirely obvious.
>
> That said, native-born white men today (if not in the past), on
> average, tend to be much less enthusiastic for unionized jobs than
> blacks, immigrants, etc.
i mis-spoke a bit in my previous email. i meant to write in the past tense re: unions, but i think the basic point still stands...
Many of them unfortunately feel that they
> can make it as individuals.
>
> >Or to put it another way, i'm 34 years old and quite confident in my
> >abilities but i am always consciouss of my blackness in an
> >all-too-often unfortunate way. That's something that "white" boys
> >don't really know about and CAN'T know about until they act
> >publically and effectively against the white race in a way that will
> >result in white folks making them feel quite black.
>
> What you say above probably continues to be true, but I'd offer two
> qualification:
>
> 1. Increasingly, the young, gifted, & light-skinned black have been
> demanding a racial reclassification through the recognition of
> "biracial," "multi-racial," & other categories that deconstruct
> "blackness" defined by the one-drop rule (see, for instance, the
> website of Project Race, at
> <http://www.projectrace.com/hot_news.html>). I believe that this
> effort is in part rooted in social, cultural, & economic polarization
> of black communities (so much so that an increasing number of the
> Talented Tenth do not want to be race men & race women).
Yes and no. i think that talented tenth types dig their blackness in so far as they can use it for relative priviledge. no in the sense that they do not want to bear the burdens of blackness. at the end of the day, however, the rules of blackness apply to even those black folks who would like to pretend that they don't, if not, due to some of the factors you sight, in a cookie-cutter way.
>
> 2. Post-civil-rights & post-affirmative-action racism, it seems to
> me, is a _backlash_ racism, in part stemming from whites' resentment
> against _having to be conscious about their whiteness_, which is a
> little different from the idea of whiteness as the unspoken but
> taken-for-granted norm.
Yes...
>
.
> >
> >Who is "we"?
>
> Not-white, not-male, at a disadvantage compared to white men of the
> same class, strata, educational background, etc. I'm not speaking of
> the political "we" here.
i was asking because their is a tendency in these conversations for folks to go from talking about black folks to folks of color as if the two are the same thing. it's both a very revealing and very bad habit, though i'm not sure that's what you were doing...
>
> > > White men who are not racist know what the real
> >> cause of alienation is.
> >
> >My experience with the so-called left is that the vast majority of
> >white men who constitute its ranks range from utterly clueless to
> >deeply sensitized but quite significantly confused about race. I
> >think you will find rough agreement about that among the so-called
> >people of color agitators, certainly among blacks, though folks will
> >disagree as to the reasons why...
>
> Hmmmn. Is that the reason why you live in Paris? I hope you won't
> go to the extreme to which Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ ("You were
> not hired [as a functionary] to think"), Richard Wright's _The God
> That Failed_ ("I Tried to Be a Communist"), etc. went. I believe you
> don't....
Nah. i live in france because my wife, who is french-moroccan, and i are having a baby and it was easier to do it here. it's been a long time since i read any ellison but i recall finding a sort of tortured merit in much of his analysis re: commies, the best of whom having always struck me as variously brilliant yet terribly, and fatally, sentimental.
> Anyhow, I say that white men who are not racist know what the real
> cause of alienation is, _but_ I don't think that white men who (think
> they) know what the real cause of alienation is are necessarily
> non-racist. So, perhaps there is no disagreement here.
>
i think the problem is that we are working within different paradigms. in so far as race is concerned, my politics are anti-white, not anti-racist. as i have stated many times before. i think the terms "racism," "racist" and "anti-racism" are useless in so far as understanding race, and therefore, the global political and social economy, is concerned. hope for america begins when significant numbers of "whites" refuse the identity and act accordingly.
chris niles the nez abolitionist
> Yoshie
>