>Messsage du 20/11/2000 00:34
>De : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>A : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Copie à :
>Objet : Re: White Men & Freedom Essential to Capitalism
>
>
>
> "Christopher B. Hajib-Niles" wrote:
>
> > hope for america begins when significant numbers of "whites" refuse the identity and act accordingly.
>
> There is (some) hope for significant numbers of white workers to join in struggles
> to change the objective conditions which generate racism as an ideology.
where do you see this happening? and again, i don't see racism, whatever that is, as the problem but so-called whites. to put it another way, if we wage an aggressive battle against 'racism' but still have white folks around, we may have altered, perhaps for the better, some of the apparent aspects of racial degradation but fundamentally, we will have changed nothing. what folks call 'racism' (what i think is much more precisely referred to as whiteness) stems from the existance of a social construct called the 'white race' which is in turn rooted in a very primitive, racialization of humanity. if one wants to destroy 'racism' one must destroy the white race.
obviously, the black race is a social construct as well. you'll hear me raging against white folks for reasons having to do with their inability to see past their whiteness and their fucked up notions of entitlement that get in the way of building a serious freedom struggle. but ultimately, the contradictions of blackness must also give way to a deeper sense of self, one more firmly rooted in a recognition of one's full humanity. black people have been both the most inspiring source for social struggle in this country and the most self destructive social phenomenah(though that is not, obviously, the whole story). that should tell us something. in short, black people must be liberated from themselves in struggle if they are to realize their freedom. otherwise, 'we' will be doomed to ever more absurd expressions of hope and rage.
it is strange to me that folk want to continue to talk about the 'idealogy of racism' with me as if i have not registered a concern about that construct. is it because old discourse habits die hard? or maybe people just think anti-whiteism is a dumb idea that is not at all worth discussion. i don't mind a good struggle where i may or may not be proved wrong but i do mind when ideas are simply dismissed or ignored, especially by people who should know better.
But any
> politics that focuses on individual choices re "identity" is utterly empty. It merely
> repeats the empty moralizing of *Paradise Lost*, which holds that there can be
> no social change until people change. But people won't change until after social
> change occurs. An impossible antimony. See the third thesis on Feuerbach.
huh? what did i write that gave you an indication that what i was espousing was identity politics? being anti-white involves no empty moralizing; it is simply an absolutely essential 'component' of my anti-authoritarian politics. when somebody shows me how wonderful and positive it is to be 'white' then i'll stop being anti-white. to be a member of the white race is to be alienated from one's status as a member of the human race, thereby undermining your ability to work in profound and creative solidarity with other human beings.
yes, obviously, struggle, not intellectual chatterboxing, is what changes people. I only insist that we do the best job possible of framing the nature of the struggle 'before', 'during' and 'after' the struggle itself. The more clearly we understand freedom, the better we will be at fighting for it.
by the way, i believe that much of what passes for 'left, worker solidarity politcs' (but less so than in the past) is nothing more than white identity politics by another name...
chris niles the new abolitionist
>
>
>