>Messsage du 25/11/2000 23:30
>De : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>A : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Copie à :
>Objet : Re: renouncing whiteness
>
> In message <3a1cdc753a45f5a2 at magnolia.wanadoo.fr>, Christopher B. Hajib-
> Niles <cniles at wanadoo.fr> writes
> >what is to be done? for starters, i would be very, very happy if, say, many
> >white anti-globalization kids in the u.s. would start publically attacking the
> >white race as the most profoundly destructive historical and social force over
> >the last 400-plus years and as the the most effective 'binding agent' for the
> >capitalist system during that time. i would also be very happy if those young
> >white kids acknowledged that they themselves reproduce the white race daily and
> >made an explicit and strategically detailed committment to liberate themselves--
> >as an essential part of their anti-authoritarian struggles--from the prison of
> >the white race so that they might work in deeeper solidarity with other people
> >as members of the human race.
>
> White guilt - who needs it?
first of all, can you point to anything in the above that has anything to do with white guilt? second, you obviously have not much of this thread because i've already made it clear that white guilt never did anybody any political good and it has nothing to do with abolitionism.
It isn't the white race that is destructive but the capitalist class.
are you really gonna argue that the white race is a consturctive phenomenah? or maybe you'll argue that the white race is a socially neutral construct? come on, now: of course,the white race does not operate independently. is impossible to understand its functionings without understanding the dynamics of capital. that said how are you gonna understand slavery, the slaughter of native americans and the nazi holocaust, just for starters, without understanding white racialism? as simply capitalist phenomenah? i don't think so.
The myth of white solidarity was that the
> working class in the West had a community of interests with the ruling
> class.
yeah...but is that the extent of your analysis of whiteness? sounds like a one horse analysis to me.
Getting people to apologise for their being white
who said anything about white people apologizing for being white? fuck the apologies, what we really wanna see is revolutionary political creativity and that is not likely to happen without attacking the socially destructive myth of the white race.
only
> perpetuates the myth (except now re-cast in guilty self-identification
> rather than proud self assertion).
do you really want people running around america shouting "say it loud, i'm white and i'm proud.!" is that your vision of a new left or post-left or whatever?
>
> What could better encapsulate the morbid outlook of today's petit
> bourgeois intelligentsia than their going around saying how bad being
> white is? Guilt, as Freud explained, is mostly about narcissism.
>
> And what could better fit the need of the ruling elite to downgrade
> working class social power than telling them all off for being
> 'privileged'!
>
> I don't feel any desire to renounce my 'whiteness', as indeed I never
> felt any desire to embrace it.
aha! so whiteness is a neutral category for you. you don't see it so you ain't gotta deal with it...and the beat, as they say goes on...
chris niles the new abolitionist
> --
> James Heartfield
>