renouncing whiteness

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun Nov 26 08:14:10 PST 2000


In message <3a2110a93a30c103 at bassia.wanadoo.fr>, Christopher B. Hajib- Niles <cniles at wanadoo.fr> writes
>> White guilt - who needs it?
>
>first of all, can you point to anything in the above that has anything to do
>with white guilt?

Yes. I don't see how you can demand the renunciation of whiteness without making people feel guilty about being white.


> 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.

On the contrary, I would say it has everything to do with abolitionism. Following Roediger and Allen I would say the core of their belief is that white people as a whole gain from black people - which is incompatible with the analysis that the working class is exploited: my own view until someone dislodges it.


>
> 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?

I guess I'm 'gonna' argue that there is no such thing as the white race, a point that you would surely accept insofar as it refers to a biological discrete group.

The social phenomena of the 'white race', I would argue is a flawed one, that forcibly combines hostile interests, and is therefore simply false.

Finally, a great many of those people that are conventionally known as being of the 'white race' have, I think you will agree, done a great many constructive things (just as a great many of them have done destructive things).

Let me list such constructive white people as Herbert Aptheker, Charles Darwin, Clarence Darrow, Karl Marx, Tom Paine, Rutherford, Mark Twain (and so on)


> 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.

Oh yes, I think so. More specifically the ideological categorisations of race are themselves a product of the social conflicts arising out of capital. More to the point, may I suggest that forcing such distinctive historical events into the ahistorical category of racism robs them of their specificity. After all there are many distinctive enslavements, and the Nazi holocaust had quite distinctive features from the annihilation of the Indians.


>
> 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.

You need to put the demand in its context. The overwhelming attitude of the middle class intelligentsia is precisely one of apologetics. In that context the demand for the renunciation of whiteness could not be anything but apology. And after all, isn't that what 'renunciation' means - just as the church demands that one renounces sin.


>
> 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?

No, but then those are false alternatives. My point in fact would be that they are just two sides of the same coin: white pride, white shame both participate in the same myth.


>


>aha!

Lo! the killer blow is to be struck...


> so whiteness is a neutral category for you.

Did I say that? Hardly.


> you don't see it so you ain't
>gotta deal with it...

Mostly I have to deal with self-indulgent nonsense like the above which is a barrier to fighting racism. -- James Heartfield



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