>Messsage du 26/11/2000 18:14
>De : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>A : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Copie à :
>Objet : Re: renouncing whiteness
>
> In message <3a2110a93a30c103 at bassia.wanadoo.fr>, Christopher B. Hajib-
> Niles <cniles at wanadoo.fr> writes
> >> White guilt - who needs it?
> >>
> Yes. I don't see how you can demand the renunciation of whiteness
> without making people feel guilty about being white.
first, you did not find any evidence to support your answer but based it on an ASSUMPTION. fine. but it you are gonna do that, don't accuse me of something i did not say. tell me why you disagree and ask me for more details. otherwise, the conversation becomes reduced to useless grandstanding.
second, my "white" abolitionists comrades are able to recognize the white race as a serious problem because they are able to THINK, not because they are wallowing in guilt. if they were, i assure you i would have found them quite tiresome rather quickly.
third, guilt can certainly play a role in a political decision to fight against the white race (or that which you call "racism) or global warming or whatever. SOME DEGREE of guilt--for a person who believes themself to be good--is a perfectly understandable response to realizing ones role in maintaining an evil. that's ok. but people acting out of guilt will not sustain a movement. NOR is it necessary. what is necessary is for people to have strong desire for a much better world. in order to get that, one of the things they will have to do is THINK. being white is not thinking; it is accepting an assigned identity. if white kids don't think, they are more likely to become trapped in the bewildering prison of whiteness, which as i have said manifest itself in a variety of ways--and, obviously, not necessarily as material priviledge.
> > > 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
why not follow me? as a long-time black radical with absolutely no patience for guilty white folk, no matter how radical, i have found "white" abolitionist like noel ignatiev and john garvey and joel olson, among others, refreshingly free of race guilt. this is precisely because of their anti-white politics, not despite them. yes, you will certainly find guilty white folks who are attracted to abolitionism. but i have encountered many more working in the anti-racist tradition.
I would say the core of their belief is
> that white people as a whole gain from black people -
historically without a doubt but the current situation is more complex: sometimes they do marginally, sometimes quite a bit, frequently in not necessarily in obvious material ways, and increasingly (at least for the moment), less so viz "globalization." can you cite some evidence to the contrary?
which is
> incompatible with the analysis that the working class is exploited:
i don't get it. are you arguing that all we need to know is that the working class is exploited? are you arguing that some in the working class have not benefited from others in the working class? are you one of those folks who thinks that real labor history started after the civil war?
> 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.
yes...
>
> The social phenomena of the 'white race', I would argue is a flawed one,
> that forcibly combines hostile interests, and is therefore simply false.
huh? help me out. simly false and...or and nothing?
>
> 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).
>
yes, and lots of smart male scientist who are responsible for cool discoveries are macho, racial chauvanist pigs. what else is new?
Let me list such constructive white people as Herbert Aptheker, Charles
> Darwin, Clarence Darrow, Karl Marx, Tom Paine, Rutherford, Mark Twain
> (and so on)
>
the fact that you are making this list tells me that you don't understand the motivations behind my anti-white politics...and that you are mixing "american white apples" with "european white oranges," thereby confounding matters...>> >
> >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.
there is more to it but yes, that is the critical point...
More to the point, may I suggest that forcing such distinctive
> historical events into the ahistorical category of racism robs them of
aaarggh! so capitalism is a historical category and race isn't? what happened to your above point that race emerges out of the social conflicts of capital? did it emerge out of those conflicts only to become a historical epiphenomenah?
>
their specificity. After all there are many distinctive enslavements,
yes, but we are talking about racial slavery. but then, you don't seem to think race is a historical category.
> and the Nazi holocaust had quite distinctive features from the
> annihilation of the Indians.
yes, but that does not mean that race had nothing to do with these events...
>
>
> >
> > 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.
i already did that. like i said, re-read some of the threads.
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.
>
you've created the straw man of abolitionists as white man full of shame and then constructed your argument accordingly which is why i am having difficulties following some of them. if you wanna insist that abolitionism is about white guilt no matter what i say, then there is really nothing to discuss, only ego points to be made.
> >
>
> >aha!
>
> Lo! the killer blow is to be struck...
>
>
> > so whiteness is a neutral category for you.
>
> Did I say that? Hardly.
some tell me how it isn't if it is a-historical. or are you not saying that either? is it a neutral epiphenomenah? what is happening here?
>
> > 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.
if it is so self-indulgent, why engage it? are you on a mission to rescue the self-indulgent from themselves? fight with me, but don't condescend.
chris niles
the new abolitionist
> James Heartfield
>