>>> sokol at jhu.edu 11/27/00 02:19PM >>>
At 01:45 PM 11/27/00 -0500, Charles wrote:
>CB: No, even Al Gore had to admit that currently in the U.S. there is
general phenomenon of police discrimination against Black people and other
"darker" people in the form of racial profiling.
Even?????
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CB: Correct , "even". Even Al Gore , who is on the rightwing, admits this , and you don't. That puts you EVEN to the right of a rightwinger on the issue in discussion. Even Al Gore gets it and you don't.
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That is probably the only thing he would admit. It is the old game of blaming individual attitudes, not the system: things are bad because of individual attitudes, not because of the normal operation of the system.
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CB: Not individual attitudes, systematic, institutionalized , collective racism in the police forces of the U.S. It is a racist ideology, not an individual attitude.
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"Racism" is a convenient excuse for many things that are wrong with this society it puts the blame on the individual: the lazy welfare mother on the one hand, and the bigoted cop or business owner on the other. This way, the system that creates and thrives on class inequality disappears from the the picture.
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CB: Racism is not a convenient excuse, it is an inconvenient social fact for Black people and other racially oppressed groups. As Coleman Young once told a bunch of people who were running the same line as you, "Racism do exist."
There is a long history of Communist theory which discusses racism and class oppression/exploitation in an integrated way. See Communist Party USA program and literature for the last 70 years, for example of discussion of relation of race to class in the U.S. ( Stop reading so much academic bullshit on this issue. It is just coming from academic careerists/opportunists) ((((((((((
No wonder that Gore and kindred "bleeding-heart" representatives of the ruling class "admit" racism. It is a convenient scape goat that diverts attention from the broader issues of the organization of economy and society.
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CB: You are thinking of the old New Deal liberals. Gore is not a bleeding heart liberal. He is a rightwing, neo-liberal. Thus, EVEN Al Gore , the rightwing, non-bleeding heart liberal, has to openly admit that there is racial profiling today in the USA.
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I received a rather good exposure to that propaganda technique in Eastern Europe under the Sovite rule. The government propaganda there was quite skillful in inventing sundry characters, such as "lazy workers," "bureaucrats" "hoolingans" and "kulaks" as the "root causes" of all social problems. The main message was: if only these people could change their attitudes, our society would be a paradise on earth. Seems as if the x-Soviets hacks were now on the payroll of the Republicrat duopoly.
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CB: Capitalism tends to unite oppressed labor forms such as racially oppressed labor with free-labor at the root cause level.
Capitalism = wage-labor + oppressed labor ( for example, racially oppressed labor in the U.S.)