renouncing whiteness

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Mon Nov 27 13:53:17 PST 2000



>>> sokol at jhu.edu 11/27/00 04:01PM >>>
At 03:52 PM 11/27/00 -0500, Charles wrote:
>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.
>

Charles, I do not deny the existence of profiling - I am asserting that racism is not a very useful analytical category to explain that profiling. The reliance on conventional stereotypes (such as racial or gender profiling among many other forms) and rituals in organizationa decision-making has been well documented by studies of organizational behavior. However, linking the existence of such stereotypes to the gobbledegook that simplistically links behavior to human attitudes and vice versa is quite a different matter.

((((((((((((

CB: It is not the position of materialist social science that ideas do not cause conduct. Materialism is the theory that systems of ideas are not self-changing, but rather that changes in systems of ideas come about from the contradictions in systems of ideas that arise from practice of those ideas.

The patterns of racist discrimination in the U.S. you say are documented ( i.e. evidence of them is described in writing) are empirical generalizations ( facts) are EXPLAINED by the systems of ideas and practices in peoples' heads, their ideology. "Racism" is the scientific term for these systems of ideas and the practices which they cause. It is as good of an analytical category as "class oppression". On one level the connection between conduct and ideas is simple, although there are complexities too, such as Black people like Clarence Thomas or a Black cop having racist ideology or ideas.



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