renouncing whiteness

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Nov 28 11:41:33 PST 2000


At 02:31 PM 11/28/00 -0500, Charles wrote: seriousness in contrast with Wojtek's trying to turn it into a joke, and trying to dismiss these issues as if he has no left political obligation to fight racism, including first , of course, acknowledging it as a real and important social problem for radicals.

Racism is a very serious thing, and so is the holocaust. Its is the usage of those words to justify the "anything goes" approach to political discourse that is difficult to be taken seriously. The difference between you and I is that I have no problem accepting "racist" explanation of behavior if it is adequately supported by empirical evidence, whereas you seem to accept it even if there is not much evidence to support it.


>
>When I say Blacks will judge, I don't mean anything heavy duty except in
the common sense that of course, Black people are judging whether white people are racist all the time , constantly, but Black people have inferior power to do anything about their judgements in this regard except in the periodic anti-racist upsurges in U.S. history.

That sounds like a racist idea. I would not describe anyone, Black, Yellow, or White as "having inferior power to do anything" about how they are being viewed. It is quite condescending to describe an entire group of people as being a "white man's burden" so to speak.

wojtek



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