>Wojtek:
>>>that "racism" is a very mushy and vague concept that allows anyone to read
>>>into it whatever he wants.
>
>Yoshie Furuhashi:
>> ...
>> With regard to race & racism in America, we should look at criminal
>> justice & incarceration as not an effect of racism but as _the cause_
>> of "persistent patterns of multi-faceted social inequalities that
>> correspond with ethnic differences." ...
>
>I think it would be more accurate to see the police and so
>forth as the cutting edge of the class war rather than the
>essence or cause of it. Although they are very close to the
>essence: one person takes power over others; the power-takers
>band together to settle differences and defend themselves from
>reprisal, thus forming the State; this ruling class produces
>or hires specialized enforcers, and we have the police. If,
>as I think, the class war produces racism and similar social
>pathologies, then the police are likely to be closely
>associated with them and their behavior may appear to drive
>the system. However, this wouldn't explain all the forms
>which racist practice takes.
I'm not interested in explaining all the forms which racist practice takes, though. It makes political sense to attack the biggest post-Emancipation/post-Civil-Rights problem -- criminal justice -- first and foremost, for redlining, housing discrimination, workplace discrimination, media discrimination, etc. have by now become either derivative of or secondary to the production of blacks as the _criminal race_. Why? Once blacks achieved first emancipation & then voting & civil rights, + affirmative action, there was & is no other state apparatus than criminal justice that was & is capable of reproducing race as an ensemble of social relations.
It took force (= primitive accumulation = enclosure + enslavement) to create the Market. And it takes force (= warfare + criminal justice) to reproduce the Market.
That is why every classical & neo-classical economist (as well as most firm believers in the efficiency of the Market & inefficiency of the State) argues not that the State should be abolished in favor of the Market but that the State's role should be limited to national defense & law enforcement.
Yoshie