>Messsage du 28/11/2000 22:27
>De : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>A : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Copie à :
>Objet : renouncing whiteness?
>
>
> I'm still confused about Chris's position.
ok.
> If the white working class has a material interest in perpetuating
> racial oppression, then his appeal to 'renounce whiteness' could be a
> moral one.
you'll have show me how everything i've written can be reduced to a moral demand. i don't get it.
precisely because they live largely miserable lives, only in the narrowest sense does the white working class have a material interest these days in perpetuating racial oppression. with de-industrialisation and post-cold war unions, being a white worker ain't quite what it used to be.
i'm sorry i ever used the term 'renounce whiteness.'it has diverted folks in all kinds of unfortunate ways. that said, my politics have always been informed by ethical and moral concerns. is there something wrong with that? do we really want a revolution where revolutionaries don't consider the ethical implications of their actions? i don't. obviously, as wage slaves, none of us are free to consistently act in our best ethical and moral interests in either a social or poltical context. that is one of the tragedies of living in a capitalist world. still, as far as i am concerned, the best revolutionary politics has "soul power." that is, it appeals to people's sense of right and wrong without moralizing. who wants to be involved in some dry ass struggle where all people whine about is not getting their piece of the pie? yuck.
so yes, anti-whiteism is a political principle based on a moral view alienation and the violence that stem from it are not good things.
> Why should the white working class act against its own interest (accepting what seems to me quite wrong: that they do indeed gain by
> collaborating with racial oppression)?
you don't think that the white working class gained (again in the most narrow material sense) by collaborating with racial oppression? that's what's at the core of american history: white workers have always been bought off with a combination of what they get (better but not gaurenteed access to the american dream) and what what won't happen to them because they are NOT black (no jim crow, no black codes, no workplace discrimination, etc.)
if what you mean by white workers not gaining is that they got petty shit in return for collaboration with racial oppression, then yes, i would agree. but remember: lots of white working folks have always expected something from this country because they are white: this is the key to understanding those "angry white men" in middle-america who think they lost their jobs because of immigration and affirmative action.
>
> Doesn't this appeal to renounce whiteness succumb to precisely those
> errors that Engels describes in Utopian and Scientific Socialism: namely
> that it is an appeal to moral action without identifying the material
> foundations for such an action?
again, you really have to be deep in the historical dark not to see what white folk got and/or expected to get from being white in this country in order not to see the material foundation for an anti-white politics.
>
> Conversely, one might make the case that collaboration with racial
> oppression was an ideological barrier to the working class's true
> interests.
this is exactly what i am saying. how has this not been clear?
Evidence for such an interpretation is hardly thin on the
> ground. Chris might think that having a car is tantamount to membership
> of the capitalist class
what?!? i never said this. how could you have possibly come to this understanding of my comments about cars? my wife has a car and i use it everyday? and yes, i think cars, such as they are, are pretty disasterous things and that the world desperately needs a better way to get about. but my wife sure as hell ain't no capitalist and i am not lounging in capitalist luxury when i am in her hoopty. please read me more carefully.
>
> If the working class has no substantial community of interests with the
> ruling class,
then it has no need to guiltily 'renounce' its supposed
> privileges. Rather it has a real material interest in challenging
> racism. Such an approach has the advantage that it is not based on
> moralism.
fundamentally, workers never do have a community of interests with rulers. but there have been many times where they have been convinced that they do (a particularly disasterous example is world war one).
>
i think that white folk are better off challenging the white race. again, it has nothing do with moralism. its about destroying a bullshit identity that has nothing to do with biological reality or culture and everything to do with relative privilege, entitlement and power or the (pathetic) relative expectation thereof. if we destroy "racism", whatever that is, and we still have "white" people, we are fucked. white people are, by defenition, lost: there ain't no white culture, no white food, no white spirituality, no white literature, no white music, no white dances style, no white art, no white language, no white theater; yet there are lots of "white" people who cling to this silly identity--and few of them actually have white skin! now that's sad--and ultimately pathetic. what do lost people do? sometimes they wallow in guilty liberalism about what they believe to be their condition. and sometimes they join white suprmeacist militias. and somtimes they become very confused r!
adical white activist. however you cut it, insofar as they are politically and socially circumbscribed by their membership in the white race, "white" folk are of no use to anyone.
and i'm not interested in making a revolution with people who simply need to be shown what's in it for them. yes, people need to see that a revolution would change their lives for the better--i certainly do. but i also need to see how will it will qualitatively improve everybody's lives since we all, in one way or another, depend on each other.
questions: apart from what happens when you walk out of your door in the morning, do you consider yourself a member of the white race? would you be offended if some serious, non-moralizing political folk (black or white or non-white) incorporated anti-white themes into their struggle? would you shy away from that struggle or embrace it?
chris niles
In message <3a23f2c53a310eed at areca.wanadoo.fr>, Christopher B. Hajib-
> Niles <cniles at wanadoo.fr> writes
>
> >and yes, one should target their idealogical and political heat at the capitalit
> >class but we should not forget that those pretty cars are buying allegiance
> >and, indeed, destroying the environment and human life. we certainly should not
> >be blaming 'everyday folk' for being auto-dependent (nor imposing gas taxes and
> >the like on them) but they should at least know what auto-dependency entails and
> >how their status as wage slaves conspires against their ability to do anything
> >about it. no one who hopes for a better world should promote the fetishisation
> >of working class innocence.
> >
>
> > we
> >hate capitalism; we hate race; we know the two are deeply entangled; we know the
> >two phenomenah, in their various guises, have conspired in much evil; let's
> >focus on destroying both as necessary to fundamental, revolutionary change.
>
> --
> James Heartfield
>