>> Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk 11/29/00 09:53AM
The other route would be to see the working class divided on race lines
with whites enjoying a differential advantage over blacks in employment
and income. In such a case, they are better off relative to blacks, but
only in the context of their own exploitation. In such a case, do they
gain by black disadvantage? No. The exploitation of black people is not
the source of white wages. White workers are not living from the surplus
labour of blacks. Their wages represent a proportion of their own
product.
This is more than a schema, it seems to me. What are wrongly seen as privileges for whites, turn out to be a massive disadvantage. Doubtless American and British elites tried to persuade white people that they were better off as a result. But such ideological appeals were nut substantially justified.
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CB: This is a good way to put it. White skin color privilege is an illusory benefit for white workers. This is from an objective perspecitive. Somebody posted hypothetical figures on white workers' wages being reduced overall by the overall wage scale being reduced by discriminated against Black workers. Marxist economist Victor Perlo wrote two books on the economics of racism, in part attempting to calculate the material harm to U.S. white workers by this dynamic.
The racism against Black workers creates a standing body of potential scabs. The union was delayed from winning at Ford Motor Company in the 1930's/40's because Henry Ford had connections to groups of Black workers who would scab, essentially. The recent 6 year strike by Detroit newspaper workers was undermined in part by poor Black workers scabbing . The newspaper workers' union had a poor record in civil rights and anti-discrimination struggle. Thus, their weak history in the struggle against racism and poor reputation in the Black community, left them open to this strikebreaking and insufficient support of their boycott in predominantly Black Detroit.
It is not just white workers wages and benefits that are reduced, but the division of the working class resulting from prejudice undermines effective working class action in the class struggle in politics and economics.
>From a subjective standpoint, in the U.S., the bourgeoisie have quite a bit of success in fomenting racist prejudice among a critical fraction of white workers, selling them on the illusion of white skin color privilege.