<html><DIV></DIV>James H says: > <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>> <DIV></DIV>>If the white working class has a material interest in perpetuating <DIV></DIV>>racial oppression, then his appeal to 'renounce whiteness' could be a <DIV></DIV>>moral one. <DIV></DIV>> <DIV></DIV>>Why should the white working class act against its own interests <DIV></DIV>>(accepting what seems to me quite wrong: that they do indeed gain by <DIV></DIV> <P>>collaborating with racial oppression)? </P> <P>Why can't white workers have different and contradictory sets of interests? As whites they benefit by the subordination of blacks, browns, etc., in a number of ways: (1) their wages are higher; (2) they reduce competition for jobs and other opportunities where prejudicea nd racism forecloses blacks and other minorities; (3) they enjoy white skin privilege and concomitant feelings of superiority over blacks and other minorities, and solidaritry with whites. Just for starters. But as workers, a divided working class undermines their ability to organize against capitalist exploitation, to develop class solidarity and exercise class power. A similar dynamic operates with sexism, perhaps no less savagely.</P> <P>> </P> <P>Jim says:</P> <DIV></DIV>>Doesn't this appeal to renounce whiteness succumb to precisely those <DIV></DIV>>errors that Engels describes in Utopian and Scientific Socialism: namely <DIV></DIV>>that it is an appeal to moral action without identifying the material <DIV></DIV> <P>>foundations for such an action? </P> <P>What does this mean? That we have to always show that moral action is also in ouir interests, or it is futile to appeal to morality? ALthough I agree that it's unrealistic to expect people to act against their long term group interests, I also doubt that it's plausible to suppose that people only respond, or respond best, to "material" appeals. Outrage that motivates is fostered by a sense of injustice, of having been wronged, not just harmed.</P> <DIV></DIV> <P>Jim says:> </P> <DIV></DIV>>If the working class has no substantial community of interests with the <DIV></DIV>>ruling class, then it has no need to guiltily 'renounce' its supposed <DIV></DIV>>privileges. Rather it has a real material interest in challenging <DIV></DIV>>racism. Such an approach has the advantage that it is not based on <DIV></DIV> <P>>moralism. </P> <P>I am not sure that this is an "advantage." But I do think that "the working class" is a process, as E.P. Thompson taught, and not an entity. Its members, some of them, do have real interests that coincide with the ruling class's interests. White workers and white bosses have an interest in racial domination. </P> <P>Moreover, I don't think that renouncing whiteness has to involve guilt. I can know that I enjoy unjust advantages, and object to them because they are unjust, without feeling that I am responsible for them.  </P> <P>--jks</P> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV><br clear=all><hr>Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : <a href="http://explorer.msn.com">http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></p></html>