Carrol Cox:
> The vocabulary of "racial division" is commonplace but it does serve to
> obscure rather than reveal reality by suggesting the presence of mor or
> less equal social 'fractions' which need to be reconciled, rather than
> the oppression of black people, which needs to be eradicated. (I'm not,
> of course, suggesting that Gordon accepts this or intends the
> implication I point to.)
I think it's pretty unusual to see a large-scale social division which persists over more than a few generations where one side does not have and use power over the other, at least not in a class-war society. So to me, oppression is implicit in racial division: (1) because people are forced into social groupings they do not choose; (2) because one such social grouping inevitably takes advantage of another. There is nothing to reconcile. Instead, the authorities have to restrain their agents from killing and beating members of certain groups, and this will be hard for them to do, because the class system which they uphold and which upholds them tends strongly to produce that sort of behavior.