>>> dhenwood at panix.com 08/03/01 10:35AM >>>
>Doug:
>> >Hmm, but if a racial category was invented in the process of
>> >oppression, then how is accepting that category negating it? Looks to
>> >me more like a perverse reinforcement. The negation would be to
>> >reject racial categorization altogether.
>
((((((((
CB: Do you think that the U.S. slave system could have been negated in fact, if the slaves and the abolitionists had just rejected the category of master/slave ? No. What had to happen was the masters had to be forced to "reject" the categories, i.e. not operate as if they were true.
Groups of people today who are oppressed based on racial categorization have no problem with you rejecting racial categorization, but they have no illusions that you rejecting racial categorization will end the police using racial profiles , for example. So, that when a person gets stopped by a police officer based on a racial profile, the person stopped would be in a weaker position to know what is going on and fight it if they refused to think in the same racial categories as the police officer. This can be generalized to dealing with all the forms of racist oppression.
Black people would grossly disarm their chidren if they told them to go into the world and not think in racial categories. Those children would not be able to make sense of how most white people treated them if they did not use racial categories.
Then , since the main institutions of power in our society, unlike you, have not, do not, and won't over many , many years reject the racial categories, and since they have the power to make enormous impact on the lives of racially categorized and oppressed groups based on persisting in holding such categories, the victims of this racist oppression conduct their lives in many ways by solidarizing and grouping themselves for mutual support with others who are categorized by the powers-that-be based on race. You might term this perverse reinforcement of the categories. From the standpoint of those victimized by racism, it is the most rational response, making the best out of a situation that is imposed upon them.
Of course , since this racism , including racial categorization , persists for generations, what I have termed pragmatic solidarizing and grouping together for self-defense, becomes something that victims at certain points turn completely into its opposite, trying to even make an affirmative virtue out of a vice - for example,celebrating Blackness, the myriad of forms of solidarity that develop into a lifestyle, culture, language, ethnos. To me that is not perverse, but extraordinary heroism. We will have life despite you'all !
Black people would be glad to dispense with racial categorization, but the racists will have to do it first.