On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Charles Brown wrote:
> 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.
>
I think you're missing the point here. If we really did let go of racial categorization, how could a police officer engage in racial profiling? Without the social differentiation of people on the basis of race, they wouldn't know who to stop! I agree that individualistic, pious calls for the oppressed groups to be "colorblind" are not going to solve anything. However, if in fact racial categories are not socially produced and sustained in a given society, prejudice and discrimination based on race is impossible.
I think the same argument applies in analyzing sexual orientation too: the existence of these social categories make possible the oppression, they are the necessary precondition of the oppression.
Miles