Zionism vs. Black Nationalism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>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

It's the other way around.  The fact of oppressions creates 
categories of oppressions.  The poor in the USA are 
disproportionately colored, due to the continuing effects of 
new-world slavery, Jim Crow, imperialism, segmented labor market, 
etc.; the poor commit more street crimes (including visible illegal 
drug use & sale) than the rich; the police & other state apparatuses 
of repression focus more on street crimes than white-collar crimes & 
corporate crimes; ergo, a material ground for racial profiling.  The 
abolition of class society (& economic development of currently poor 
nations & areas) is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for 
the abolition of race.  Short of socialism, the abolition of the war 
on drugs & the diminution of policing in general will help make 
racial profiling less of a problem than today.

Yoshie