>>> sawicky at bellatlantic.net 08/06/01 04:10PM >>>
-clip- People say race is socially constituted (to which I agree) as if that made it somewhat less real. But social relations are as real as anything else, maybe more so. (sidenote to YF--that's why monetary policy is 'real' too.)
(((((((
CB: I agree with Max on this and that some seem to use "socially constituted" as if it means "easily disconstituted"
)))))))
I've believe self-determination of a nation or people is a justifiable and sometimes indispensable concept. But to make sense there needs to be some roughly identifiable nation in question, with some common geography and experience. "Common" means a relative lack of others. There are lots of black folks in D.C., you couldn't classify it as part of a black nation unless you sliced off everything west of Rock Creek Park. Otherwise it's two nations -- Africans and Chardonayistas, plus a small enclave, call if Salvadoria, that is oppressed by both (n.b. the confusion between 'oppressor' and oppressed nations).
(((((((
CB: Max, regarding your n.b, I am sympathetic to the fact that for white people living in a majority Black city there are local power dynamics that make the claim that Black people don't have power , well, not jive with your day to day experience.
But this is is something of an illusion of immediate experience. You know about positivism, and basing a scientific conclusion on only your immediate experience. You know that in the overall larger , national picture , using sociological and economic and other social scientifc data etc., power resides with whites relative to Blacks.
I don't mean this makes it ok that you feel like an oppressed minority in your local city.
(((((((
Alternatively, there are constructive responses to racism that need not raise the issue of nationhood. When these things get mixed up you get some of the weirdness that has come out in this thread.
mbs
Charles Brown wrote:
>CB: Is Doug proposing that the _legal_category of race be rejected ?
>But why would he propose this to Black or other racially oppressed
>groups ? Black people do not have the power to obliterate or reject
>the _legal_category. Black people don't have the power to change the
>law, do they ?
I'm not proposing it to anyone specifically - I'm proposing it to everyone.
Doug