"Race" or "ethnicity"

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 09:12 PM 7/2/01 -0400, Gordon wrote:
>It might.  Certainly the term "queer" was successfully
>appropriated.  Others are being contested even as we speak.
>We may regret that this sort of thing is taking place, but
>nevertheless it proceeds.  It seems inevitable given the
>durability of caste systems and the language with which they
>are framed and maintained on one side, and the opposing
>determination of people to live and value their lives on the
>other -- because their lives include their histories, their
>Jerusalems beside the waters of Babylon.  I can't imagine a
>Black person who would want to see his or her Blackness as
>rationalization of existing inequality, as if they were some
>kind of inferior, unlucky White people; they want to see it
>as something to glory in.

I guess we disagree on the importance of symbols and identitty politics.
Somehow I got stuck in the rhetoric of Marx's answer to the 'jewish
question' (i.e. abolish all false identities).  Alas, it's already 6PM, and
I am anxious to get out of this place and intoxicate myself to avoid the
unpleasant experience of the 4th.  

wojtek