Wojtek Sokolowski:
> They also espoused the notion of jesus christ as their "own" - no? Ditto
> for the conquered peoples of Latin America. Does that mean that
>christianity was basically a beneficial force for blacks and American natives?
It doesn't matter, does it? The point is that Black people have appropriated race for their own purposes. "Black", "Queer", "female", all began as terms of class oppression, and that is still an element of them, but they have escaped from the control of their inventors and assumed new shapes and acquired new purposes. While you may see the concept of race as but an ex-post facto rationalization of existing inequalities that fits the individualistic ideology, many, maybe most African-Americans see it as a concept, a context which preserves and frames their common African origins and culture, survival of slavery, and invention of a new, vital and valuable culture in America. Though White men are free to continue their habitual fighting about the hitherto- deprecated categories, I don't think the categorizations belong to them any more.
> As the Old Man aptly observed, "the class which has the means of material
> production at their disposal, has control of the means of mental
> production." Consequently, the lower classes often accpet the mythologies
> rationalizations of their masters as those of their own.
This seems like fairly dumb remark, leaving huge realms of phenomena unexplained and inexplicable. I trust he was smart enough to contradict himself elsewhere.
> ....