What Goldberg doesn't mention explicitly, and what this has discussion has missed up to now, is the presumption that the family is the default nurturer. This is the presumed alternative to universalistic social welfare as a way to assure that the society will meet human nurturant needs. Universalistic social welfare challenges that presumption, and thus is a more progressive approach that tends to grow out of class politics (absent in the US...
..In the US, the notion of the family as default nurturer gets much support from the cultural right partisans of "family values." Family values are inherently reactionary in the political-economic sense, and the religious groups that support them naturally form part of the conservative coalition that underlies the Republican Party. This is also why white racism so heavily depends on images of oversexed African-american women propagating out of wedlock. This is also why the right so strongly pushes legitimation of marriage. Goldberg obviously hopes to enlist the presumed family values and religious faith of immigrants to attack social welfare, and African-americans.
...This is also why feminism and gay rights tend to gravitate to the left and are natural components of a left coalition that could work for universalistic social welfare. It is crucially important for the left to develop progressive proposals for family policy, social welfare, and the legal institutions of the family that promote universalism and challenge the presumption of the family as primary nurturer.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
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Definitely. As I said, the blood in my eyes obscures my ability to see their faces clearly.
Just to continue the nuance here, I think it isn't just the over sexed, and animalistic essentialism of black women that is operative, but also the idea that there is no such thing as the black family, since the men and boys are all criminals.
And I certainly wouldn't argue with this either:
``...I think his [Goldberg] is more of a diatribe against the public sphere and universalism and continental Europe as the main bearer of them, as opposed to the US (and insular British) privatism and isolationism - rather than an advocacy of racist views. His strategy is to divide to conquer the universalist public sphere rather than create different spheres for different ethnic groups (which is the essence of racism). This is the same hatred of the public sphere that drives many US-ers from cities...'' Wojtek
On the other hand this I think is a little off, or maybe not developed enough:
``I think it is the other way around - the revulsion toward underclass and welfare dependency is the factor causing racism...'' Wojtek
The apparent universal social rejection of an underclass is more a matter of a culture of denial that there is anything profoundly wrong with the larger configuration of the society itself. It is much more gratifying and secure to believe there is something wrong with the poor or underclass, particular individuals,---including, the embrace of the clearly stupid ideas of racism---than it is to understand the conditions of poverty are direct products of the same system we all live under. This includes the underclass deluding itself. Mounting even a common sense critique of the system puts the critic in the position of a moral obligation to change it or at least do something, even if that only entails yelling about it. So there seems to me to be a conspiracy of silence.
Racism in this context then becomes a kind of moral crutch. First we need do nothing since They are beneath concern, and whatever we did consider doing, is all wasted effort anyway. Sexism is also operative here, in the indirect guise of an overvaluation of masculinity, that should after all be capable of winning against the rigged stupidity and greed of capital---capital---a world run by stingy, prissy little white jerk-off bureaucrats. What real man couldn't kick their ass? And then pursuing this form of over-driven masculinity, leads directly to jail---ah, violence that nasty evil rises its ugly head. We all deplore violence, don't we? After all only animals resort to violence.
So we chase these morbid symptoms into oblivion---rather than actually acting in concert together against oppression.
Chuck Grimes Chuck Grimes