>Joel Kovel's WHITE RACISM: A PSYCHOHISTORY lays out some of what went into the
>process which assigned different values to different physical appearances, and
>made light, European skin a paramount value. It is almost true that
>this process
>itself created races as social categories. Kovel's argument is primarily
>psychological, but has political-economic implications, inasmuch as he links
>racism to anality and to the process by which social relations became mediated
>through money.
A review of that book when it first came out - around 1981, I think - said that Kovel needed Marx to complete his analysis. Kovel read Marx seriously for the first time as a result, and was convinced.
Doug