>Empirically supported generalizations such as "whites or white
>workers have materially benefitted by racism or racialized
>work, educational, housing opportunities, etc." probably require
>a lot more historical nuance and detail, especially of the
>precise benefits gained.
I'm saying that a proposition that white workers have materially benefited from racism or racialized work, educational, housing, and other "opportunities" is _neither theoretically nor empirically_ supportable. See my comments on Heather Boushey's article "Two Alternate Tests of the Wage Curve: Does Discrimination Matter?" (1998) in my LBO post "Re: BK on Identity" dated "Fri, 2 Mar 2001 01:37:48 -0500."
>There's McIntosh's list of advantages and privileges of whiteness, most
>importantly the presumption among whites that they represent the
>moral benchmark from which all others are measured.
White workers do not materially benefit from the list of "white privileges & advantages" created by Peggy McIntosh. The theory of "white privilege" is not only an incorrect analysis of how racism affects white workers (in fact, those who think like McIntosh do not clearly distinguish white workers from white capitalists at all -- capitalists are invisible subjects in the theory of "white privilege"!); it constitutes an obstacle in the path toward the abolition of racism (_even if_ it helps us understand some aspects of symbolic compensation for white workers' feelings of powerlessness in the face of capital).
McIntosh writes: "As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage." So far, so good. White workers are indeed at an advantage in all important respects, _compared to_ black & other discriminated-against workers. However, she incorrectly argues that white workers "gain from" black & other discriminated-against workers' disadvantages (and that male workers "gain from" female workers' disadvantages). Pace McIntosh, white workers not only do not gain but in fact *lose* in their class struggle against capital *because of* their relative advantage vis-a-vis black & other discriminated-against workers. This is the material basis of cross-racial solidarity to which many white workers have _yet_ to become hip, perhaps _because_ a good number of them -- taught by McIntosh, et al -- think that they gain from their relative advantage.
white workers of the USA, wise up!
Yoshie
Postscript:
***** Relation between income inequality and mortality: empirical demonstration
Michael Wolfson, George Kaplan, John Lynch, Nancy Ross, Eric Backlund
Institutions and Social Statistics Branch, Statistics Canada, Ottawa, Canada K1A 0T6
Michael C Wolfson, director general Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-2029, United States
George Kaplan, professor and chair of epidemiology
John Lynch, assistant professor Social and Economic Studies Division, Statistics Canada
Nancy Ross analyst Federal Building #3, US Bureau of the Census, Washington DC 20233-8700, United States
Eric Backlund, mathematical statistician Correspondence to: M Wolfson wolfson at statcan.ca
Abstract
Objective: To assess the extent to which observed associations at population level between income inequality and mortality are statistical artefacts.
Design: Indirect "what if" simulation by using observed risks of mortality at individual level as a function of income to construct hypothetical state level mortality specific for age and sex as if the statistical artefact argument were 100% correct.
Setting Data: from the 1990 census for the 50 US states plus Washington, DC, were used for population distributions by age, sex, state, and income range; data disaggregated by age, sex, and state from the Centers for disease Control and Prevention were used for mortality; and regressions from the national longitudinal mortality study were used for the individual level relation between income and risk of mortality.
Results: Hypothetical mortality, while correlated with inequality (as implied by the logic of the statistical artefact argument), showed a weaker association with states' levels of income inequality than the observed mortality.
Conclusions: The observed associations in the United States at the state level between income inequality and mortality cannot be entirely or substantially explained as statistical artefacts of an underlying individual level relation between income and mortality. There remains an important association between income inequality and mortality at state level over and above anything that could be accounted for by any statistical artefact. This result reinforces the need to consider a broad range of factors, including the social milieu, as fundamental determinants of health.
[The full article is available at <http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7215/953/DC1>.] *****