>No one is gonna argue that white
>workers in the south suffered considerably from racism. But thats
>not the point.
Why do you think "that's not the point"? On what grounds? Can you explain?
As Mike Davis, etc. demonstrate (see, for instance, _Prisoners of the American Dream_), the failure to organize the South -- caused in large part by racism & anticommunism -- has had a tremendously negative impact upon not only Southern but also Northern workers.
>You define away the possibility of white workers
>reaping any material benefit, short of workers becoming capitalists,
>and any symbolic benefit, because it any material.
Relative advantages of white workers are not beneficial to them if they bring down their real wages. Michael Reich's work shows that they do. Relative advantages of white workers would be (minimally) beneficial to them (within the terms of capitalism) if they raised their real wages, but they don't.
>But if one is to be true to the contingency
>of it all, then racism operates in some complicating ways - such as
>by according a range of benefits and advantages for groups beyond
>capitalists. But you are albeit grudgingly giving ground in this
>thread as you offer implicitly a definition of at least one of the
>main currents of racism: "symbolic compensation for white workers'
>feelings of powerlessness in the face of capital."
I am saying that advantages -- including symbolic compensation -- that white workers do enjoy _diminish_ their real earnings & _deny_ them social programs that would decrease the "cost of job loss."
> > white workers of the USA, wise up!
>
>Would that they could...and why won't they easily?
In part because many American leftists have been mistakenly telling white workers that they benefit from racism & that "it is in the interest of whites and males to maintain their employment privilege because it sustains their higher earnings" (Heather Boushey, "Two Alternate Tests of the Wage Curve: Does Discrimination Matter?" [1998], p. 6), I think, though that's neither the only nor the most important reason.
Let us not despair, however. Truth = the Good News. :-)
Yoshie