I've pondered your response, Ian, as well as what you say later in this thread. And I couldn't disagree more. The "point" here is hardly academic and goes right to the crux over question about how to fight, how to eradiate racism, in its various forms.
If the proposition about rationality inflames some and sends others scurrying to their bookshelves looking for definitive treatments about human irrationality, then how 'bout replacing the word with "instrumental." The dynamics of domination clearly have the irrational swirling through them; hatred, violence, the casual use of terror and brutality are hardly epiphenominal. And Yoshie may well stand on firm theoretical ground claiming that our real ethical and material interests are only served by people recognizing the limitations in their relative advantages. And the rigged game of capitalsim also gives shape and meaning to varied unequal relationships and intergroup strife. But various forms of inequality have an instrumental quality to them, directly and indirectly. What is gained in either defining that away or denying it? If some experience a premium - whether it be wages, jobs, housing, land, health care, education, or whatever and by experience where talking about something more than the thin veneer of subjectivity, then the instrumentality of racism becomes a major barrier to change.
But the practical questions, for me at any rate, have to do with how to confront the rewards and advantages some gain in imposing and/or sustaining racist practices. I think it is an error to minimize how significant those with relative power/advantage feel theirs to be. Calling it symbolic compensation or imply false consciousness detaches theory from the real struggles of exclusion/usurptation.
Someone - Brad Meyer I think - remarked that capitalism doesn't allow for sharing. Yep, and more generically, power doesn't relinquish itself until its met with some countervailing force. Hardly a novel notion. Yet by recognizing that many groups (and I'm speaking really imprecisely here) instrumentally gain generally also means they'll employ a Charlton Heston-like response when challenged: "from my cold dead hand."
New millenium and same old, same old...
Dennis Breslin