. . .it is a matter of where and how one draws boundaries and and establishes units (the dialectical term is "abstracts") in which to think about the world. The assumption is that while the qualities we perceive with our five sensesactually exist as parts of nature, the conceptual distinctions that tell us where one thing ends and the next one begins both in space and across time are social and mental constructs. However great the ifluence of what the world is on how we draw these boundaries, it is ultimately we who draw the boundaries, and people coming from different cultures and from different philosophical traditions can and do draw them differently.
Bertell Ollman, _Dialectical Investigations_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 11-12. ***
It is impossible to make use of empirical data comparing categories _until_ those categories have been identified. Doug, on the other hand, assumes that his spontaneous and unexamined categories have a platonic existence of their own. That is, he believes that "white working class" is a category established by God while "U.S. working class" is merely a subjective prejudice on Yoshie's part. Hence statistics on white workers are divinely sanctioned and there is no obligatiom to establish the historical basis for the category.
I think Ollman's perspective illuminates the following exchange between Yoshie & dd.
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> Daniel Davies wrote:
>
> >--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote: >
> >>
> >> (1) Why do empirically-minded leftists not rest
> >> content with an
> >> empirically observable & theoretically
> >> unobjectionable proposition
> >> that a good number of white workers _think_
> >> anti-racism is _not_ in
> >> their interest?
> >
> >Because they are quite possibly *correct* to think
> >this way, in the sense that this view may correspond
> >to an economic reality that the clique of workers who
> >are white are able to prosper at the expense of the
> >rest of the working class, and that they do better by
> >membership of this clique than they would by
> >identifying themselves with the working class as a
> >whole.
>
> It appears to me that "white male workers without college degrees"
> (to take just one "clique" you might come up with) have not prospered
> under neoliberal capitalism, even if they subscribed to the most
> economistic definition of "prosperity" within the narrowest limits of
> capitalist ideology (which says better real wages = working-class
> prosperity). Have racism & sexism declined? Is it correct to think
> that their relative decline must have come from the relative advance
> made by women & people of color? What should be their correct
> response? Reaction against feminism & affirmative action?
>
> >Again, it's the difference between properties
> >of sets and properties of their members.
>
> What makes "white workers" a set with a shared economic interest in
> racism that overrides any other economic interest (to say nothing of
> the interest of the working class) when "white workers" come with
> endless differences in income, net financial worth, occupation,
> education, avocation, social geography, social power, health,
> religion, etc.? (Do white male college professors and white male
> homeless day laborers have a shared economic interest in racism that
> should override any other economic interest? Do white male homeless
> laborers benefit in any way if white male college professors exclude
> female & colored professors from their departments?)
>
> Isn't the endgame of cliquish thinking sovereign individualism --
> every worker is a clique of one?
>
> >What people are doing is to point out that some
> >workers hold the belief that the "real interests of
> >the working class" are opposed to their own interests
> >as individuals, and may be correct in this belief.
>
> "Their own interests as _individuals_." Again, it appears to me that
> individualism is a foundational assumption of posters who have
> disagreed with me.
>
> >Again, I may be working on the wrong level here -- I'm still
> >troubled by "ideological".
>
> What is ideological from the vantage point of the Marxist tradition
> surely differs from what is ideological from other vantage points, so
> it is no wonder that the term is troublesome. (I realize I don't
> know what _your_ standpoint is since you often argue from the vantage
> point of the devil's advocate. :-))
>
> > > (2) There are many things that are persistent
> >> besides racism.
> >> Capitalism is persistent, imperialism is persistent,
> >> protectionism is
> >> persistent, individualism is persistent, rape is
> >> persistent, war is
> >> persistent, malnutrition is persistent, ill health
> >> is persistent,
> >> bald-headedness is persistent, etc. How do we
> >> explain their
> >> persistence? By concluding that capitalism,
> >> imperialism,
> >> protectionism, individualism, whatever is persistent
> >> is in the
> >> interest of this or that segment of the working
> >> class?
> >
> >Baldness is not something that the working class can
> >do something about. Very few of the other items on
> >your list are actions of any part of the working
> >class, considered as such. Racism is a particular
> >project of part of the white working class, and
> >therefore it makes very good sense to ask whether
> >their reason for doing it is that they gain something
> >by it, because that is a very common reason why people
> >do things. This analogy is not analogous.
>
> I included bald-headedness because it seems to me that sociobiology
> is another likely candidate for a non-Marxist explanation of
> persistence, aside from a theory that seeks economic interests &
> material benefits of individuals & sets of individuals behind
> persistence. If economism & individualism, why not sociobiology?
>
> Yoshie
The argument is that "The Working Class" and "Black Working Class" are abstractions which contribute to the understanding of and struggle against racism in the U.S. while the abstraction "White Working Class" blurs the lines and becomes a barrier to clarity and understanding. This may be wrong but there is no imaginable set of empirical data that can either support or question it.
Carrol