You well know that this is familiar ground we stumbling through here and I think there's a fair amount of incommensurablity at play. Notwithstanding the distinction beween typology and taxonomy, the criteria validating one system of classification, boundaries, etc. _for the most part_ lie entirely within a particular theory. So claims about the existence and actions of and by abstractions such as white working class, white men, whites, men, since they're not necessarily generated by a marxist theory can play no useful theoretical role. And a theory, to a considerable extent generates, its own condition of validity, then these phenom are non-theoretical at best and work contrary to the theory. And I agree that empirical evidence is incapable to justify conceptual distinctions, inasmuch as what counts as evidence is itself implicated in theory. But there are degrees of extreme. Isn't it perhaps useful to recognize that at some concrete level there might be cross-theoretical agreement? Otherwise you've got an entirely closed loop which may well work against your larger project: understand and contribute positively to the struggle against racism in the U.S. Otherwise you or Yoshie are doing what you seem to disklike a lot: the leisurely distractions of the theory class.
Dennis Breslin