Carrol Cox:
> One of the conditions of racism is, tautologically, generically human
> tendencies. But as many, including Karl Marx and Kenneth Burke, have
> emphasized, a _tendency_ to X is _also_ a tendency _away_ from X. "Deep
> Human Needs" (DHNs), like Providence, explains nothing because it
> explains everything.
Why doesn't class war suffice to explain racism? Conceded it may not give all the details, but in a situation in which the set of social relations is in-formed by the attempts of classes (and individuals) to get power over one another, we ought to expect to see various differences resonate the fundamental note of the class struggle and become fault lines or fronts along which the struggle is manifested, and we could also expect to see them exploited by class warriors. Over a period of time, we could expect these lines of conflict to become habits and subsequently ingrained into the culture until they were taught to children at an early age, like the flatness of the earth.
If racism were analogous to religion, we ought to see it everywhere; but we don't.