Racism and white workers, wfas Re: Ideology and "Psychology", was Re: identifying with the enemy

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat May 19 18:57:47 PDT 2001


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>
> Tim O'Brien is simply pointing out the nearly complete lack of
> sympathy among probably the majority of Americans for the
> non-Americans who got "killed, maimed, & disappeared" in the war. In
> their minds, the Vietnamese, the Laotians, etc. are not their class
> brothers & sisters. Neither in your mind, probably, since you think
> of only Americans whose remains couldn't be recovered.
>

One can understand the southern workers and farmers who were hornswoggled by their betters into lynching black businessmen who dared to compete with white businessmen -- but defending believers in the MIA myth is in the same category as defending the lynch mobs as working class. The same racist feelings formed the ideological basis for lynching and for believing in the MIA myth.

Eventually, if there is ever a revolution in the U.S., it will include many whites who start off racist -- but one does not reach those racist whites by sympthizing with their racist myths.

Carrol



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