[lbo-talk] Alex Cockburn on Ted Honderich

[C. G. Estabrook]

The point was that racism is not simply prejudice but a structure of law
and practice.  There are still prejudiced people in Virginia, but white
privilege and discrimination no longer exist in law.  (Practice is of
course another matter.)  I mentioned Virginia because it had been granted
that "the Jim Crow south or apartheid South Africa" were examples of a
racist state.  --CGE

On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Carrol Cox wrote:


> 
> 
> "C. G. Estabrook" wrote:
> > 
> > [A racist state is one in which one group defined by descent is privileged
> > in law and practice.  (The Virginia of my boyhood was a racist state:
> > e.g., it legally prohibited marriages between whites and other races.)
> 
> I agree with your overall estimation of the state of Israel, but this
> parenthesis is a bit misleading. First, Virginia was not a _state_ of
> any kind in the sense relevant here (the nation state), but a province
> of the United States. More importantly (and this differentiates Israel,
> South Africa, etc. from Germany and the U.S. -- what you describe as
> existing in Virginia is a racist _policy_, as is also (for example) the
> case of Germany with its treatment of Turkish and other immigrants.
> South Africa was and Israel is a racist _state_ by its very nature: it
> cannot cease to be racist by any change of policy but only by
> liquidating itself as a state. An Israel without racist policies would
> simply be Israel.
> 
> Carrol
>