Chip Berlet wrote:
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> [clip]
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> Developing a concept of "racial formation," Omi and Winant argue that
> "racist projects" entail a linkage between "essentialist representations of
> race and social structures of domination." They further argue that "racial
> ideology and social structure" act in an interconnected and dialectical
> manner to shape racist projects.
That racist ideology did not drop from the sky. Ideologies grow as a spontqneous way of "explaining" everyday reality. Reality in the U.S. for two hundred years has been a strange combination of individual freedom and the extreme oppression of a visible part of the population. How does one (spontaneously, not as the result of systematic analysis) make sense of that? Why, obviously, there's something wrong with those people who are being oppressed, or they wouldn't be oppressed. It can't quite be stated that baldly, but that is (I think) not only the historical origin of modern racism (the extreme incompatibility of "all men are created equal" with the fact of black slavery) but it continues to be the source from which racism is endlessly regenerated in current practice. It is fairly easy to forgive someone who has screwed you; it is extremely difficult to forgive anyone you have screwed. More formally, it is easier for the oppressed to forgive the oppressor than for the oppressor to forgive the oppressed.
And to speak of a "linkage" between "essentialist representation of race" and "social structures of domination" is at best inexact and misleading. The first slavers in the U.S. were not really racist, any more than the Russian nobles who (despite the evidence of their eyes) thought peasant blood was black were racist. Structures of domination (a bit highfaluting) have been around for a long time, but have always more been taken for granted, as slavery could not be after the declaration of bourgeois equality. So speaking of a linkage acknowledges an initial separation that was never there.
This can (probably should) go on forever, but only one more point here. You don't account for the kind of non-racist racism that both Justin & I focus on. The kind of racism that sees the "problem" as one of "race relations," the racism of those who quite sincerely believe that they are not racist. In the last 30 years the old cliche of "Some of my best friends are Jews" has been extended to "Some of my best friends are African Americans." And then a cascade of rationalizations.
Carrol
) I'm a little dubious about the concept of "racist projects."