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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
> Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 11:37 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Racism, Pride and Fear
>
>
>
>
> Chip Berlet wrote:
> >
> > [clip]
> >
> > As for lynching, Abby Ferber and others point out that
> lynching and other
> > forms of sexualized racism is tied to competition for
> dominance in the
> > grotesque concept that natural law gives sexual property
> rights to White men
> > over Black men for access to White women's bodies.
> >
>
> This, it seems to me, hangs in midair: that is, it comes
> close to being
> a description masquerading as an explanation. Why should this
> particular
> "grotesque concept" appear at a given time in a given place
> under given
> historical conditions. Ideologies do _not_ have a life of
> their own, and
> they disappear when the material conditions which they make sense of
> disappear.
>
> Carrol
>
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OK Carrol, fair enough, but there are several competing explanations even within Marxism, as hinted at in the post by Yoshie. Traditional Marxists side with Cox and Reed, while cultural Marxists side with Roediger and strains such as critical race feminism. (Wing, Adrien Katherine. 2000. Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader. New York: New York University Press.)
The successful assertion of "collective human rights" or "group rights" depends on the "linking of ethnicity/race, class, gender, and sexuality" because this linkage "mutes supremacist tendencies by denying the right of any one group to assert supremacy over a different group" (Felice, William F. 1996. Taking Suffering Seriously: The Importance of Collective Human Rights. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.).
Many older studies of prejudice had a “tendency to collapse distinctions between types of prejudice...” observes Young-Bruehl. They assume “that a nationalism and racism, an ethnocentric prejudice and an ideology of desire, can be dynamically the same...” Furthermore, she writes “there is a tendency to approach prejudice either psychologically or sociologically without consideration for the interplay of psychological and sociological factors.
In a complementary fashion, Buechler notes that issues of class, race, and gender are “omnipresent in the background of all forms of collective action” and reflect “institutional embeddedness within the social fabric at all levels.” But he adds that these are “distinct structures of power” that need to be assessed independently, and that it is important “to theorize the different, specific, underlying dynamics that distinguish one structure from another.”
This was the point Matt Lyons and I were trying to make in "Right-Wing Populism in America." We drew from many sources in that book, and it reflects the tension and overlap in traditional Marxism and cultural Marxism. Adolph Reed gave us a nice cover blurb. (see below).
-Chip Berlet
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“Chip Berlet has been a valuable resource for many years to everyone concerned about the potentially dangerous right–wing ideological strains that operate in this country. His work with Political Research Associates has been a most important source of data and analysis. Now he and Matthew Lyons have made yet a different major contribution. Right Wing Populism in America builds on their years of expertise to provide a sweeping historical account of the tradition of such tendencies in American politics—from Bacon's Rebellion in the 17th century to the present.
This is an important analysis for anyone—among scholars and nonspecialists alike—who wishes to understand the complex, sometimes ugly forces that have participated in shaping the American political landscape; it is a good companion to Rogers M. Smith's Civic Ideals as a careful treatment of the powerful anti–egalitarian tendencies that have always contended to define the American political mainstream.”
Adolph Reed, Jr., author of Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene.