[lbo-talk] Race and difference (was Rwandan ....)

[Tahir Wood]

Balibar and others have argued that there's a "new racism," which is 
derived from seemingly progressive traditions in anthropology and 
other social sciences, that holds that no one race is better than the 
other, but we're all just different, and should stay that way. This 
is the sort of thing that Gore Vidal flirts with, as do critics of 
"cultural homogenization" in the antiglobo crowd.
Doug

This just sounds to me like good old liberal dishonesty. The one part
is sayable, "races are different" - the other part is unsayable, "some
races are better than others" - so you just say the part that is sayable
and keep the other part to yourself or only reveal it in private
conversations. Human beings are judgmental - you cannot say that two
things are essentially different and then legislate against an opinion
as to which of the two different things is better. Once you accept that
there are definite 'races' and that they are different to one another,
the rest simply follows ... It is because people don't perceive a
difference between cans of beans that are the same brand that they don't
evaluate one in comparison to the other, but give them two brands and
they will immediately wonder which is the better (even if the stuff
inside is utterly identical and produced in the same factory). As far as
anti-globalisation goes, well this will always have a right wing to it,
and it is an inherently problematic notion open to such a rightwing
interpretation, just because it has a nationalist premise. I don't
believe that progressive persons can simply be opposed to
globalisation.
Tahir