[lbo-talk] white Americans think Kanye West is wrong

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

CB:
>  In terms of classes, race in the U.S. is not hard to understand. Race,
> especially the Black race in the U.S., is the historical remainder, the
> result of the more ramified or complex class system that existed in the
U.S.
> when there was both slave labor and wage"slave"-labor simultaneously, if
you
> want a historical materialist idea of race. Superstructure often lags
> changes in infrastructure. Sometimes by many generations. So, in this
sense
> racist divisions were created originally by class divisions. But then the
> racist divisions take on a social and historical life of their own, and
> become an independent  or co-dependent variable , in your multivariable
> analysis, causing inequality on their own.
> 
>  Just because the racist divisions are socially constructed and not
> biological does not mean that they are not there or will just go away
> because somebody doesn't like to admit they are there, denies them etc. ,
> that they just end with the passage of time ("how could the same patterns
be
> there 140 years after slavery was abolished?"). They have to be
consciously
> rooted out and affirmatively deactivated - even more than the Civil War
and
> the Civil Rights Movement. There has to be a special struggle against them
> within the larger working class movement.

I  do not think that any reasonable person can disagree with the above.
However, I have an altogether different fish to fry.  I am basically sick
and tired of America and its many cultural tropes - from neo-liberal
pseudo-certitudes, to the vulgar in-your-face religiosity, to bombastic and
self-righteous politicians, to vulgar populism ands celebrity cults, to
brash shock-jocks and tv "personalities" to patriotic bumper stickers, and
-yes-  to Berkeley-style "leftism" of the
down-with-the-fascist-corporate-state, and
every-inmate-is-a-victim-racism-and-a-political-prisoner variety.  

I am tired of living in this country, Charles, and facing the copious
bullshit it oozes day after day every day - and one way of dealing with it
is ranting about what annoys me.  You surely agree that is ranting has any
sense at all it must be directed at the source of annoyance.  Hence my
ranting against the Berkley-style leftist tropes on this list.  It would
make no sense to rant about that on some right wing outlet, would not you
agree?  Likewise, it does not make much sense to rant about right wing
tropes on this list - it is kind of stale and predictable like bowel
movement.

I just feel so fucking out of place here - even among the seemingly
like-minded people - that it is not even funny.

Wojtek