Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> >>Which I guess rules out seeing the piety as part of the goddam problem.
> >
> >It's hard to imagine a less promising starting point. If you said
> >the problem was whiteness you'd alienate fewer people. But when BAI
> >takes that tack you're against, no?
>
> I know I can't go out and say "your religion sucks." But, really,
> there's nothing like American piety anywhere in the First World, and
> it's a very serious problem. It's a nation of phucking pharisees.
>
There are a number of Marxist orthodoxies to choose from here (if plural orthodoxies is not an oxymoron). I think I'll choose the one that says you can't confront religion directly; it really does belong to that much abused and misused category of the "superstructure." You can only go about creating an alternative set of social relations (grounded in struggle), and the "problem" of piety will take care of itself (in one of a number of different ways, the "social religion" or whatever it was called back a century ago or liberation theology or anticlericalism or several yet undiscovered ways of religious people reconciling their faith with a left politics). Religion (piety, whatever) is no problem, but merely one symptom of real problems. Incidentally I personally know people with very 'fundamentalist' religious beliefs who nevertheless are _really_ against racism and _really_ for generous welfare benefits.
Whiteness is a problem in and of itself, because it is directly grounded in the oppression of black people, while piety is far more free-floating.
Carrol