On 7/14/06, Auguste Blanqui <blanquist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here's what I wrote on another list:
>
> This article is really dishonest, but it does point to one problem in
> Reed's recent work that he needs to fix, if only to avoid caricatures like
> this in the future. More on that below. There are so many things wrong
> with it that one can
> only bullet point the biggest misrepresentations. I hope Reed responds.
> A minimum standard for intellectual honesty in criticism is
> accurately representing your opponent's views and body of work, especially
> if you uphold him/her as exemplar of the new colorblind left-liberalism.
>
> * First, I find it shocking that he lumps Bourdieu/Wacquant with this
> supposed resurgence of colorblind leftists/left-liberals Anyway, as I
> read it, the Bourdieu and
> Wacquant article had nothing to do with what Roediger claims. If I
> recall, B & W were criticizing European and American scholars for imposing
> their nations' notions of 'race' onto other regions where different
> categories of differentation existed, like Brazil. That doesn't sound
> anything like turning a blind eye to racism/racialized
> inequality/injustice and wanting to erase it from analysis. Moreover, how
> can he indict Wacquant like this? Isn't Wacquant's latest project
> African-American incarceration rates, and more broadly, the central role
> of the modern American prison in what he thinks is a qualitatively new
> phase of racial domination? (I'm not sure if I buy into his whole new
> project, btw.) Are these really the words of a colorblind leftist?
> <http://newleftreview.org/A2367> This suggests superficial reading of the
> B
> & W essay and little familiarity with Wacquant's writings.
>
> * This is a real dishonest shot at Barbara Fields (he
> does the same strawman on her two articles in both Wages of Whiteness and
> the the anthology that followed it) and attempt to mold her into someone
> who thinks
> "class" trumps "race," and who thinks that strategy-wise, we ought to take
> the
> early-20th century Socialist Party position of concentrating on the former
> to in the process eradicate the latter. Fields in fact has said in
> several essyas something like: "Arguing over whether class trumps race is
> like arguing over whether the denominator the numerator is more important in
> a fraction." He's doing the same number on Reed here. He did it
> to Oliver Cromwell Cox in Wages of Whiteness (Reed called him on it in the
> intro to the retrospective edition of Cox put out by MR, actually)
> Cox doesn't say that all. He, preceding Edmund Morgan et.
> al for two decades+, states that racial ideology in the US grew out of
> labor relations, it has had very real material consequneces, and even if
> we decide we'll all play nice and drop "race," those consequences are
> still going to remain (i.e. 'racism without racists,' 'possessive
> invetsment in whiteness,' etc.). Race can't be divorced from broader
> political economy, and vice versa, so taking either stance is a problematic
> way of framing the debate. (If you want to get Cox in a few pages,
> check out his response to the modern bible of "race
> relations"/"diversity"/"sensitivity training"-huckster discourse, the
> Myrdal Report, where Cox blasts Myrdal's prescriptions using this
> analysis.)
>
> How does this relate back to Reed? One of his critiques in the Katrina
> pieces and elsewhere is that "race" and even "racism" are becoming, at
> best, overly general proxies, and at worse, imprecise abstractions that
> obscure
> broader political-economic structures and changes. The "racism" point is
> especially well-taken given the astonishing changes in post-1965
> African-American demography where the long-standing bifurcation among the
> African-American population has been exacerbated enormously, and that has
> created a substantial African-American "middle class" with significant
> accumulated capital at its disposal. Does "racism" apply to this new
> class the same way it does to a working class African-American making
> minimum wage and holding down to jobs? "Racism" obscures these
> intra-racial group dynamics. Only viewing things
> through the rubric and language of "race" and "racism" obscures the fact
> that a black
> member of the rentier, creditor, and investor classes is still probably
> going to act in predatory
> ways. This is a call for analytic precision, not the kinds of
> superficial generalities in which people like Roediger love to traffic.
> And it's hardly, as my next point suggests, a call for ignoring the
> particular concerns of poor African-Americans.
>
> * It's also wrong for him to contrast Reed unfavorably to Mike Davis,
> whose Nation piece on Katrina noted the electoral consequences of the de
> facto denial of return to the displaced might pose. But Reed in his
> co-authored piece with Stephen Steinberg on the liberal sociologists who
> signed the "Move to Opportunity" petition said just that.
> < http://www.blackcommentator.com/182/182_cover_liberals_katrina.html>
> And
> I think a reading of this article rebuts Roediger's characterization of
> Reed more generally.
> This excerpt from it sure doesn't sound like what a colorblind
> left-liberal would write: "Left behind are masses to fend for themselves,
> particularly since the .moving to opportunity. programs are themselves
> used as an excuse to disinvest in these poor black communities that are
> written off as beyond redemption."
>
> * For all the citations to it, people still don't really seem to read
> Fields' articles that carefully. Why is this "race"/"class" either/or
> formulation still the boundaries of most debates? Reed has a whole essay
> ripping apart the assumptions beneath it in a recent Politics, Culture,
> and Society (http://web.mit.edu/dusp/ppst/vol15edintro.html ) and I
> somehow don't think Roediger has read it. If he had, he'd have seen that
> Reed thinks the whole "race" trump
> "class" or "class" trumps "race" formulations are both really stupid ways
> of describing the complexities of American political economy and social
> structure.
>
> * This all said, I think Reed needs to do a better job at more carefully
> distancing himself from the colorblind Rortyites. His attacks on bankrupt
> narrow ethnic politics AND colorblind liberalism are too important to get
> shoved into the latter, and a superficial reading of his work makes him
> seem like the second coming of Bill Wilson.
>
>
>
> On 7/14/06, MICHAEL YATES < mikedjyates at msn.com> wrote:
> >
> > I guess you can say anything on the internet. But the heading of A.
> > Blanqui's message to the list is remarkable. No chapter, no
> > verse. Just a
> > smear headline and a web link. Is Blanqui really M. Pugliese?
> >
> > I edited the MR summer issue. A variety of views on race and class are
> > expressed. Mr. Blanqui, if you want to challenge Roediger and defend
> > Reed,
> > send me a detailed critique and I will forward it to Roediger. If
> > that's
> > not too much work, of course.
> >
> > Michael Yates
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
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