[lbo-talk] Fight the taboo on the use of the word "racist"

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Mar 15 10:17:35 PST 2006


Charles:


> CB; However, as a white person, you need to stay out of
> conflicts between Black and Hispanic people. For one thing,
> you probably are off on the dynamic, of prejudices going in

No, I did not want to imply that "I" should mediate conflicts between anyone. Not at all. What I say on this list may be interpreted as elitism, but it definitely is NOT patronizing. As I said time and again, I am just a wussy liberal, I am against making decisions for other people, let alone treating them like children who cannot think and act on their own.

What I wanted to say was that the politics of racism - and for that matter any other politics of power - is played on many different levels and in many different ways. The relations of power are not fixed, but relative and constantly changing. An oppressed in one situation can be an oppressor in another, and vice versa. I think that understanding that dynamics can be more effective in fighting that power than any frontal assault based on fixed definitions of who your enemy is. It is like fighting Al Qaeda either by tracking, understanding, and eventually disrupting their intricate networks, vs fighting it the Bush way - by attacking a target on which one is fixated (like Iraq).

Wojtek



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