[lbo-talk] Misusing "Racism", was Re: Bush down to 33%; public loves posturingxenophobiccongress

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Mar 16 12:23:56 PST 2006


jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:


> > Nathan Newman wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Doug-- there's been plenty of opportunities for Menendez to promote racial
>> > profiling and attacks on Arabs over the last few years. Somehow
>>Menendez has
>> > skipped many other opportunities to do so, but chose to focus on the UAE's
>> > purchase of the ports. If he he such a racist, why did he pass
>>on all those
>> > other opportunities.
>
>> Because in the individualized psychological sense he is NOT racist, but
>> like all the other motherfuckers who make up the DP leadership and
>> elected officials he is perfectly willing to utilize the structural
>> racism deep in u.s. life for opportunistic purposes. I can't believe
>> that Nathan can't see what is happening here.
>>
>> More evidencd that we hamper the struggle against racism by using the
>> word so often to describe individualized feelings. The DP is a racist
>> institution, though most of the people who make it up at all levels are
>> not personally "racist."
>>
>> Carrol
>
>But the word applies to individualized feelings. The word isn't
>being mis-used.

This fits into Carrol's habit of looking at Historical forces without any acutal sense of human agency. So we have institutional racism - but individual racism isn't worth talking about, or isn't possible to talk about.

Doug



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