> Are they?
> How do you define oppressed?
John's remarks are apt.
I define oppression wonkishly as a collective "opportunity set" narrowed, not by natural or technological conditions, but by social conditions: economic, legal, political, cultural, socio-psychological. So, poverty, broadly understood, is a good proxy for oppression. And the official stats are not too bad a starting point in looking at this. So I am more than willing to correct my assertion.
I'll say that Blacks in the U.S., a substantial minority in the country (first or second largest), are *among the most oppressed sectors of the U.S. working class*, along with undocumented immigrants and Native Americans. Among the largest nations, Black Africans and those of Black African origin scattered all over are among the most oppressed in the world.
My conclusion is the same.
> I find it less than helpful to try to list one minority group as more or
> less oppressed than another.
> It leads nowhere and is a tool used divisively more than anything else.
I point this out not to pit one sector of the class against another, one nation against another. Knowing where each group or nation is in terms of oppression, poverty, access to economic and political power, etc. is potentially, but not necessarily divisive. I don't see why that's obscurantism (Carrol). Why is knowing obscurantist? On the contrary -- I'd say. Yes, knowledge is, potentially, a weapon of the oppressors. But it is also, potentially, a liberating tool.
To me, this kind of knowledge is a requisite for unity. I'm all for the unity of the working people. Not only of the most oppressed, but of all those who live off a wage or salary, regardless of differences -- and the differences can be huge! I don't think the unity of the workers becomes more feasible if you sweep under the rug those differences, including key differences in the degree of oppression, for fear that airing them will divide us. The divisions exist. They are objective. Ignoring them doesn't make them go away. I don't see how one can maintain collective solidarity without taking care of the most disadvantaged. And we cannot do this if we don't acknowledge who the most disadvantaged among us are.
When I made my assertion, I wasn't thinking of Native Americans or Latinos because there was no Latino or Native American among the viable candidates. The list had shortened to Clinton and Obama. When Richardson was around, I didn't think his positions were too bad. But he wasn't around anymore. Even if he had been around, the criteria are not only who a candidate is, or even what his declared policy stances are, what the likelihood is that he won't get in the way of mass movements pressing for progressive change, etc., but also *electability*. I didn't think that Edwards was terrible either. But, again, at this point, I was thinking only of Clinton and Obama.
shag wrote:
> On your very own position of racial solidarity, it's not clear
> why Dwayne should should have to run out and interview black americans how
> they feel about Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice.
I didn't mean to be patronizing or disrespectful to Dwayne. I'm sorry if I came across that way. We're in the business of helping each other's self-education. I've gone back and forth on the issue of nationalism. Under different circumstances in the world, I'd be very impatient with nationalism. And, of course, the nationalism of the oppressors is always repugnant to me. I have an entirely different view of the nationalism of the oppressed though. In no case is nationalism a supreme value to me. But it is a fact of life we need to reckon with. The experience of the last 7 years in this country shifted my perspective.