-----Original Message----- From: shag <shag at cleandraws.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Obama & the white guys Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:43:29 -0500
what IS structural xtianity? this is a serious question. is xtianity embedded in the institution we call 'family'? the institution we call 'work'? etc. how is it embedded in those institutions? when you get at those questions/answers, then you're getting at the phonem.
relatedly, when charles points to incarceration rates, home ownership rates, disparities in wealth, and so forth, while that information points at the issue, it's not really explaining how it happens.
so, to get back to my point, well, I'll just quote Iris Marion Young's review of the literature on oppression -- which is a way of talking about structural inequality in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, ability, sexuality, and so forth. There are two things leftists really have to grasp, IMV:
1. "The systemic character of oppression implies that an oppressed group need not have a correlate oppressing group."
2. "The conscious actions of many individuals daily contribute to maintaining and reproducing oppression, but those people are usually simply doing their jobs or living their lives and do not understand themselves as agents of oppression." Which means that people, often even when they think they are doing the "right" thing, can be reproducing oppressive practices.
============
Re 1 & 2, yes and yes. Perfect examples of invisible hand explanations.
One of the problems is one can perpetually shift the explananda/explanandum until the cows come home and when one throws the underdertermination problem on the heap is it any wonder that whites retreat to individualism 101, throw up their hands in cynical futility a la "you can't fight city hall"?
I'm not apologizing for/excusing that; structural racism is all too horribly real as global warming. It's just that it's more interesting and difficult as hell to talk about the overcomeability of structures when they hare habitually spoken of/written about as if they were non-overcomeable.....structures.
Ian