Cooptation is pretty ubiquitous. Malcolm X has been on U.S. stamps and is referred to as a "civil rights leader." We have a Malcolm X Park in D.C., but no VI Lenin park. Cooptation is not unique to MC.
MC is anathema to an old style of racism in the U.S. that has faded but is far from dead. It can be more easily accommodated by neo-liberalism, I agree w/Michaels etc on this, but I would not make it out to be toxic either.
On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 4:28 PM, James Heartfield
<Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Alan Rudy seeks to recuperate 'the anti-racist impetus behind multiculturalism' from its critics.I see it differently. It is not that multiculturalism has a rational anti-racist kernel. The relationship between anti-racism and multiculturalism is rather different. Multiculturalism is the subversion of anti-racism, its involution into something quite different.
>
> Throughout the twentieth century many have taken up the fight against racial discrimination and oppression, and demanded equality. Multiculturalism is different. Its central thesis is not the overcoming of inequality, but the accomodation of inequality. Multiculturalism takes difference, not equality as its starting point (and its conclusion).
>
> The other central difference between multiculturalism and anti-racism is that multiculturalism is for the most part an official discourse operated by teachers, municipal administrators, human resources managers and government officials. Anti-racism was for the most part a set of struggles against the state.
>
> Multiculturalism has coopted the anti-racist struggles of the past into its imaginary history. At my school, teachers will happily tell my daughter about Claudia Jones in Black History Month. (And in the next breath they invite her to join the Metropolitan Police run 'Detective Club'.)
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>