That's an almost impossible hypothetical given the intense linkages between historical capitalism and historical racism. I should also note that there is a underlying currency that wants to posit an ethnicity that isn't socially and historically constituted.
I also wanted to return to some of the comments about the transformation of the construction of race. The notion that racism can't be understood in the same way as it was 'before' isn't something that either Reed or Michaels brings to the table. You can see these arguments in Balibar and Wallerstein's cowritten book, as well as Paul Gilroy's work from Small Acts to Against Race (the latter wasn't very good) just to name a couple people. Hell, Tim Wise has recognized this fact. I think that you can return to something that Omi and Winant stated in their analysis of the social construction of race, which is that this construction is both unstable and contested. When Reed made his comments on Doug's show, I thought that something possibly interesting might be set out, the argument that the term 'anti-racism' no longer is an effective organizing category for the many problems that fall under its aegis. I'm still looking forwards to the article. I'll leave it there.
robert wood
PS I will get to the WalMart stuff at some point...
> --- On Sun, 10/11/09, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
>
>> From: wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] corporate rationality
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Date: Sunday, October 11, 2009, 4:04 PM
>> Capitalism operates as a world
>> system. robert wood
>
> So if the entire planet was ethnically homogeneous, capitalism would be
> impossible?
>
>
>
>
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