[lbo-talk] Adolph Reed on the limits of antiracism

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Sun Oct 25 06:00:38 PDT 2009


At 09:15 PM 10/24/2009, Chuck Grimes wrote:
>So, some points. I don't know where the term `anti-racism' comes from. I
>never heard anyone use this term in the past.

i think, in the past, you could say "civil rights struggle". Today, since the civil rights struggle seems largely over, the thing people are fighting is structural or institutional racism. People tend to focus on individual manifestations, however, which Jenny Yamato explores in the essay, "Something About the Subject Makes it Hard to Name": http://djjr.net/dan/crss/soc055/readings/race-eth/bruce-williams-readings.pdf

But even though she tries to move away from individual manifestations, she doesn't really do so in her examples.

Iris Marion Young, though, argues that the writing and research on oppression that came out of the struggles of the 60s and 70s pointed at structural level oppressions that were embedded in the norms of social institutions. Whereas Yamato talks about systematic mistreatment of one group by another group that benefits in some way, Young points out that oppression doesn't require a beneficiary. It is 'abstract' in the sense the Moishe Postone means in _Time, Labor, and Social Domination_.

http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/young.pdf

Michael Hoover on Young: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1998/1998-December/013196.html

Decent summary of the five faces: http://webserver.lemoyne.edu/~glennon/IRIS-FAC.htm

Entire chapter: http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/young.pdf



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