You should not stop. This is precisely the sort of thing that discussion is good for.
I think everybody is trying to actually understand this. We've had pissing contests before, but this is not one.
I know I am trying to understand. I mean, I'm a socialist. I certainly understand the primacy of class, and I have argued variously against identity politics on this list.
I also know that once the explicitly discriminatory Jim Crow laws were dismantled, racism lost its home address.
The right tells me that there is no racism or sexism in this country:
-- an overwhelming number of people of color are in jail because they're criminals and drug users
-- women should have no right to abortion because of the sanctity of life
-- people of color should receive no preferential treatment because that's an example of govt interfering with our freedom
-- we have a black president
Reed tells me there is racism, but it is tactically the wrong target.
Now I grant that a certain number of issues like stop and frisk, education, health care, gerrymandering can be fought for without mentioning the word race. But some simply cannot. For example, differential sentencing. I think it is a good thing that there is some discretion in sentencing, but then there is the fact that this discretion is often used to penalize brown people more harshly than white people. How do you stop that without talking about racism? There is also the fact that charging a crime is influenced by racism -- how do you address that without talking about racism?
And how do you help people understand their perception of themselves and others, which has been shaped by centuries of racism, without talking about racism? And if that perception plays a role in their willingness to fight alongside different others for broader social goals, isn't it important to talk about it? What we wind up saying will probably be different than what was said in the thirties and fifties and seventies, but it still has to be said and thought through.
Joanna
^^^^^ CB: One more way to mention racism: In Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, et al. Tea Partiers were elected especially by first using the racist attacks on immigrants of color and Obama as an "immigrant-foreign born" of color. The also used the coded racist narrative of "anti-Big Government-Tax and Spend Liberal Democrats" ( deficit reduction demagogy). Tax and Spend Liberal = N-wordloving white politicians in this code. It started with Reagan. Now in office the Tea Partiers are the whole working class, white's too; attacking Great Society/War on Poverty and New Deal laws and programs.
Racism is used against _white_ workers in this way.
Black, Red, Brown, Yellow and White, unite and fight !