Doug Henwood wrote:
> These disparities are often attributed to abstractions like "racism" and
> "white supremacy," things that have no agency.
>
>
^^^^^^^
CB: "White supremacy" is a generalization concerning a feature of the
US social, political and economic system. In that sense it is a
proper abstraction.
Many of the agents, as some have said here, do not hold extreme or conscious white supremacist ideology. However, for example, the people who voted to make affirmative action unconstitutional in Michigan several years ago, are agents of white supremacy. Most of them are nice people, and do not think of themselves as racially superior. But, the notion that affirmative action is racist is itself racist or white supremacist. It is the main form of racism in the Reaganite era.
^^^^^^^ Eric Beck Aaaand here is where I get confused. I thought Marx spent most of his life showing how abstract, agentless, uh, things and processes dominate under capitalism. If you are going avoid abstractions that have no agency, why not just go all liberal: racism exists because of racists, accumulation exists because people are greedy, etc.