Six Five, try existing in the here and now rather than creating a fiction about yourself.

Quite the opposite, as I clearly stated in an earlier comment.

Nor was anyone denying the existence of racism. Racism in not any one thing. There’s racism in India against dark people equal to or even worse than anything in the US. (How productive is it to calibrate human suffering by racial groups, by the way?)

And as for slavery, whites have enslaved whites (Russian empire, for example) in ways quite as savage as any. No race has a monopoly of suffering if we go back far enough into history.

The point being made was that right now we are in a financial collapse and our African-American president hasn’t meant that the banksters responsible have been brought to account, now has it?

Regardless of what outsiders think, only Afrikan people(home and abroad) determine who we are, what moves we should make, who our friends/enemies are, how OUR resources should be handled, etc. Like Michael Eric Dyson said yesterday…”I am not trying to be post-racial…I am trying to be post racist”. Meaning we refuse to deny our BLOODLINE heritage just to make other “johnny-come-latelys” feel comfortable or accepted, but at the same time we still continue to struggle against white supremacy(capitalism, imperialism, or whatever you want to label it). This talk of racism being “divisive” or somehow “an old, outdated issue”. In my opinion, liberals and this “classism” and “We all need to come together” rhetoric is not only divisive, but also destructive. It also shows the arrogance and selfishness of liberals. They are basically saying “the battle you all have been hung for, had feet cut off for, etc. is no longer relevant. Put that down and join our fight.”

I stand in solidarity with anyone who stands and proves solidarity with Afrikan people. But no one should have the audacity to try to swindle anyone into letting go of their TRUE national identity(not an identity which was created by slaveowners). You all need to either accept it or move the f on………..

But you are right about the blaming of foreigners – they are giving gays a break on this one.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Wallace/andrew117.htm

“Every foreign born worker, every free trade agreement, every action by the private federal reserve bank, and every unconstitutional act are responsible for all of our unemployment and pain”

That statement by News with Views website is almost Nazi, and Hitlerian because it blames non-americans for the collapse of USA. when in truth it is the American population, and the US voters who are to blame for the capitalist dictatorship of Democrats and Republicans, the main responsables for USA’s bankruptcy, collapse and destruction.

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This as I expressed is a dilemma (conundrum to be exact). Is there ever closure to a social problem once it has been institutionalized?

I used the example of the “war on drugs” a bankrolled problem/solution which has been fully institutionalized with no doubt a “lobby” (which is yet another issue confounding the conundrum) to boot. Once in place these institutions just don’t go away… this is an issue with military industrial complex which has taken over at least a 1/3 of the economy to support it’s mindless and endless tenticles. I know someone who has devoted his life to “saving” the homeless. Of course, he has no plans to solve the problem of homeless, but to keep providing food and the like. It’s good for his “soul” and “keeps him going”.

But back to social problems. Systematic racism, that is the kind that incarcerates people of color in greater numbers, that effects their lives in early deaths from all sorts of diseases which could be avoided entirely, and all the stats that Barry gave before are REAL. This is not an imagined problem.

But a systemic problem can be resolved. So, why isn’t it solved? How come the problem remains in place for most poor people, and particularly people of color? Who benefits from this systemic problem? As a social construct, racism is a narrative. What supports the narrative? I submit it is the economics which is the root cause fo the systemic problem, and that the narrative changes when the systemic problem diminishes (and one hopes disappears).

I don’t think endless talk about “race”, whatever that means to Tom or Bill, or Sue or Luther or Tipper, is ever going to deal with the systemic problem and until that changes the “talk” will be fruitless. But that “talk” will be fine for the institutions who keep the problem essentially where it is and has been.

In other words, it is only the material objectification of the problem and solving it, that will address real grievances. The dynamics of groups and dominance will likely stay and manifest itself in some other horrid way with no regard for black or while, but some other differentiating factor. (Perhaps, I’m including a touch of Marx here, purely unintentional, but he like other classical economists understood that relationships and behavior are driven by economics.)

This is a sweeping generalization?
This qualified, careful statement preceded by apologies and trepidation is a sweeping generalization?

I rest my case…

Listening to the conversation herein it is no wonder why solidarity on the left is so retarded. It appears that change will not come from the contributors on DV. It will come from those who can empathize with people who are really struggling for change. The sweeping labeling by Ms. Rajiva of “activist” as living off of research/activism is reckless as she doesn’t identify who these people are and what their advocacy is and why they should be described in that manner. For example while that may be true of Noam Chomsky is that true of Tim Wise for example? Max Shields sure seem so yet he doesn’t explain why he would lump Tim Wise into that group.

Racism is clearly an issue that is very sensitive to communities of color who has been struggling against white supremacy in the U.S. for the past 400 years. For Ms. Rajiva to throw the rabid bone of dismissiveness is to insult this legacy of struggle. Has Ms. Rajiva opened the Pandora box of latent racism of the Left and the Left’s hostility toward people of color?

What Ms. Rajiva should explore is how to build solidarity with people of color because right now the struggles against Capitalism is being led by people of color especially by Latino/a in Latin America. Clearly only by expanding and building solidarity with people of color will America begin to truly build the kind of successful challenge to Capitalism and also to Zionism which has gripped the political economy of the United States.

Some people want to see if problems can be resolved or at least if they can bring us to a new beginning and others like Wise seem bent on living off the problem. The problem becomes his raison d’etre.

The other condundrum is the human condition that seems to demand problems be institutionalized our problems and thus self-sustaining because we’ve built livelihoods or University departments require that problem is NEVER resolved. The war on drugs is a perfect example. How many institutions require that those billions allocated to “fight the war on drugs” STAYS right where it is. It’s the institutionalization of the problem.

I once had lunch with Jensen. He’s really good on Palestine’s Israel problem.

I think racism should be a term that finds its way into the language of genocide and apatheid. These are all manifestations of aggression and power struggles. What makes “racism” different is that it is a tool of oppression, through demonization and dehumanization. Genocide is taking the demonization to the ultimate end – eliminating the existence fo the “other”, annhilation or an attempt to do so, and apartheid is a tactic whereby conditions are created which reduce living conditions to the command and control of the more powerful over the less powerful (a living hell).

In the US “racism” has not taken on all of the symptoms of domination in terms of African Americans, but it did most assuredly with Native Americans.

By making Israel accountable for “racism” we have a world-view that sees racism as a systemic means to destoying a group (however distinguish) through dehumanizing the other. In Israel’s case, that state has actually moved on all fronts of crimes against humanity: racism, apartheid and attempting genocide of a people .

But of course it is a social construct! A social construct is real. The term race has defied clear definition from a biological perspective. It is purely a social construct.

That there are greater cases of certain diseases among black Americans as well as increased incarceration all need to be taken with some understanding of which is environmentally based (and re-inforced) and what might be genetic, but for the most part, the Western diet alone creates most of the diseases you mention. So, what is it about a given population that exposes them to more of the so-called Western diet than more affluent Americans – primarily it’s economics as well as education. This is not to deny that various human populations have acquired genetic adaptations, but these are not examples of “racism”.

Incarceration is certainly a social construct. The mere fact, Barry that you said it was primarilly systemic indicates that this is a social construct.

This is an important point, because problems don’t find sustainable solutions when we mystify them, when we relegate them to something byond the material. I’m not saying that all problems are economic, but that all systems outside of the ecosystem, are social constructs of one sort or another sustained by some feedback loop within those systems.

It is clear that the “other” will never go away. It could be a freckle or the color of hair that distinguishes if it suits a social construct – the desire to dominate.

I do however agree, Barry, that this is an intractable problem which cannot be “talked away”. It will find a way to pop up in one form or another (in the future it may not be a black/white issue).

But racism (as we tend to think of it) is a means of domination. It is a social construct of power. In the universal and more abstract sense it has nothing to do with skin color but with distinctions of one sort or another. Remember the film: Rwanda? I can’t tell a Tutsi from a Hutu. And yet there was a power struggle which bears all of the markings of racism, with genocide and at bottom, that power is a strugggle over control of resources (land).

There have been changes in all these stats over time – a few for the better – but none the less, these are long term entrenched patterns. So obviously we have two societies – or at least two – and they are separate and unequal. So clearly there is racism going on – it is systemic, it is institutional, it is violent.

Yet race is not an imaginary thing – it is not entirely a social construct. Early band societies had to make decisions in their encounters with other groups and quickly decide who was the ‘other’ and who was kindred. Of course, that would not necessarily break down on racial lines – as the various races were less likely to be in contact in the Neolithic – but it does establish a notion of suspicion of those who appear to be different – whether in speech, dress, or manner.

Capitalism did not invent race or racism. In capitalist societies however, race (and other human differences) are used to divide groups – so while racism existed beforehand, it now manifests itself in a thousand ways hitherto impossible. It’s not new, it is racism in new forms.

Today, we have, at the ends of the racial spectrum, whites and blacks whose fortunes on average are literally poles apart. We now have other minorities who might be said to be in between blacks and whites. These groups also serve a function in capitalism and we are all familiar with the stereotypes (it should be admitted there are usually grains of truth in stereotypes). We don’t know how this mix will play out over this century. But it does appear that white and black cultures have grown irreparably apart (which is not to admit they were ever one). Most of us on this site I’m sure are white (and male). We will likely date other whites, eventually marry white, and discuss racism and other politics with fellow whites. We will live in largely white neighborhoods and work largely in majority-white jobs.

So it’s a pretty intractable problem we have here with race. We can ignore race and go simply with a class analysis – but we do so at the peril of our own analysis. Marx is required but insufficient. Feminist theory is required but insufficient. Diversity studies are required but woefully insufficient. And in a society where genetic science is increasingly revealing racial differences, how much of it do we reject outright and what do we incorporate into social analyses?

I have no faith that the deepening depression we now live in will bring us together to overthrow the system that put us here. I have no faith that working and middle classes will discard race and band as one against corporate culture. It seems to be out of our hands – there is far too much suspicion that functions as a bulwark against recognizing commonalities.