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Ghost Leviathan posted:There's a lot to be said about in-group out-group discrimination and its relation to empire. That said, more specifically the kind of racism recognisable in the modern day- heavily based on skin colour and aimed towards the global south- absolutely was invented by European colonial empires wanting to stop the underclass at home from realising they had more in common with the colonial subjects being abused, exploited and plundered than they had with the people benefiting from the plundering and exploitation. And the dynamic has never really changed from that, aside from adapting slightly to new conditions. This also isn't at all the only type of racism recognizable in the modern day, either. Perhaps you should specify the sort of racism most intimately familiar to yourself? Velocity Raptor posted:Remember those "few bad apples" in the Minneapolis Police Department who murdered George Floyd 3 years ago? Shortly after that incident, the Justice Department began investigating the department regarding their policing practices. And they just released their report. I could not believe some of the stuff they were openly doing on DOJ ride alongs, it was crazy.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 15:20 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 02:21 |
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GlyphGryph posted:I could not believe some of the stuff they were openly doing on DOJ ride alongs, it was crazy. Just remember that was the poo poo that was so normalized there that they had no issue doing it in front of "outsiders", just imagine the poo poo they do when they don't have the government looking directly at them.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 15:24 |
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Bel Shazar posted:I can only imagine how horrible we would be to each other if we could see our stripes. Idk cats can see our stripes and they don't seem to care
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 15:43 |
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The persecutions of Jews from the Romans onward was based on religion, as were the Crusades (which were first kicked off by the Turks invading Byzantium, although they rapidly turned into attacking any heretics or heathens). Mellow Seas posted:I also think that if Black people didn't exist in America, if we didn't have this history of racial subjugation, then we would've invented them. That is to say, we would've readily invented bigotries. The "white" identity only exists in opposition to blackness, and would be happy to subdivide itself into a hierarchy in its absence. S The 'white identity' as we know it didn't exist before it was invented to support enslaving black people in the Americas. The Romans didn't see themselves as the same as the Germans, while in the medieval era Ethiopia was considered part of Christendom with no asterisks. I mean sure, if you define literally all violence as racist, then racism is inherent to humanity, but I don't feel that's a useful definition.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 15:47 |
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Failed Imagineer posted:Idk cats can see our stripes and they don't seem to care They probably chose us as pets because of our stripes, tbh.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 15:49 |
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Byzantine posted:The 'white identity' as we know it didn't exist before it was invented to support enslaving black people in the Americas. (It's funny, I do that all the time when I'm hanging out with my friends, often because I'm stoned. For some reason there's one friend I always tend to do it with, where he'll say something, and I'm kind of lost in thought and don't consciously hear him, and then like 10 seconds later I'll say the same thing like it was my idea.) Byzantine posted:I mean sure, if you define literally all violence as racist, then racism is inherent to humanity, but I don't feel that's a useful definition. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jun 19, 2023 |
# ? Jun 19, 2023 16:06 |
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Mellow Seas posted:To hold it up as distinctive is to claim that race is distinct dividing line when it's just one of the many arbitrary ones humans have chosen throughout history. Racism (especially anti-black racism) is distinct from other bigotries because it's intrinsic in the person. A Jewish person can conceal their faith or practice it in a muted way to escape persecution. A Catholic can pretend to be a Baptist to avoid being terrorized. No one "looks" Catholic or gay. People with black skin can't escape persecution no matter what they do. The difference is important.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 16:20 |
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You can't look at the history of 'scientific' racism without seeing how the turbo racists of the time were also engaged in the project of creating European pecking orders, often based on the weirdest criteria. The Nazis and their Aryan superiority were a distillation of stuff that had been out there for ages.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 16:36 |
The caste system was also used in the same way by the British, fwiw. It's not an accident that it looks the same.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 16:52 |
Mellow Seas posted:I disagree; I think it is a useful definition. I think what it distinguishes "racism," as so defined, from "bigotry" is the application of power dynamics, which don't rely on skin color or any other morphological trait. (And who said anything about "all violence"? ) The only respect in which anti-Black racism is distinct from religious or caste bigotries is that it's based on "race," but race is, like all those other categories, just some made up bullshit. To hold it up as distinctive is to claim that race is distinct dividing line when it's just one of the many arbitrary ones humans have chosen throughout history. Arguably the most prevalent form of bigotry we have in the US today is bullshit that was invented in early modern times. So it's not hopeless or denying human nature to think we might be able to do something about it. I've explained that race was invented 500 years ago to people who aren't bigots and they have gotten really confused at the idea that, for instance, a Roman soldier could be black and no one would give a poo poo. "Can't they see they're different?" Yeah, they have eyes, they just wouldn't care about that aspect. Pointing out that racism specifically is a product of the early modern world is useful because it's really hard for people today not to assume that particular type of bigotry is innate. Explaining that bigotry in general is pretty normal is beside the point.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 16:53 |
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:Racism (especially anti-black racism) is distinct from other bigotries because it's intrinsic in the person. A Jewish person can conceal their faith or practice it in a muted way to escape persecution. A Catholic can pretend to be a Baptist to avoid being terrorized. No one "looks" Catholic or gay. People with black skin can't escape persecution no matter what they do. The difference is important. I think it was more the technological ability - i.e. sailing ships - that made African enslavement happen, and that historically coincided with the rise of capitalism. (And I'm sure there's a link between seafaring and capitalism that I am not at all able to speak on.) So having a supply of African slaves was European capitalism "lucking out," from a historical perspective, to gain access to this source of free labor, easily dehumanized, at the same time that capitalist systems were proliferating and colonialism was claiming new land for slaves to work. Africans were subjugated because of opportunism and because of greed, but not necessarily because of capitalism. I think if pre-capitalist Europeans had a way of mass-transporting Subsarahan Africans for free labor, they would not have needed to wait for capitalism to come around to exploit that. Eiba posted:That's the point though. "Race" was made up 500 years ago. That's useful to point out, and what is being pointed out. quote:Pointing out that racism specifically is a product of the early modern world is useful because it's really hard for people today not to assume that particular type of bigotry is innate. Explaining that bigotry in general is pretty normal is beside the point.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 17:12 |
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Killer robot posted:When he said that to counter the Latino-targeting ads claiming he was the love child of Castro and Chavez, none of them even believed it meant he wasn't a socialist. I don't get why anyone acts like it was "bragging" , or that it was the night he was cursed by a magical imp to reveal his true name. No he said similar things in his book, in audacity of hope
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 17:19 |
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Madkal posted:You can look at caste systems to see that racism and othering don't need capitalism to exist. I don't have anything to add to the conversation right now, but I would just like to reiterate that the original point was that capitalism needs racism to exist, not the other way around. Capitalism depends on keeping the working class divided, and racism is one of the best ways to do that, so if you fight against racism then you are inherently fighting against capitalism's ability to divide and exploit. The point is not that identity issues are more important than class issues or vice versa, but that they are both part of the same struggle, and it's important for both sides to recognize that and unite. Sorry for repeating myself but my point seems to have gotten lost in the discussion.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 17:36 |
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If capitalism needs racism as practiced today to exist, then the most effective measure to fight capitalism should be fighting racism. Personally I feel like if you waved a magic wand and eliminated outright racism, there would just be more social signifiers waiting in the wings to fill the roll. Which is why I believe that the fight needs to be on multiple fronts, economically and socially.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 17:51 |
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I agree wholeheartedly.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 17:53 |
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Professor Beetus posted:If capitalism needs racism as practiced today to exist, then the most effective measure to fight capitalism should be fighting racism. Personally I feel like if you waved a magic wand and eliminated outright racism, there would just be more social signifiers waiting in the wings to fill the roll. Which is why I believe that the fight needs to be on multiple fronts, economically and socially. Exactly so. Too often the argument of "fix class and you'll fix race" is given for why white leftists can ignore or de-prioritize pressing racial issues.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:13 |
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In addition to all the regular old bigots racism will be co-opted and applied by capitalists towards the pursuit of profit just like everything else
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:16 |
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A lot of the struggle around fixing racism feels like not knowing what your actual metrics are. If we lived in a society that had the same amount of social racism (people holding the same opinions at the same rates they do now) BUT there aren’t observable economic impacts based on race; black homeownership is the same as white, latino graduation rates are the same as all other groups, have you solved racism? Or have you solved the impacts of racism? To me, the goal should be economic empowerment. To quote someone smarter than me, a white man wanting to lynch a black man is a white man’s problem; a white man having the power to lynch a black man is the black man’s problem. That resonates for me; show me a racially discriminated group that has economic power? If you want to fix racism? Good luck. If you want to fix the impacts of racism, we know exactly what we need to do, but for some reason as a society cannot stand to undertake that action.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:26 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:And those policies were explicitly designed to accompany the crackdown on leftists by making just enough concessions to the (white) working classes to convince them they didn't need socialism. See also the assassination and whitewashing or erasure of Civil Rights leaders, MLK turned into a bland pacifist who asked America nicely not to be so darn racist and so they fixed everything, and then he died for some reason oh well. He died when he started to focus on worker rights. Just saying.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:27 |
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VideoGameVet posted:He died when he started to focus on worker rights. Just saying. Started the poor people’s campaign and started talking about how the vietnam war was imperialism and then got murdered. It’s very interesting what parts of his legacy people felt motivated to keep and what they were eager to ignore, or legitimately incapable of understanding.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:39 |
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Jaxyon posted:Exactly so. Absolutely. Like this: selec posted:A lot of the struggle around fixing racism feels like not knowing what your actual metrics are. Economic power can be and has been taken away due to racism. Ask the African American community in Tulsa, or Jewish people who had economic power in Germany. Bigots don't just grumble and then do nothing because they don't have an economic upper hand anymore. They continue to be bigots. Unless you take people completely out of the system and resources are distributed by some magical AI or mathematical formula the biases of the people in the system will come through in the result. I think you need to attack the bias, and the system at the same time. You don't have to pick just one.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:40 |
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Absolutely. So what’s the fix? People can have economic power taken away, sure, but they have a greater chance of defending and preventing that from happening if they already have economic power. What’s the route around economic empowerment that somehow fixes racism? How do you prevent the individual and collective human suffering of being poor because you’re not white otherwise? Is there a way to be poor and content as a white person that is somehow not available to black people? Is that some kind of goal worth fighting for? I would say it’s not. People deserve the dignity of living free from want. You can continue to attack cultural racism but doing so without attacking the economic disparities every disadvantaged group lives in is just rainbow capitalism; “Caitlyn Jenner is rich, what’s the problem?” If I had to choose the ability to pick one, a genie’s wish, I’d get rid of economic disparities without a second’s thought.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:48 |
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selec posted:So what’s the fix? People can have economic power taken away, sure, but they have a greater chance of defending and preventing that from happening if they already have economic power. This is kind of a pointless statement, because there is no magical wand that can erase one or the other, and in reality you cannot deal with one without dealing with the other. You are arguing from a hypothetical that exists as a counterfactual. e: You also seem to be strawmanning a bit since going back through the convo, no one here has said that rainbow capitalism is enough. Nearly everyone in the conversation has said that both economic and racial disparities both have to be addressed. Attacking economic disparity without racism would essentially just be the mid-20th Century post-war boom. Professor Beetus fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jun 19, 2023 |
# ? Jun 19, 2023 18:52 |
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Professor Beetus posted:This is kind of a pointless statement, because there is no magical wand that can erase one or the other, and in reality you cannot deal with one without dealing with the other. You are arguing from a hypothetical that exists as a counterfactual. It’s about priorities. White liberalism has been about policing people’s hearts while contending the racial caste system we live under can’t be fixed for decades now. Black homeownership plummeted under the first black president we had. Fixing hearts is a mug’s game. Money is the fix, and liberalism (small L) universally opposes meaningful redistributive projects so you’re never going to get Both. Fight for what works, because if we are to judge modern liberalism’s progress on race the revanchist turn of the last twenty years is a dire progress report for corporate-friendly fixes to a system that makes people of color poor as a matter of daily existence. Every single org I’ve worked for, which in the last decade has been either nonprofits or orgs serving nonprofits, has paid people of color less than they deserve, and less than white counterparts, and all of them sung and continue to sing the exact words on the song sheet rainbow capitalism hands out. They praise the one or two members of minority groups in the C suite, and those people do their duty and make speeches praising the company back. They all say the right words, but until the checks match that, they’re just words and mean nothing, mean less than nothing in fact.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:01 |
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selec posted:It’s about priorities. White liberalism has been about policing people’s hearts while contending the racial caste system we live under can’t be fixed for decades now. Black homeownership plummeted under the first black president we had. Fixing hearts is a mug’s game. Money is the fix, and liberalism (small L) universally opposes meaningful redistributive projects so you’re never going to get Both. I had several replies going for this but tbh it's all gishgalloping gobbledygook that conflates several different things under the broad brush of "rainbow capitalism" and it seems like you have basic problem with understanding the posts in this conversation. Economic justice is literally impossible without racial justice, because if you lift everyone up, guess who's still going to have the upper hand.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:14 |
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Jaxyon posted:Exactly so. The opposite is both far more common and more politically mainstream. "We could break up that big banks, but would that fix racism? Would that fix sexism?'
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:15 |
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MLK was doing class analysis well before the poor people’s campaign. “The White Liberal” in letter from Birmingham jail is built on the class analysis of the privileged classes in Moral Man and Immoral Society (explicitly because he mentions Niebuhr). it’s (Moral Man and Immoral Society ) worth a read because it’s much much more radical than one would expect. Here’s a link to it: http://media.sabda.org/alkitab-2/Re...0Study%20in.pdf
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:20 |
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:Racism (especially anti-black racism) is distinct from other bigotries because it's intrinsic in the person. A Jewish person can conceal their faith or practice it in a muted way to escape persecution. A Catholic can pretend to be a Baptist to avoid being terrorized. No one "looks" Catholic or gay. People with black skin can't escape persecution no matter what they do. The difference is important. It's not nearly as simple as this. For example, there were plenty of Jews who gave up their faith or converted, only to face continued persecution, because people who converted in response to persecution weren't necessarily considered reliable converts. More importantly, race-based persecution wasn't really about appearance at all. It was about treating other races as if they were entirely different "breeds" of humanity, with genetically-inherited differences that they were born with, as opposed to the Roman view that such differences were a product of environment and culture. This allowed for the rise of racial caste systems built on ancestry rather than skin color, where a light-skinned mixed-race child might be able to superficially pass as white but would be treated as non-white if their black parentage were to become known, though they would still often be treated better than their darker-skinned parents or grandparents. In particular, the Jim Crow era saw many racial hierarchy laws passed which explicitly defined race by ancestry rather than skin color. Many of these laws defined anyone with 1/8th non-white ancestry (i.e. one non-white great-grandparent) as non-white, though others went further, down to the extreme "one-drop rule" passed in many states which required complete "racial purity" in order to qualify as white. Mellow Seas posted:I think it was more the technological ability - i.e. sailing ships - that made African enslavement happen, and that historically coincided with the rise of capitalism. (And I'm sure there's a link between seafaring and capitalism that I am not at all able to speak on.) So having a supply of African slaves was European capitalism "lucking out," from a historical perspective, to gain access to this source of free labor, easily dehumanized, at the same time that capitalist systems were proliferating and colonialism was claiming new land for slaves to work. African enslavement actually predates European slavery of Africans. Even before colonialism got started, slavery was practiced locally by various North and West African kingdoms, and this included chattel slavery where the slaves could be bought and sold as property. For the most part, European slavers bought slaves from African slave traders, rather than capturing and enslaving people themselves. Of course, this isn't to say that Europeans didn't manage to make it worse. Before the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, slavery was a relatively small market in those regions, but the colonial empires' hunger for chattel labor meant extremely high demand for slaves and a willingness to pay massive amounts for slaves. That totally destabilized Africa, as kingdoms that engaged heavily in the slave trade saw massive influxes of European wealth and weaponry which allowed them to rise above their neighbors and dominate the region, which in turn allowed them to capture even more slaves via war and oppression, which in turn meant they could sell more slaves to European traders in exchange for even more wealth and weaponry. If it were a simple matter of technological obstacles, you'd expect African slavery to be a common sight across Southern Europe. After all, crossing the Mediterranean was far easier than crossing the Atlantic - and in fact, the Barbary Pirates were infamous for their slave raids which carried many Europeans back to North Africa as slaves. I'd say the simple answer is that they had no particular need to develop slavery - aside from the cultural taboos against enslaving Christians and the rarity of non-Christians in Europe by the early modern period, feudalism had already established a vast underclass workforce which could be exploited well enough as it was. EDIT: Actually, the decline of slavery in feudal Europe probably had the same cause as many other Roman institutions that faded: a lack of strong and organized state power with the administrative capacity to keep track of and enforce divisions in the large lower classes. Even the weak disorganized states of the medieval era were mostly capable of keeping track of who was an aristocrat and who wasn't, but keeping track of whether individual peasants were slaves or serfs is a bigger administrative load. Main Paineframe fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jun 19, 2023 |
# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:20 |
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I can't think of a single mainstream political figure who has said "we'd really like to break up the banks but dang ol' racism is stopping us" Do you have any examples that won't be an impressive rhetorical pretzel?
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:20 |
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Professor Beetus posted:I can't think of a single mainstream political figure who has said "we'd really like to break up the banks but dang ol' racism is stopping us" I mean it was a pretty big discussion point in the 2016 primaries. (no video as far as I know, but widely reported and jumped on by the left). https://twitter.com/ABCLiz/status/698598708674326528
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:22 |
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Fister Roboto posted:I don't have anything to add to the conversation right now, but I would just like to reiterate that the original point was that capitalism needs racism to exist, not the other way around. Capitalism depends on keeping the working class divided, and racism is one of the best ways to do that, so if you fight against racism then you are inherently fighting against capitalism's ability to divide and exploit. The point is not that identity issues are more important than class issues or vice versa, but that they are both part of the same struggle, and it's important for both sides to recognize that and unite. I understood your point FWIW but its still something I disagree with; using the "wave a magic wand and banish racism forever" hypothetical I think capitalism would still continue to exist; it'd simply evolve and continue to preserve its existence; and nothing would fundamentally change regarding labour relations. I think the key point that capitalism requires dividing the workclass via racial antagonisms is not an inherent aspect of capitalism; its a way capitalism gets implemented but it isn't the only way. Capitalism will simply find new and different antagonisms; the key thing isn't maintaining divisions within the working class, but divisions between classes as a whole. Capitalism as a system doesn't care if the working class hates other parts of the working class; but the political class that benefits from capitalism is what does; these are two completely different parts of the larger problem.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:32 |
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:Racism (especially anti-black racism) is distinct from other bigotries because it's intrinsic in the person. A Jewish person can conceal their faith or practice it in a muted way to escape persecution. Part of the invention of race was when this stopped being true for Jewish people during the Inquisition - converts to Christianity and their descendents were still seen as suspicious fifth-columnists not because of their religion but because of their descent. While I'm sure you didn't intend it this way, what you said is so ignorant and unthoughtful that it's actually offensive. The victims of the Holocaust had no ability to escape persecution just by giving up the religion - hundreds of thousands of German victims were not religious at all - because they weren't being persecuted for the religion but for their ancestry. Modern antisemitism (as in, dating back to the invention of the term 'antisemitism') is totally racialized and targets Jews of no religion just as much as religious Jews, the only way to escape it as you propose is to conceal the fact that your family is Jewish, not by doing the religion less. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jun 19, 2023 |
# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:34 |
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selec posted:So what’s the fix? People can have economic power taken away, sure, but they have a greater chance of defending and preventing that from happening if they already have economic power. You need to do both, and neither alone is sufficient. You need to attack the bias, and improve the economic system at the same time. You don't have to pick just one, and picking just one will leave huge swaths of people behind. selec posted:If I had to choose the ability to pick one, a genie’s wish, I’d get rid of economic disparities without a second’s thought. That's the false dichotomy. You don't have to only pick one. And when you tell African Americans, or LGBT people or whomever that their struggle for equality should be set aside to focus on the economics you are actively doing harm. Professor Beetus posted:Economic justice is literally impossible without racial justice, because if you lift everyone up, guess who's still going to have the upper hand. Beetus says it better and more succinctly than I did. DeadlyMuffin fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jun 19, 2023 |
# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:50 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The opposite is both far more common and more politically mainstream. "We could break up that big banks, but would that fix racism? Would that fix sexism?' Kalli posted:I mean it was a pretty big discussion point in the 2016 primaries. (no video as far as I know, but widely reported and jumped on by the left). so we got 1 tweet from 2016, versus arguments being made in this thread right now Edit: Having said that, I don't find it an objectional argument. You need to do both things. You need to address racial inequality and economic inequality.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:50 |
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Professor Beetus posted:I can't think of a single mainstream political figure who has said "we'd really like to break up the banks but dang ol' racism is stopping us" is hillary rodham clinton not mainstream enough for you?
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:53 |
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That quote does feel like it could be out of context; do we have context one way or another?
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:55 |
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Economic power can be and has been taken away due to racism. Ask the African American community in Tulsa, or Jewish people who had economic power in Germany. Bigots don't just grumble and then do nothing because they don't have an economic upper hand anymore. They continue to be bigots. i don't think you know what 'economical power' means. none of those communities owned the means of productions or could rely of some police force to protect themselves.
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:55 |
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The notion that racism is in any way an invention of capitalism is a bit laughable for a species that has been believing that the people next valley over are stupid, criminal, and butt-ugly for as long as there's been people the next valley over. Modern scientific racism is if anything a product of the Enlightenment, whereupon you can't just murder someone and take their stuff just cuz, you have to have a reason. Even American chattel slavery's relation with capitalism is dubious; the planter class that drove slavery was far more interested in instituting itself as a new aristocracy than it was in business. The strongholds of capitalism (Yankee America and England) gave up on slavery much earlier. (tho I know relatively little about Caribbean plantation slavery, which i think was much more capitalist.)
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 19:57 |
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tristeham posted:i don't think you know what 'economical power' means. none of those communities owned the means of productions or could rely of some police force to protect themselves. Do you think the African American community of Tulsa owning factories would've prevented what happened to them?
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 20:01 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 02:21 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:That quote does feel like it could be out of context; do we have context one way or another? It was a stump speech arguing that Bernie Sanders only cared about economic issues and was "mistaken" that economic policy has an impact on these other issues. The idea was that Sanders was a single issue candidate and that he was wrong when he argued economic reform was necessary for those other reforms. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/13/clinton-in-nevada-not-everything-is-about-an-economic-theory/ quote:Clinton in Nevada: ‘Not everything is
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# ? Jun 19, 2023 20:03 |