The way to fix racism is to stop referring to things in terms of race, but rather in terms of wealth.
Addressing racism ironically frames the problem in terms of the in-group and the out group being segregated along lines of race. A more materialist framing is with the in group and out group along the lines of wealth, as that is the dominant factor determining your quality of life.
So for example, instead of trying to make university admissions representative of population demographics, we should be pushing to accept a fixed proportion from each wealth bracket.
However, that’s not to say solidarity movements are not productive. It is of the utmost importance to join with these movements and support these movements. The most important reason is to avoid segregation along race lines. The second reason is that we often have the same goals, and a class analysis can advance their agenda and prevent it from being derailed by capitalist forces.
This is a pretty bad take, and I say that as a committed Marxist. The reality of race is in the structures of our society. Fighting directly against it requires naming it. If you did income-based admissions, you’d just get poor white supremacy and structural racism would go uncontested.
First of all, racism isn’t mandatory for us to make a living. Thus, there is no material basis for racism. And because there is no material basis for racism, we can much more easily organize collective bargaining power, to use direct democracy, to remove the structural barriers causing segregation.
Secondly, naming it had devolved into a mental shortcut that’s been exploited and perverted to advance practices that lead to more racism, or to practices that’s intensified racial discrimination.
Lastly, universities still admit based on academics. What we’re doing is changing the groups that you’re selecting the top performers from, from race to income. So for example, if you have to admit a certain number of students from each district, proportional to the population of that district, then that will vastly increase the equality of university admissions, because it normalizes for education conditions. Failing at that, you will decrease the amount of segregation in society as a whole, as more affluent families move to poorer school districts for a leg up. So, it’s win-win really.
First of all, racism isn’t mandatory for us to make a living
Yes, actually, it is. It’s built into our everyday superstructures and it permeates every aspect of life from food to housing to clothing to music to literature to education. You are swimming in racism from the day you’re born in the empire.
Thus, there is no material basis for racism.
Complete non-sequitur. There is no material basis for RACE because race is a social invention of race pseudoscience. However, RACISM, a superstructural hyperobject, absolutely permeates the material base and we see that by looking at the distribution of land, money, power, health outcomes, trauma, etc. Racism is absolutely embedded in our material base despite being born of a superstructural aspect. Lest you forget, superstructure is not epiphenomenal, but rather exists in a dialectical relationship with the material base.
And because there is no material basis for racism, we can much more easily organize collective bargaining power, to use direct democracy, to remove the structural barriers causing segregation.
Another non-sequitur. There is no evidence for your claim, you merely assert. The only successful slave rebellion happened in Haiti and required the complete subjugation of the white population. The most successful socialist revolutions were not launched and won by the proletariat but by the peasantry - in Russia, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Korea. All of these revolutions actually had to seize political power first before they could being a deliberate process of proletarianization by industrializing their economies. All of these movements understood the White Patriarchal European Settler Colonial Empire was the biggest threat to their revolutions, and history has shown us that in contexts with a white population, the minority of white settlers sided with the revolution and the majority sided with the empire.
Secondly, naming it had devolved into a mental shortcut that’s been exploited and perverted to advance practices that lead to more racism, or to practices that’s intensified racial discrimination.
This is also ridiculous. The only think you could mean by saying “leads to more racism” is that there is now reverse racism in addition to “classical” racism. This is a white supremacist position and has no merit and no basis in reality. Fighting against racism using the structures of racism is not more racism, it is explicitly anti-racism. The legal race categories that were invented by the white empire were used to bind the actions of people through law. Reversing this power is a legitimate form of resistance, so by establishing that people assigned to the Black race category must be protected by law, it constrains, in modest ways, the actions of the white empire to create more room for the oppressed to operate it. The end goal is, of course, liberation, but reversing the power of racial categories is a demonstrably effective form of resistance, harm reduction, and mechanism for organizing.
Lastly, universities still admit based on academics.
Yup. Which is why its racist that they didn’t admit people with equal academic performance based on their racial category.
What we’re doing is changing the groups that you’re selecting the top performers from, from race to income
Which means that they’ll go back to oppressing people on the basis of race.
So for example, if you have to admit a certain number of students from each district, proportional to the population of that district, then that will vastly increase the equality of university admissions, because it normalizes for education conditions
No, it won’t. Because a) no one actually requires admissions to be bound by geography and b) because the history of racialized oppression in the education system is far more complex and effective than the laws we can create to combat it. It doesn’t normalize for education conditions, it’s simply gives more freedom for people in power to oppress racialized groups.
Failing at that, you will decrease the amount of segregation in society as a whole, as more affluent families move to poorer school districts for a leg up. So, it’s win-win really.
This will literally never happen because the affluent families go to private schools, not public schools and the idea that there would be geographical quotas would be impossible to ram through in law. You’re burying the lede here, and arguing disingenuously. You are not really talking about income-based admissions but rather geography-based admissions, and that will never work, ever. So you’re arguing for income-based but predicating it on geography-based, and we all know geography-based literally can’t work and therefore you’ll end up with only income-based as a half-measure “compromise” with the white supremacists and then we’ll slide back 100 years into even worse segregation.
The way to fix racism is to stop referring to things in terms of race, but rather in terms of wealth.
I don’t think so, as long as the primary contradiction of colonialism still exists in the US. The white European settlers, even the poorest (who are considered acceptable casualties), are all still a part of the Empire, who all benefit not just from the stealing of resources from the Global South but also from this imposed racial hierarchy that exists within the Empire, as they are citizens and not subjects.
We won’t fix or solve racism unless that primary contradiction is resolved.
Colonialism is not contradictory within the US, but rather between the US (specifically US corporations and client state corporations) and other states. (As opposed to the internal fascistic capitalism within the states) As such, we can have racial equality within these corporations, but the global systemic hierarchy / international contradiction still remains.
There is data confirming that the benefit from imperialism is marginal in the working class in the US, with this data specifically being how the real average wage of production and non-supervisory employees have not increased significantly. We can see the same trends in heavily exploited countries such as Mexico, with the conclusion being that a good part of America can literally be compared to an over exploited third world country.
The contradiction inside the US is and always has been between the rich and the poor, and segregation has been just a means of preventing organization. In other words, contradictions between races have been intensified to the point where it overwrites the primary contradiction.
However, material conditions do not enforce the contradiction between races, and this is just a facade; our current method of production (the methods which we use to put food on the table) does not necessitate segregation by race. What enforces segregation and racism is the structure put in place by our bourgeois dictatorship.
Why not both?
Yes both, but not the way the liberals do it. You can’t solve racism by policing microaggressions or letting more black people into Harvard. You do it by organizing around a mass line, with goals to removing the segregational rules and policies that not necessarily affects only race, but also wealth.
The same method used to invoke qualitative change can be used.
If we ended capitalism right now, white supremacy would still exist. The contradiction of settlers living on stolen land would still exist, hence why colonialism is the primary contradiction. It’s why the US must cease to exist as it is in order to solve that contradiction. Land must be returned to the Natives and colonized people that built the empire.
Whiteness as an ideology must be dismantled. Consumption, domination, hyperindividualism, etc are all tenets of whiteness and subsequently capitalism. You can’t tackle one without the other.
Whiteness as an ideology must be dismantled. Consumption, domination, hyperindividualism, etc are all tenets of whiteness and subsequently capitalism.
I’m with you in some of what you’re saying but this is an extraordinarily poor and non Marxist idea. Where did you hear this? Capitalism is the result of “whiteness”? You surely must have misspoke?
I didn’t say that capitalism is the result of whiteness, just that they’re inexorably linked together. Colonialism is what ties the labor aristocracy and racial hierarchy together. The “culture” of the United States includes consumption, etc, all the things I mentioned but those ideals are solely colonial ones.
didn’t say that capitalism is the result of whiteness, just that they’re inexorably linked together.
This is either the same thing or even worse. This entire thread is bizarre and for me just demonstrates how insular and far removed from humanity American culture has become.
Exactly what it is about a lack of melanin causes people to decide to exploit others and appropriate their surplus value is a theory I can’t wait to hear. Perhaps hypervitaminosis D is the fundamental process causing a kind of atavistic savagery and sociopathy? This is the best hypothesis I can manage with all generosity and it’s wacky as fuck. Please explain yours.
If you believe that capitalism is an inevitable stage then it can emerge anywhere the conditions allow for it. If capitalism had emerged in Africa you’d be telling me that capitlism and blackness are inexorably linked together.
Lack of melanin is not the same as whiteness. Whiteness is not biological. It is socially constructed. Once upon a time Itialians and Irish were not considered white. What was considered white among “hispanic” peoples is quite inconsistant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans Recently liberals have been happily calling Russians “orcs” even though they are also fair skinned.
Whiteness is a super-structural phenomenon to contrast people that are “colored”. The differentiation gives preferential treatment to “white” people over “colored” people. To eliminate whiteness is to eliminate white supremecy. You can have cultural ties to English, Irish, German, or American culture without being “white”.
During the start of European colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the mythology of white supremacy and the burden for white people to “civilize” these people is the justification for colonization. White supremecy was created to justify colonization, genocide, and slavery. All of these allowed colonizing nations to believe that they are justified to exploit the non white peoples for wealth. These attitudes carried over into capitalism and also used to exploit people of color for greater profits. The white proletariat were exploited but not to the extent of the colored proletariat.
It is up to radicals to push back against the inertia of history. If we don’t work to destroy whiteness, white supremacy will continue. We have to acknowledge the wealth stolen for generations, psychological harm inflicted for generations, and if one is understood as white, distance themselves from their whiteness. Destroying whiteness destroys coloredness. Only then can people just be people.
Lack of melanin is not the same as whiteness. Whiteness is not biological. It is socially constructed.
According to who? Anyway, we were talking about racism and skin colour. Something people experience solely on the basis of their appearance. You’re moving the goalposts here. Telling American police that it’s okay, you support the empire and are actually white won’t change their behaviour.
First of all, the means of production, (and through which we can sustain the population density in the states) is industry. Without industry, farms will not be able to generate enough yield to sustain our population density.
Secondly, suppose that a revolution happens, and the American experiment is ended. Will the workers and the people who have revolted, agree to give the means of production to the aboriginals, essentially placing them as a new ruling class? It would be against working class interests.
Thirdly, human society will organize themselves in response to material conditions. In the case of the capture or gifting of the industrial mode of production to the aboriginals, the previously equitable aboriginals will reorganize themselves to for a new capitalist class.
A more equitable solution is to have aboriginals take part in the revolution and subsequently collectively own the land and means of production alongside the working class.
Racial and other hierarchies are developed in response to not just capitalism, but rather property, the defence of property, and the conquest of properties. As it is, whiteness is just another word for the capitalist class, as representative for the ruling hierarchical class. For example, Obama is white.
So, to get rid of whiteness, you must change/reorganize our current mode of production. (A la Lenin) But to have enough bargaining power to do that, you must organize across all the intersections.
And how do we do that? By focusing on our common interests, organizing around our common interests, and fighting for our common interests. How do we not do that? By focusing on our differences and hiding the capitalist contradiction through arguing about the contradiction between intersections.
National liberation comes first, if you think you can ignore Native people and the descendants of slaves brought here against their will you’re going to have an extremely bad time trying to build a cohesive revolution in the US.
The way to fix racism is to stop referring to things in terms of race, but rather in terms of wealth.
Addressing racism ironically frames the problem in terms of the in-group and the out group being segregated along lines of race. A more materialist framing is with the in group and out group along the lines of wealth, as that is the dominant factor determining your quality of life.
So for example, instead of trying to make university admissions representative of population demographics, we should be pushing to accept a fixed proportion from each wealth bracket.
However, that’s not to say solidarity movements are not productive. It is of the utmost importance to join with these movements and support these movements. The most important reason is to avoid segregation along race lines. The second reason is that we often have the same goals, and a class analysis can advance their agenda and prevent it from being derailed by capitalist forces.
This is a pretty bad take, and I say that as a committed Marxist. The reality of race is in the structures of our society. Fighting directly against it requires naming it. If you did income-based admissions, you’d just get poor white supremacy and structural racism would go uncontested.
This, basically
First of all, racism isn’t mandatory for us to make a living. Thus, there is no material basis for racism. And because there is no material basis for racism, we can much more easily organize collective bargaining power, to use direct democracy, to remove the structural barriers causing segregation.
Secondly, naming it had devolved into a mental shortcut that’s been exploited and perverted to advance practices that lead to more racism, or to practices that’s intensified racial discrimination.
Lastly, universities still admit based on academics. What we’re doing is changing the groups that you’re selecting the top performers from, from race to income. So for example, if you have to admit a certain number of students from each district, proportional to the population of that district, then that will vastly increase the equality of university admissions, because it normalizes for education conditions. Failing at that, you will decrease the amount of segregation in society as a whole, as more affluent families move to poorer school districts for a leg up. So, it’s win-win really.
Buddy no
Like…what???
Like, currently. Historically, there was. But not today.
don’t stop now, you’re on a roll
Yes, actually, it is. It’s built into our everyday superstructures and it permeates every aspect of life from food to housing to clothing to music to literature to education. You are swimming in racism from the day you’re born in the empire.
Complete non-sequitur. There is no material basis for RACE because race is a social invention of race pseudoscience. However, RACISM, a superstructural hyperobject, absolutely permeates the material base and we see that by looking at the distribution of land, money, power, health outcomes, trauma, etc. Racism is absolutely embedded in our material base despite being born of a superstructural aspect. Lest you forget, superstructure is not epiphenomenal, but rather exists in a dialectical relationship with the material base.
Another non-sequitur. There is no evidence for your claim, you merely assert. The only successful slave rebellion happened in Haiti and required the complete subjugation of the white population. The most successful socialist revolutions were not launched and won by the proletariat but by the peasantry - in Russia, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Korea. All of these revolutions actually had to seize political power first before they could being a deliberate process of proletarianization by industrializing their economies. All of these movements understood the White Patriarchal European Settler Colonial Empire was the biggest threat to their revolutions, and history has shown us that in contexts with a white population, the minority of white settlers sided with the revolution and the majority sided with the empire.
This is also ridiculous. The only think you could mean by saying “leads to more racism” is that there is now reverse racism in addition to “classical” racism. This is a white supremacist position and has no merit and no basis in reality. Fighting against racism using the structures of racism is not more racism, it is explicitly anti-racism. The legal race categories that were invented by the white empire were used to bind the actions of people through law. Reversing this power is a legitimate form of resistance, so by establishing that people assigned to the Black race category must be protected by law, it constrains, in modest ways, the actions of the white empire to create more room for the oppressed to operate it. The end goal is, of course, liberation, but reversing the power of racial categories is a demonstrably effective form of resistance, harm reduction, and mechanism for organizing.
Yup. Which is why its racist that they didn’t admit people with equal academic performance based on their racial category.
Which means that they’ll go back to oppressing people on the basis of race.
No, it won’t. Because a) no one actually requires admissions to be bound by geography and b) because the history of racialized oppression in the education system is far more complex and effective than the laws we can create to combat it. It doesn’t normalize for education conditions, it’s simply gives more freedom for people in power to oppress racialized groups.
This will literally never happen because the affluent families go to private schools, not public schools and the idea that there would be geographical quotas would be impossible to ram through in law. You’re burying the lede here, and arguing disingenuously. You are not really talking about income-based admissions but rather geography-based admissions, and that will never work, ever. So you’re arguing for income-based but predicating it on geography-based, and we all know geography-based literally can’t work and therefore you’ll end up with only income-based as a half-measure “compromise” with the white supremacists and then we’ll slide back 100 years into even worse segregation.
This is pretty class reductionist
Depends on if you agree with how liberals “fix” racism.
The choice is not between liberalism and your poorly thought out take. You can (very clearly) be wrong right alongside the libs
I don’t think so, as long as the primary contradiction of colonialism still exists in the US. The white European settlers, even the poorest (who are considered acceptable casualties), are all still a part of the Empire, who all benefit not just from the stealing of resources from the Global South but also from this imposed racial hierarchy that exists within the Empire, as they are citizens and not subjects.
We won’t fix or solve racism unless that primary contradiction is resolved.
tl;dr Why not both?
Colonialism is not contradictory within the US, but rather between the US (specifically US corporations and client state corporations) and other states. (As opposed to the internal fascistic capitalism within the states) As such, we can have racial equality within these corporations, but the global systemic hierarchy / international contradiction still remains.
There is data confirming that the benefit from imperialism is marginal in the working class in the US, with this data specifically being how the real average wage of production and non-supervisory employees have not increased significantly. We can see the same trends in heavily exploited countries such as Mexico, with the conclusion being that a good part of America can literally be compared to an over exploited third world country.
The contradiction inside the US is and always has been between the rich and the poor, and segregation has been just a means of preventing organization. In other words, contradictions between races have been intensified to the point where it overwrites the primary contradiction.
However, material conditions do not enforce the contradiction between races, and this is just a facade; our current method of production (the methods which we use to put food on the table) does not necessitate segregation by race. What enforces segregation and racism is the structure put in place by our bourgeois dictatorship.
Yes both, but not the way the liberals do it. You can’t solve racism by policing microaggressions or letting more black people into Harvard. You do it by organizing around a mass line, with goals to removing the segregational rules and policies that not necessarily affects only race, but also wealth.
The same method used to invoke qualitative change can be used.
If we ended capitalism right now, white supremacy would still exist. The contradiction of settlers living on stolen land would still exist, hence why colonialism is the primary contradiction. It’s why the US must cease to exist as it is in order to solve that contradiction. Land must be returned to the Natives and colonized people that built the empire.
Whiteness as an ideology must be dismantled. Consumption, domination, hyperindividualism, etc are all tenets of whiteness and subsequently capitalism. You can’t tackle one without the other.
I’m with you in some of what you’re saying but this is an extraordinarily poor and non Marxist idea. Where did you hear this? Capitalism is the result of “whiteness”? You surely must have misspoke?
I didn’t say that capitalism is the result of whiteness, just that they’re inexorably linked together. Colonialism is what ties the labor aristocracy and racial hierarchy together. The “culture” of the United States includes consumption, etc, all the things I mentioned but those ideals are solely colonial ones.
This is either the same thing or even worse. This entire thread is bizarre and for me just demonstrates how insular and far removed from humanity American culture has become.
Exactly what it is about a lack of melanin causes people to decide to exploit others and appropriate their surplus value is a theory I can’t wait to hear. Perhaps hypervitaminosis D is the fundamental process causing a kind of atavistic savagery and sociopathy? This is the best hypothesis I can manage with all generosity and it’s wacky as fuck. Please explain yours.
If you believe that capitalism is an inevitable stage then it can emerge anywhere the conditions allow for it. If capitalism had emerged in Africa you’d be telling me that capitlism and blackness are inexorably linked together.
Lack of melanin is not the same as whiteness. Whiteness is not biological. It is socially constructed. Once upon a time Itialians and Irish were not considered white. What was considered white among “hispanic” peoples is quite inconsistant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans Recently liberals have been happily calling Russians “orcs” even though they are also fair skinned.
Whiteness is a super-structural phenomenon to contrast people that are “colored”. The differentiation gives preferential treatment to “white” people over “colored” people. To eliminate whiteness is to eliminate white supremecy. You can have cultural ties to English, Irish, German, or American culture without being “white”.
During the start of European colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the mythology of white supremacy and the burden for white people to “civilize” these people is the justification for colonization. White supremecy was created to justify colonization, genocide, and slavery. All of these allowed colonizing nations to believe that they are justified to exploit the non white peoples for wealth. These attitudes carried over into capitalism and also used to exploit people of color for greater profits. The white proletariat were exploited but not to the extent of the colored proletariat.
It is up to radicals to push back against the inertia of history. If we don’t work to destroy whiteness, white supremacy will continue. We have to acknowledge the wealth stolen for generations, psychological harm inflicted for generations, and if one is understood as white, distance themselves from their whiteness. Destroying whiteness destroys coloredness. Only then can people just be people.
According to who? Anyway, we were talking about racism and skin colour. Something people experience solely on the basis of their appearance. You’re moving the goalposts here. Telling American police that it’s okay, you support the empire and are actually white won’t change their behaviour.
We’re taking about different things here.
That’s fairly idealist of you to claim that.
Why is it idealist? Three reasons:
First of all, the means of production, (and through which we can sustain the population density in the states) is industry. Without industry, farms will not be able to generate enough yield to sustain our population density.
Secondly, suppose that a revolution happens, and the American experiment is ended. Will the workers and the people who have revolted, agree to give the means of production to the aboriginals, essentially placing them as a new ruling class? It would be against working class interests.
Thirdly, human society will organize themselves in response to material conditions. In the case of the capture or gifting of the industrial mode of production to the aboriginals, the previously equitable aboriginals will reorganize themselves to for a new capitalist class.
A more equitable solution is to have aboriginals take part in the revolution and subsequently collectively own the land and means of production alongside the working class.
Racial and other hierarchies are developed in response to not just capitalism, but rather property, the defence of property, and the conquest of properties. As it is, whiteness is just another word for the capitalist class, as representative for the ruling hierarchical class. For example, Obama is white.
So, to get rid of whiteness, you must change/reorganize our current mode of production. (A la Lenin) But to have enough bargaining power to do that, you must organize across all the intersections.
And how do we do that? By focusing on our common interests, organizing around our common interests, and fighting for our common interests. How do we not do that? By focusing on our differences and hiding the capitalist contradiction through arguing about the contradiction between intersections.
National liberation comes first, if you think you can ignore Native people and the descendants of slaves brought here against their will you’re going to have an extremely bad time trying to build a cohesive revolution in the US.
hear hear
No, I don’t think I will.