7/04/97, Karl Carlile wrote:
>In short sexism is prevalent both among men and women.
In other words, the proof is in the pudding - sexism (or racism) is about
action more than about rhetoric. Feminists may have all the correct
rhetoric of anti-sexism, yet be an agent of sexism.
The essential truth about a racist or sexist is that they have an agenda of
discriminating for or against some group of people - the ratonalizations
for their behavior may be secondary, and may fluctuate to keep up with
currently popular notions.
Thus a racist might buy into the notion that races don't exist, yet
continue his discriminatory behavior with new rhetoric, such as "I don't
want individuals from culturally deprived communities moving in next to me
or marrying my daughter".
The rationalization is not the center of the beast - it's only a
discardable cloak. Anti-racist/sexist advocacy, it seems, needs to respond
directly to the behaviors and agendas of the perps, and the conditions of
the victims. In that sense preferential-hiring has a sound theoretical
anti-racist basis, even if individual measures may or may not be written as
good law.
7/04/97, Parthasarathy Devanathan wrote:
>Wallerstein also distinguishes between whites and non-whites;
>white refers to the advanced capitalist nations while non-white refers
>to the "proletarian nations; there is only one white race, while there
>are a number of non-whites.
With imperialism, the essential transaction is, in approximation, Euro
nations exploiting others. Race is a serendipitous characteristic that
happens, more or less, to distinguish the parties. Hence, racism has
typically been exploited in war-rousing public rhetoric ("Have you killed a
Jap today?" - WW II Newsreel about munitions plants) and as an
aggression-rouser for troops in the field ("The only good injun is a dead
injun"). Racism here is a tool of the agenda, not a cause of the agenda.
It's a convenient rationalizer, but others are available if it falters.
Hence in the anti-racist 60s climate, Vietmamese weren't racially demonized
in the US press, only communist-demonized.
---7/05/97, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: >What must be stressed in this mention of Cavalli-Sforza et al.'s book is >that these genetic lineages are not groupable into racial differences. For >example, the range in genetic variation between African blacks and >European whites is much slighter than the range of genetic variation >between African blacks and Australian blacks.
Maybe part of this debate has been terminology. ** I DON'T believe in race, if what you mean by that is an attempt to divide the whole species into a few grand ethnic categories ** And I never in a million years would have presumed Australian Aborigines were ethnically close to Africans - I'd look more to Poynesia for relatives.
I simply agree with Cavalli-Sforza that identifiable genetic lineages exist. And of course "spatiotemporal distancing" would be a more significant factor than skin tone in tracing lineages.
rkm