Re: racism, sexism

Sat, 5 Jul 1997 20:26:15 +0000
Karl Carlile (joseph@indigo.ie)

KARL: Hi Richard! Just a quick off the cuff message. Whats the
weather like in Wexford. It has been dreadful in the capital.

RICHARD: 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.

KARL: I dont think I can go along with this Richard. The rhetoric and
the action are inseparably integrated with each other.

The point is that many feminists dont have "all the correct rhetoric
of anti-sexism". This is just the problem. It is their rhetoric that
is sexist, an inseparable expression of their sexism. The point I am
making is that much of feminism is sexist both in its language and
corresponding politics. It is a sexism that has men as its immeidate
target but ultimaley women. By reinforcing divisions along gender
lines their anti-male sexism reinforces division among the working
masses along these same lines and consequently weakens the working
class on the political plane. Essentially this militates against the
interests of working class women and thereby women as a whole. In this
way separatist feminism is sexist against both men and women. It is a
reationary ideology that needs exposure.

_________________________________________ On 5 Jul 97 at 15:35,
Richard K. Moore wrote:

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