On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Gernot Kohler wrote:
> With reference to the discussion on race-related issues.
> A handful of writers, including Ali Mazrui, also myself, have compared
> the structure of the world system to the structure of (pre-Mandela) South
> African apartheid (in the sense of a system) and called it "global
> apartheid". The analogy has several dimensions: a (predominantly) white
> minority is dominant in the system (military and political power), has a
> vastly higher standard of living than the multiracial majority (wealth)
> and is privileged in several other dimensions. Over much of the past 500
> years, this system was explicitly justified in racial superiority terms.
> How do others on the list react to such a concept (i.e., global apartheid)?
>
> Regards,
> -GK
>
Gernot and List:
This is certainly one way to look at the structure of the world
system. It is correct statistically. Most of the world's people of
European descent are doing well, and in good part at the expense of most
of the world's people of non-European origin. The once-called Third
World, which includes the non-European ghettoes of various Euro-American
cities, is composed largely of people of color, who now toil at
minuscule wages to make shirts for the Euros, and so forth.
However, I would argue that Global Apartheid works even better as
a descriptor of the world class structure. People of color who are
capitalists or skilled professionals or wealthy landowners or whatever do
not live cheek by jowl with peasants and workers of color. They inhabit a
quite different world, not so different from the world of Euro
capitalists, skilled professionals, and wealthy landowners. In our time
they mix comfortably with Euros, speak the same languages (literally), and
have little or no difficulty migrating to the Euro-American world and
buying a mansion next door to Bill Gates or Madonna or Paul McCartney.
Accidents of history (I will not speak of biology or culture) gave the
Euros a head start in modern times in amassing wealth and power (somewhat
as accidents of history initially made AIDS a gay plague in North
America), but I do not notice that people of color are incapable of
amassing wealth and power, exploiting their underclasses, and generally
behaving just like Euros when given half a chance.
So, to me, as an unregenerate Marxian, Global Apartheid applies
even more to the segregation of the classes than to the segregation of the
races. Either way, the house of earth is a house divided against itself,
and in the long run it will not stand.
Warren