Kon Womyn said ...
In questioning DV's analysis of the past to present day, I am by no means not suggesting that the contemporary economic and political Matrix singularly operates in term of race. In some cases poverty or police brutality or imprisonment disproportionately affects Blacks and Latinos.However understand that this is not chiefly about race; pitting Black v White as Slave v Massa is no longer the functional binary of capitalism; its now a multiplexed continually shifting binary that is not always operant on racial difference. It is always operant on power; those with power versus the powerless. It is always People v The State; for example the unconstituted citizen - the illegal immigrant or the homeless as one without rights versus the State which simultaneously ensures and polices the rights of those who live above the poverty line or those who by violent history or economic migration have now naturalised citizenship and can claim health insurance as token of belonging to the State.
The system that profits from the powerlessness of the collective will do all it can to ensure the powerless remain so and if race, class, gender, sexuality or nationality are the means by which to do it, then so be it. You only have to look at how the Orwellian State continually polices and limits the civil liberties of the indivdiual to know that sheeple control is indiscriminate.
peace
13 comments:
Konwomyn,
Make babies.. please...
LOL! I will mos def do that Ill. Soon.
Well, that's basically a Marxist-Leninist analysis. The problem is that when you are dealing in global terms and in terms of averages you get to a point where economic class becomes aligned along "color". Thus you get "white" wage earners on the average consistently aligning themselves with the "white" (wealthy) ruling elite against the mass of "non-white" wage earners and disenfranchised.
You analysis leads to the age-old slogan "workers of the world unite", which ain't gonna happen, because despite all of the hardship, being categorized as "white" still has concrete economic and psychological advantages for persons categorized as such.
"However understand that this is not chiefly about race; its now a multiplexed continually shifting binary that is not always operant on racial difference. It is always operant on power; those with power versus the powerless."
after thinking about KW's post i think i see where she's coming from....
care to elaborate for a brutha..
"because despite all of the hardship, being categorized as "white" still has concrete economic and psychological advantages for persons categorized as such."
on the other hand, MF i see your point as well....
seems to me...two solid points, two different perspectives.
would it be...one sees cause...the other effect?
Fisher,
Calling for global unity across differences is any optimist's dream (Marxist or not), but it'd be foolish to be blind to the way in which White privilege operates. But also it is never a given that Whiteness is a privileged position inhabited by all White people at all times.
I do agree with you Fisher, but I'm inclined to extend your analysis. Inasmuch as it "get to a point where economic class becomes aligned along "color"", you also get to a point where economic class becomes aligned along gender - e.g in the UK in general women earn less than men and poverty affects Black and South Asian women in London more than any other group (RE: London Divided 2002). I'm not being a White-apologist nor pushing a feminist agenda but I'm acknowledging the complex and multiple ways in which power operates.
That's why one can only go some of the way with classic Marxist thinking. It's singularistic view of oppression/revolution as class-based is basically because when Karl Marx was writing; he wasn't really thinking of what life might be for a person like me, but that's why women like Gayatri Spivak were born.
And while the legacy of racial oppression may be the overarching struggle of people of color in The West; it's not always the prevailing condition. People are aligned and oppressed along different, interlocking factors; hence my reference to gender, nationality etc. Having a conversation about power and race without including any other variables is incomplete to me.
I agree with III.
KW, please add to our black vegan, spiritual, independent thinking, breastfeeding, non circumcising, non vaccinating, herb using, intellectual community.
@KW
i hear ya loud and clear!!!
tks for da insight
KW is school
KonWomyn...
"you also get to a point where economic class becomes aligned along gender - e.g in the UK in general women earn less than men..."
That's the fallacy of the feminist argument. The most basic economic unit is the family. Woman/women + man/men + child/children.
Income is earned (and spent) by the family unit as a whole. So while the female half of the family unit may receive less than the male half based on discrimination and the male half of the family unit may receive more than the female half based on discrimination, in terms of the family unit as a whole it balances out. This is why you will never get women who are married to well-to-do-men to fight for affirmative action for poor and single women. It would mean reducing the income of the male half of the unit to the detriment of the female half.
Feminism in the economic sphere is basically about rearranging the balance of power within that basic economic unit (such as husbands not being able to object wives to obtain credit, get employment without the husband's permission and the other myriad of indignities that women have to suffer, and yes, balancing the source of income).
This is why when you look at economics in terms of the basic economic unit, the family, once you average it out you see an alignment of economic class with color. And this is why women classified as "white" maintain such a vested interest in practice in being "white". This is also why the feminist movement is essentially a "white" movement. It is concerned about the power location of white women vs white and not via "non-white" or "black" men, who, on the average don't don't participate in basic economic units that can generate the type of income compared to the basic economic units the white women/white man dynamic participate in.
That's what you call "white privilege". But it really is just mistreatment (on the average) of people defined as "non-white" by those who classify themselves as "white" (and are able to make that classification stick).
Thus the global disparity between "white" and "non-white". The reason for which is then given as "genetic differences/inferiority/superiority" which confuses the victims of this whole scheme.
cool sait!
thank you
Fisher
I'll respond to the rest of this in little while but for now I'll say this:
MF: "Income is earned (and spent) by the family unit as a whole. So while the female half of the family unit may receive less than the male half based on discrimination"
This would be in a nuclear family setting but in a world where a single parent household has become commonplace this cannot be presumed to be how a family operates as an economic unit. More often than not poor single parent homes are run by women who are the chief income earners and the primary care-givers - some women have to work part-time jobs (where most of the pay discrimination operates) because for numerous reasons they cannot take up full employment. And two of those reasons relate to the high cost of childcare and another has to do with fitting one's work schedule around children.
More later,
peace
KonWomyn
dx
mch appreciate, each one teach is the way.
Stylistic MF
LOL! Sista I def need to be rainsing some young'uns of my own as soon as this school gig is over. Yea some li'l vegan warriors would be perfect for me.
one
KW
KonWomyn...
"This would be in a nuclear family setting but..."
Globally the "single parent household" is an aberration from the the basic economic unit. A car that lacks two wheels is still a car, it just can't go anywhere.
However, when you compare "single parent family" to "single parent family" on the basis of color, the same old economic disparity emerges, with "white" on top and "non-white", that is "black" on the bottom.
Moreover, most every "white" woman knows that, on the average marrying a "black" man is tantamount to economic suicide. And most every "black" woman knows that marrying a "white" man enhances her economic opportunities.
That's the reality. The first step to doing something about this abject condition is to look reality square in the eye, analyze what is going on, and then figuring out what to do about it. Distracting from this task by creating mythical "Systems of Global Back Supremacy" and various other distractions ranging from classic Marxian and Marxist-Leninist interpretations to half-baked conspiracy theories isn't helpful.
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