Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[frogwoman]

When i was at school my ex gf's mate got beaten up by black kids for being mixed race, how does that fit on the wheel of oppression? or should we not waste our time looking at this stupid wheel and start looking at the causes of racism, the conditions within society that allow racist people to get away with it, the conditions that brutalise people into having a lack of empathy and blaming others for their problems, thinking they are the only person that matters etc.

 

[frogwoman]

I did used to be an immigrant, and got told by some Fight Racism Fight Imperialism gobshite that the English revolution depended on leadership from oppressed Irish immigrants like me.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

They can if they're travellers or gypsies or if they're from Eastern Europe. In certain countries and I think some parts of the US they can if they're jews. Although not this one really I think I'm OK as far as that spoke of the wheel of oppression goes.

Yes, but those groups are being discriminated against because of their ethnicity, not because of their whiteness!

And of course a white person can be denied a job if they're white, I'm thinking of cases Ive heard of where a white person has applied to a job at an Asian owned firm and been turned down for it despite having the necessary qualifications.

Yes, such things happen, but they don't happen in a systemic way. This sort of thing is an example of some people being dicks on the basis of racial prejudice, but it's not something that a white person is going to have happen to them on a regular basis, or which forms one part of a whole range of shit they are going to get for being white over their lifetimes.

I really do think that it's missing the woods for the trees not to see that there's an important difference between racial prejudice and racial prejudice reflecting social power and systemic racism. A socialist analysis of racial oppression shouldn't be reduced to the truism that anyone can be a dick to anyone else.

 

[frogwoman]

Yes, but those groups are being discriminated against because of their ethnicity, not because of their whiteness!



Yes, such things happen, but they don't happen in a systemic way. This sort of thing is an example of some people being dicks on the basis of racial prejudice, but it's not something that a white person is going to have happen to them on a regular basis, or which forms one part of a whole range of shit they are going to get for being white over their lifetimes.

I really do think that it's missing the woods for the trees not to see that there's an important difference between racial prejudice and racial prejudice reflecting social power and systemic racism. A socialist analysis of racial oppression shouldn't be reduced to the truism that anyone can be a dick to anyone else.

I agree m8, i don't think anyone is doing that though.

 

[butchersapron]

e less likely to get expenses that someone who really needs it

This is how interns an scholarships work. The rich get sieved in. Well done red pepper, well done.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Well explain the difference please as applied to Western Europe where we are.

I was distinguishing between prejudice within or pushed by particular institutions (like the cops, or the welfare, or whatever) and prejudice which is both pushed by particular institutions and a general factor in society. Irish travellers are an interesting example to use, because despite their rather extreme paleness, it's quite easy to see how they face a truly remarkable mix of personal, institutional and social prejudice. It's individual being prejudiced dicks, but it's not just that. It's the cops treating them like shit, but it's not just that.

 

[sihhi]

I really do think that it's missing the woods for the trees not to see that there's an important difference between racial prejudice and racial prejudice reflecting social power and systemic racism. A socialist analysis of racial oppression shouldn't be reduced to the truism that anyone can be a dick to anyone else.

No that truism is kind of what the intersectionality approach does.
It states that if people simply focus on checking their privileges like sexism and aggressiveness and racism, they can by being called out regularly, thinking more instead of speaking or shouting as part of the progressive stack purge themselves of aspects of their in-built 'dick' or violent tendencies and reduce manifestations of 'dick' behaviour.

 

[J Ed]

They can if they're travellers or gypsies or if they're from Eastern Europe. In certain countries and I think some parts of the US they can if they're jews. Although not this one really I think I'm OK as far as that spoke of the wheel of oppression goes.

I've met a few people who think it's okay to be xenophobic about Eastern Europeans who would never dream of being racist, in fact UKIP's electoral strategy seems to be appealing to these people

 

[frogwoman]

Nigel Irritable Yeah what I'm saying is all those groups are pretty powerless in society so the whole idea of a "white skin privilege" (espeically when it's coming from a mouth of a privileged person who has had the time etc to sit around navel gazing about their identity, and is probably white themselves) is simplistic at best.

I also dont like the idea that if you aren't part of the oppressed group you benefit from the oppression, nobody benefits from oppression. I am in a straight relationship now but I was in gay relationships in the past and had to deal with a lot of homophobia when I was at school, now that Im in a straight relationship do i benefit from homophobia in any way whatsoever? no of course i don't, it's taken me years to get over. what about someone who divorces their husband and meets a woman, have they been benefiting from homophobia all their lives and once they meet a woman they turn into someone whos oppressed rather than an oppressor? It doesnt benefit anyone, it stops you looking at the structure of capitalist society that encourages these things to occur and turns it onto the individual.

when someone changes sex and becomes a man does it mean they automatically become an oppressor, and if someone transitions to a woman does it mean they were benefitting from sexism before but now they're a woman they dont benefit from it any more? it's total nonsense, and its also got nothing to do with real life.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

No that truism is kind of what the intersectionality approach does.
It states that if people simply focus on checking their privileges like sexism and aggressiveness and racism, they can by being called out regularly, thinking more instead of speaking or shouting as part of the progressive stack purge themselves of aspects of their in-built 'dick' or violent tendencies and reduce manifestations of 'dick' behaviour.

The privilege / intersectional approach does fall right back into that trap, as you note. But it's not the only route. "Colour blind" anti-racism is also an essentially liberal approach, just coming from a different part of liberalism. By removing the systemic elements, it reduces racism to just being a dick to others because of their race.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Nigel Irritable Yeah what I'm saying is all those groups are pretty powerless in society so the whole idea of a "white skin privilege" (espeically when it's coming from a mouth of a privileged person who has had the time etc to sit around navel gazing about their identity, and is probably white themselves) is simplistic at best.

I fully agree with this. "White skin privilege" was an interesting, but ultimately wrong, attempt to explain the centrality of race to American capitalism, taking slavery as a historical starting point. "Privilege" as a general explanation of all oppression everywhere is even more wrong and doesn't even have the merit of being interesting.

 

[sihhi]

I was distinguishing between prejudice within or pushed by particular institutions (like the cops, or the welfare, or whatever) and prejudice which is both pushed by particular institutions and a general factor in society. Irish travellers are an interesting example to use, because despite their rather extreme paleness, it's quite easy to see how they face a truly remarkable mix of personal, institutional and social prejudice. It's individual being prejudiced dicks, but it's not just that. It's the cops treating them like shit, but it's not just that.

Irish travellers do face severe levels of prejudice.

But where do "general factors of society" come from if not from being pushed by capitalist institutions: police (look out for Muslim terrorists alone not multi-million RAF aircraft), media (black criminals receive heavier coverage than white criminals), government (all landlords to be responsible on threat of fines for ensuring tenants are not illegals), local government (households with sharing migrants don't count as single households, unlike settled families, EU migrants pay more council tax), customs officials (flights from Morocco receive more attention than those from Canada)

It's not 'all white people' or 'white people' producing this, its institutions explicitly making it the way it is because of capitalist demands/protocol (violence that protects the credibility of state military alliance is not bad, advertising and sensationalist pressures on/from the capitalist press, immigration while extensive must still be mediated by the state, the local state will screw who it can after the neoliberal transformation, tax/customs evasion by the poor is always a serious crime poorer countries will have people trying to do it more than others)

 

[sihhi]

"Colour blind" anti-racism is also an essentially liberal approach, just coming from a different part of liberalism. By removing the systemic elements, it reduces racism to just being a dick to others because of their race.

Doesn't colour-blind racism - via liberalism or socialism - try to make systemic elements colour-blind ie non-racist?

This is your sepcialism, no? How on earth did the early Soviet state try to overcome oppression against the central Asians, except by trying to institute a rigid proletarian colour-blindness, zero tolerance of anti-semitism, and education about the racism the British used against the Egyptians and why it mustn't be allowed to spread in the Soviet Union?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

But where do "general factors of society" come from if not from being pushed by capitalist institutions:

I think it's more complex than that. Or at least, it depends on how broadly we are using the term "capitalist institutions" here. The state, in its many and various forms, does certainly produce and reproduce social prejudice against travellers, as does the media.

But there is also a real phenomenon of prejudice emanating "from below" in a semi-spontaneous way. Spontaneous in the sense that it hasn't been directly and immediately whipped up on every occasion by the state or by the media, but not of course spontaneous in any sense that means divorced from social conditions created ultimately by capital. Essentially, travellers come into (deeply unequal) conflict with settled communities over resources, property prices, dumping (an issue which is created in large part by the local state's failure to provide services), etc. The local state is in turn constrained from providing services, even to the limited extent that it is obliged to, because a significant proportion of settled locals will be enraged.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

This is your sepcialism, no?

Jesus, no.

Good question on the early Soviet state. I'm not sure that "I don't see colour" style liberal anti-racism is going to have much in common with its approach though. The very idea that there was a particular question of prejudice against Central Asians to address in the first place is alien to that sort of "colour-blind" liberalism.

 

[sihhi]

But there is also a real phenomenon of prejudice emanating "from below" in a semi-spontaneous way. Spontaneous in the sense that it hasn't been directly and immediately whipped up on every occasion by the state or by the media, but not of course spontaneous in any sense that means divorced from social conditions created ultimately by capital. Essentially, travellers come into (deeply unequal) conflict with settled communities over resources, property prices, dumping (an issue which is created in large part by the local state's failure to provide services), etc.

I see, but if those "settled communities" that do the racism (which we can agree they do) were the product of a not-capitalist society say a large fairly 'communalised' but hierarchical settled dayak village - the racism would not be the same.
It is the concerns about property prices and protecting assets - like a non-dumped environment - which motivates a lot of this stuff. The householders know that if they were to demand better services it would mean more council tax or whatever the Irish equivalent is(rates?) - easier to concentrate their attack on anyone who is disposed to recycling and dumping like the travellers - get quicker, easier results.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I see, but if those "settled communities" that do the racism (which we can agree they do) were the product of a not-capitalist society say a large fairly 'communalised' but hierarchical settled dayak village - the racism would not be the same.

Yes.

It is the concerns about property prices and protecting assets - like a non-dumped environment - which motivates a lot of this stuff. The householders know that if they were to demand better services it would mean more council tax or whatever the Irish equivalent is(rates?) - easier to concentrate their attack on anyone who is disposed to recycling and dumping like the travellers - get quicker, easier results.

It's concerns about property prices and assets, but it also goes beyond that. Racism against travellers has a life far beyond that sort of immediate economic calculation. It also involves fear of crime, a sort of background assumption that they are atavistic savages and all kinds of other stuff.

Because racism against travellers is so extreme, and they really do live very segregated lives, neither living alongside nor often being employed alongside settled people, it can be easier to see issues that can be glossed over with other forms of racism. It should be said though, that because it's quite an extreme example, using it as a template might be as misleading as importing unmodified American assumptions about race and racism.

 

[Tom A]

Some people don't though. That much is true. I've seen some very unpleasant stuff just about letting someone change which toilets they use at work. But it doesn't happen all the time, it hardly happens at all. So you're aware of it and do what any decent person would do which is to say lay off with that shit. You don't build an entire political agenda from it.

I have a transwoman friend (who only came out as trans two years ago) whom has had a lot of shite hurled her way for using the ladies' toilets. It happens too often, and it's very unpleasant.

 

[sihhi]

Jesus, no.

Good question on the early Soviet state. I'm not sure that "I don't see colour" style liberal anti-racism is going to have much in common with its approach though. The very idea that there was a particular question of prejudice against Central Asians to address in the first place is alien to that sort of "colour-blind" liberalism.

Can colour-blind anti-racism not be socialist? I thought liberal colour-blind anti-racism was a bastardisation of Soviet or communist anti-racism.

'Communist' colour-blind anti-racism would have been the ANC-SACP doing what it promised nationalising everything then socialising (by some sort of popular mechanism) so that there would be no more boer white private schools or elite universities. Everything would be equalised to a point where blacks, whites and Indians alll had access - by proper post-revolution colour-blind equal comprehensive education - to all jobs and skills. Cuba is the closest but it's still not very close, I suppose.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Can colour-blind anti-racism not be socialist? I thought liberal colour-blind anti-racism was a bastardisation of Soviet or communist anti-racism.

I think that perhaps we are talking at cross purposes about "colour blind anti-racism". There's a difference between a "colour blind" analysis, one which for instance refuses to accept that black people are oppressed in a way that white people are not, and proposed solutions which may or may not be considered "colour blind" but actually rest on an understanding that some people suffer systemic prejudice.

I'm calling "I don't see colour" claims to anti-racism liberal. I'm certainly not saying that solutions which aim to abolish racial distinctions rather than perpetuate them but in allegedly non-oppressive form are inherently liberal.

 

[Tom A]

In this context "systemic" involves more than simply "institutional" racism. And no, white people don't suffer systemic racism. At least not in Western Europe or North America, and not including groups like Irish Travellers for these purposes.

What about Eastern Europeans? I'm thinking about the Daily Mail's paranoia of Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians conspiring to take our jobs...

 

[Nigel Irritable]

What about Eastern Europeans? I'm thinking about the Daily Mail's paranoia of Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians conspiring to take our jobs...

They face prejudice for being immigrants, not because they are white.

 

[Tom A]

They face prejudice for being immigrants, not because they are white.

But isn't their immigrant status an axis of oppression in itself? Also isn't race more than just skin colour?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

But isn't their immigrant status an axis of oppression in itself? Also isn't race more than just skin colour?

Yes and yes.

 

[sihhi]

It's concerns about property prices and assets, but it also goes beyond that. Racism against travellers has a life far beyond that sort of immediate economic calculation. It also involves fear of crime, a sort of background assumption that they are atavistic savages and all kinds of other stuff.

Because racism against travellers is so extreme, and they really do live very segregated lives, neither living alongside nor often being employed alongside settled people, it can be easier to see issues that can be glossed over with other forms of racism. It should be said though, that because it's quite an extreme example, using it as a template might be as misleading as importing unmodified American assumptions about race and racism.

It's a very deep enduring problem. But the idea of their being atavistic savages almost comes from structural contour of society - the fact that there is such extreme segregation (ie travellers keeping away from settled people and vice versa).

The struggle against formal segregation in the US South allowed people to come into contact with one another to integrate to blow away those preconceptions. Similarly with the fruits of integration in disability after the 1970s also had some impact by the time a generation of people left school in the mid-1980s. But perhaps it was only surface deep ?

On the intersectionality front. I wonder how much of the white racial intersectionalists/half of the people pushing this stuff is down to their experience of nearly all-white middle-class towns and grammar/private schools (where immigrants are rarer than most urban areas at least in Britain). They want to assume integration is impossible without their revolutionist rhetoric, their assumption being that all white people are psychologically racist (hence "should shut the hell up" in order not to "be a shitty human being") and do racism every waking minute because their white middle-class perspective has seen large dollops of middle-class hypocritical racism (eg Buy a fancy minority cooking books, but limit the pay to your immigrant babysitters. A Slovak immigrant who never revealed the name of the middle-class actor because she didn't want trouble, did reveal just before she left back to her country that this actor a. wasn't a very good employer (she was cleaner, food preparer and child-minder) b. also sent the only child to a private school in north London.)

 

[JimW]

...

Good question on the early Soviet state. I'm not sure that "I don't see colour" style liberal anti-racism is going to have much in common with its approach though. The very idea that there was a particular question of prejudice against Central Asians to address in the first place is alien to that sort of "colour-blind" liberalism.

Some really interesting stuff on how the Chinese revolutionary state attempted to address the issue of "national minorities" - on paper it was a progressive awareness that with a massive Han preponderance (90%+ of population) special measures were required, which came with the autonomous regions and guarantees on language and cultural rights, but these ended up meaning little in practice and today there's popular resentment of affirmative action measures such as special dispensations for lower university entrance test scores for minorities or a perceived unwillingness of the police to target eg. Uighur pickpocket gangs that seem to mirror the failings of top-down multiculturalism in the West.

 

[xslavearcx]

The role demands an articulate and enthusiastic individual who is self-motivated and passionate about communications and Liberation.

passionate about communications and liberation ... hilarious

 

[seventh bullet]

Some really interesting stuff on how the Chinese revolutionary state attempted to address the issue of "national minorities" - on paper it was a progressive awareness that with a massive Han preponderance (90%+ of population) special measures were required, which came with the autonomous regions and guarantees on language and cultural rights, but these ended up meaning little in practice and today there's popular resentment of affirmative action measures such as special dispensations for lower university entrance test scores for minorities or a perceived unwillingness of the police to target eg. Uighur pickpocket gangs that seem to mirror the failings of top-down multiculturalism in the West.

By following the 'Soviet model,' it was a modification of 1930s Stalinist nationalities policy in the USSR? But also using similar methods of the 1920s, like indigenisation or korenizatsiya to staff regional government and other state institutions with minorities? Affirmative action was eventually stopped by the Stalinist government.

 

[sihhi]

Speaking of Clowns, here's an article on Jacobin http://jacobinmag.com/2012/02/race-war-or-murdering-your-parents-a-left-debate/ with extra tweets by Malcolm "big shoes, bulbous red nose" Harris. Link taken from this, interesting, article http://mattbruenig.com/2012/05/10/purity-leftism/

Want some more? OK Then. http://thenewinquiry.com/features/obituary-borders-books-and-music/ The New Inq-wirry. Here's Nathan Barley himself. Check this out for bollocks.

He really hates schools - even the concept of schools.

Retweet of a teenager supporting the Boston bombing suspect:

Supporting Jahar ‏@Justice4Jahaar

6 sa​

why does school even exist why does society hate us
Malcolm Harris tarafından retweetlendi

He looks forward to more technology as a new front in the war of schoolchildren examining problems honestly:

Malcolm Harris ‏@BigMeanInternet

14 Mayıs​

Once we have a programmable world though, I look forward to innovations in kids cheating on tests.

Fragment of ironic? misogyny noted:

1. 

   ​
   Malcolm Harris ‏@BigMeanInternet
   
   17 sa​
   @minkahunter Bitches love Kathy Acker

 

[butchersapron]

sihhi, i'm banning you from the internet for a period not exceeding 48 hours.