Subject: Re: On interracial relationships, or anything
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 22:16:11 GMT
Adrian Riskin (ariskin@guinan.mps.org) wrote:
: Paco Valiente (sweetf@pcfl.net) wrote:
: : IMHO, as applied to humans, nationality exists, culture exists, genetic
: : heritage exists. Race does not.
: and
: >If race does not exist, then the dominant social reality of
: >the last 500 years -- race-based enslavement of African by
: >European, and the consequences we still see in myriad ways --
: >did not and does not exist either.
: [snip]
: If Santa Claus does not exist, then kids don't act good before Christmas to
: get presents from him.
: The fact is that there is no way to define race consistently. If you line
: up all the people in the world from darkest skin to lightest skin, you'll
: see a continuum. Where you choose to draw dividing lines is totally
: arbitrary.
Race is a social construct. Where a given society chooses to
draw the line separating races is, I agree, arbitrary in some
sense. The fact of its arbitrariness does not, however,
translate into its non-existence. It does not even translate
into lack of consistency. From where I sit, society's racial
classifications are pretty consistent, even for folks one might
think to occupy the "gray" area. Now, just because the biologists
and geneticists are not bright enough yet to duplicate the
unerring racial classifications of society at large, does not
of itself provide an argument as to its non-existence. (I stray
here into biology only because, social construct though racial
classification is, the characteristics upon which society
bases its classification judgments are clearly heritable.
: Just because a lot of vicious people believe in a concept called race
: doesn't mean that concept exists or makes any sense whatsoever. If you
: want to combat racism, the first step is denying that the idea of race
: makes any sense.
No. As always, the first step is to acknowledge Truth.
To acknowledge race is not ipso facto to endorse racism
(white supremacy).
: [snip]
: > Therefore, there will be
: >attempts to advance the argument that race does not
: >exist. After all, if race does not exist, then racial
: >discrimination and all forms of racial injustice cannot
: >exist either, and the white supremacist, racist status quo
: >may continue undisturbed.
: See, this doesn't follow. What you have is a lot of deluded racists, who
: think that race exists, and they are acting on their false belief.
No. Step out of your Euro-thought if you can. Go read
Marimba Ani's "Yurugu: An African-centered critique of
European Cultural Thought and Behavior". The so-called
Indians who welcomed the so-called Pilgrim Fathers who
landed on Plymouth Rock were under no illusions of the
racial difference that separated them from the white
immigrants that stepped off the boat, hungry and unable to
feed themselves. If they were the savages that the Christian
whites described them as being, they might have chosen, based
on race, to kill every one of the immigrants, or to let
them starve to death. Instead, they fed the immigrants,
and taught them how to grow corn. You see my point? To
acknowledge racial difference does not require one, as
a consequence, to practice racism. We all know what the
whites did when the tables were turned, and what they
did *everywhere* they went as part of imperialist expansion.
They saw racial difference, and based on racial difference,
they practiced racism (white supremacy). That that is
what the whites did does not however make it a universal
human condition, as we saw with the so-called Indians of
America in their first contact with the whites. To their
later detriment, the Africans were similarly welcoming
to the whites who went to Africa looking for gold, ivory,
and later, for people to kidnap and enslave. As long as
you keep thinking that recognition of race must lead
inexorably to racism, you exhibit the failings of
Euro-thought so well illuminated in Yurugu. Read it.
: You
: don't help lunatics come to their senses by pretending that their delusions
: have a basis in reality. The fact is that racial discrimination is wrong,
: but we don't have to accept the racist's delusional explanation for his
: wrong behavior in order to say that it's wrong. It's wrong because it's
: wrong. It doesn't matter if a racist says his actions follow from his
: concept of race or from instructions handed down to him by aliens---his
: actions speak for themselves, and they are wrong.
You conflate race with racial discrimination. They are not
one and the same, and the latter is not a necessary consequence
of the former, except perhaps by some delusion of Euro-thought.
It is the same delusion that leads some white folk to think
that if they do *not* practice racism, such ... magnanimity ... on
their part warrants some special praise or acknowledgment.
: >This is the program at work
: >I think when the same kind of white folk who stood in the
: >school-house door 35 years ago to prevent Blacks from getting
: >in, start talking about a "color-blind" society and quoting
: >Martin Luther King Jr. in an effort to defeat Affirmative
: >Action. I think it is the same program at work when
: >light-colored Puerto Ricans and Brazilians, among other
: >Latin American types, assert the primacy of "culture" and
: >the non-existence of race (especially of the Black sort).
: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. These kind of people bother me
: as much as they bother you, but just because their motives are essentially
: despicable doesn't mean that race exists. The "Black Race" doesn't exist.
: The "White Race" doesn't exist. The concepts are empty.
The concepts are real. The Middle Passage was not a figment
of the African imagination, nor of the European mind lusting
for riches, power, and control. What was wrong was not the fact
of racial difference; it was how the European reacted when
faced with that reality. It would appear deeply rooted in
European cultural thought and behavior (see Yurugu). And
it leads the European attempting to be an anti-racist to
posit the non-existence of race, rather than to confront
the behavioral well-springs of racism, qua behavior. Perhaps
it's too difficult.
: Adrian
Nobody likes confronting his own demons.
Contents | Previous | Next