This is the same mistake that George Ciccariello-Maher made in his response to Barbara and Karen Fields' piece in Jacobin about the Philando Castile killing.
The original piece by the Fields sisters: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/racecraft-barbara-karen-fields-philando-castile/ Ciccariello-Maher's response: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/philando-castile-police-brutality-fields-white-supremacy Ciccariello-Maher completely fails to understand the Fields sisters' argument. They are NOT saying Jeronimo Yanez didn't commit a racist act of violent aggression when he killed Philando Castile. They are clear that he did. Their point is that formulations like "Castile was killed because of his skin color" mystify the causal relationships involved. They shift blame from the aggressor (Yanez) and his racist action (killing Castile) onto a physical property of the victim (his skin color). Similarly, saying that the Holocaust happened because of the Jewishness of Jewish people would shift blame from the aggressor (the Nazis) and their racist action (genocidal mass murder) onto the identity of the victims (their Jewishness). The fact that the racist aggressors' ideology includes false beliefs about a victims' characteristics doesn't mean that those characteristics are the *cause* of the aggression. The aggressors' ideology and actions are the cause. Clearly, this is what Cedrick-Michael Simmons is saying. I think Louis is failing to understand Simmons' argument in exactly the same way that Ciccariello-Maher failed to understand the Fields sisters' argument. Also, as Adolph Reed pointed out on Louis' blog recently, there is something arrogant about white Marxists lecturing black Marxists about their supposed failure to understand racism. First Louis did it with Reed and Johnson, and now he's doing it with the Fields sisters and Simmons. Instead of attacking them, I suggest reading their work more carefully. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#2139): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/2139 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/77211650/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
