On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Joseph Catron <[email protected]> wrote:
> > http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/06/26/i-dont-recognize-the-world-peter-frase-is-critiquing > This is wrong, wrong wrong! I find myself MUCH more in sympathy with the article in Jacobin that this piece is criticizing: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/06/stay-classy/ But where to start with this really wrong-headed piece by Fredrik deBoer? > (Posting is not necessarily agreeing. Fair enough. > Personally, I'd go a bit further than deBoer does here and say that a lot > of white middle-class leftist contempt for "rednecks," "white trash," etc. > is itself a form of racism. No, it is not. First of all where is the evidence for this alleged leftist contempt for lower-class whites? Second of all, unless you want to completely strip the concept of "racism" of all meaning, how does "contempt for lower-class whites" qualify as a "form of racism"? > Left-wing publishing, for good and bad, is defined in large measure by a > particular social and cultural group. And that group has little use for > issues of class that aren’t ancillary to issues of race and gender. Just > check the publishing records of the popular left. Find how many of them > concern, say, the destitute white underclass of the Appalachian mountains. > You won’t find many! > This is stated as fact, but where is the evidence that "left-wing publishing" (whatever that means) focuses on race and gender to the exclusion of class? From my casual observation, I'd say the opposite is true: Marxists tend to look at racism as an epiphenomenon and focus almost exclusively on class. Now granted, there is a strong historical argument that racism originated from the exploitation of slaves, but it seems pretty clear that since the late 17th century, the concept of "race" really took on a life of its own, and deserves careful study quite apart from its connection to class and exploitation. The Jacobin article that I linked to above really nails it on this. Btw, the destitute white underclass of the Appalachian mountains seem to care quite a lot more about their racial identity than their class. I'd think that this is a strong argument for putting more rather than less effort into understanding racism and its deep hold on so many sections of the white working class: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-in-10-choose-convict-over-obama-in-wva-primary/ -raghu.
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