Re: ethnic divisions
In a message dated 7/29/2004 2:02:24 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Are the ethnic hostilities something that would naturally die out without being enflamed intentionally for political gains or are they inevitable? The Irish were regarded almost identically to the Blacks in the US. I gave some sources on this a few days ago, I believe. Yet, there is not a high level of anti-Irish feeling in the US. If my suspicion is correct, are there any models for people confronting those who try to whip up divisions? Comment We defeat the ideological advocates of ethnic hostility by winning turf in the social arena. We win at the dinner table and the electoral arena on the basis of the power of one . . . our individual bad ass self. And this works . . . really. As a general rule . . . I spend an inordinate amount of time making sure to NEVER discuss . . . other than in the most general sense . . . any question that deals with oppressed people any where on earth except in America. Then again . . . I have a fundamental distrust of any American Marxists who claims to have an analysis of the national factor anywhere on earth except the American Union. Anything we say about the national factor any where else on earth is going to automatically provoke the most intense disdain and contempt because we are the most imperial of all imperial peoples. Good intentions mean nothing. If you are standing at the dice table . . . rolling the dice and winning . . . with your doll on your arms looking like a million bucks . . . this is not the right time to lecture the guy who cannot get into the game. If you have any compassion in your heart you have to throw him a couple chips . . . which is proof of your imperial status . . . or set the house up (the drinks on me) . . . or be real cool and leave people alone. Ethnic tension that passes over into antagonism do so in an economic context and this is not meant in the sense of economic determinism . . . but the intractability of a historically evolved social position the oppressed occupy in relationship to the oppressing people. Some time ago I read about . . . in New York . . . the wages structure placed on the Irish worker and it was lower than that of the African American about a hundred years ago. A hundred years is not a very long time . . . really. The Slavic workers were "lower" than say the English immigrant. What is called the melting pot in America . . . from the lens of the social and economic position of the African American as a people . . . has meant a process of assimilation that produced what is called Anglo-American and not simply "white." The designation "white." . . . drives me up the wall . . . andis in itself a construct of the bourgeois ideological sphere that robs us of an understanding of the continuous formation and reconfiguration of a historically evolved people unique to America. What happens to the Irish in America . . . after a generation or two . . . is the assimilation of that which is specific to the evolving story called American history. This process of assimilation also happens to . . . not just to . . . so-calledwhite people but blacks . . . African Americans. One can be rewarded by tracing the historic immigration pattern . . . since say 1700 . . . and can chart the formation of the Anglo American people on the basis of successive waves of European immigrants. One can also trace the evolution of the African American people as a people and will discover that they evolved as a people ... Especially after roughly 1850 . . . not based on successive waves of immigration . . . but on an internal dynamic of growth that placesthemat the center of American history. It's DEEP. The point is that we are dealing with a national factor peculiar to our own history and nothing in the writings of Marx . . . Lenin . . . Stalin or even Trotsky (whose insights on the "Negro Question" was always more keen than his followers) is going to allow us to understand our own history. The historic antagonism between the Anglo American people and the African American . . . which has materially lessened since the shattering of the barrier of segregation . . . is fundamentally economic. This is a bourgeois property relations. Whose kids get to go to college . . . who becomes foreman . . . who is promoted on the job . . . what kind of house you can buy . . . what kind of neighborhood one lives in . . . whether or not one is stopped by the police and threatened with incarceration. It is not my intent to present an economic determinists picture of American society . . . but the last large "race riot" in Detroit - attacks of whites against blacks . . . was over housing and who could have access to government sponsored housing. There was no spontaneous ethnic conflict . . . but an attempt to enforce segregation and economic privilege. Left on our own so to speak .
Re: ethnic divisions
Although I am highly disappointed by the low level of discourse on Kerala/Chechnya, I do have a serious question that might deflect the discussion. Are the ethnic hostilities something that would naturally die out without being enflamed intentionally for political gains or are they inevitable? --- In the case of Russia/Chechnya, I think ethnic divisions were dying out slowly over the Soviet period for a variety of reasons (though Stalin's deportation of Chechens and other groups and the violent application of the Short Course in Western Ukraine and the Baltics increased them in those areas). In any case, they have gotten much much worse since 1991. Caucasians were depicted as happy-go-lucky Bohemians on Soviet TV. They are portrayed as gangsters, pimps and terrorists on contemporary Russian TV. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
ethnic divisions
Although I am highly disappointed by the low level of discourse on Kerala/Chechnya, I do have a serious question that might deflect the discussion. Are the ethnic hostilities something that would naturally die out without being enflamed intentionally for political gains or are they inevitable? The Irish were regarded almost identically to the Blacks in the US. I gave some sources on this a few days ago, I believe. Yet, there is not a high level of anti-Irish feeling in the US. If my suspicion is correct, are there any models for people confronting those who try to whip up divisions? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Set sail Irish; Land White Re: ethnic divisions
Michael Perelman wrote: The Irish were regarded almost identically to the Blacks in the US. I gave some sources on this a few days ago, I believe. Yet, there is not a high level of anti-Irish feeling in the US. All _european_ ethnic groups that have migrated to the u.s. have come to begin with as micks, wops, hunkies, etc., which _at the time_ were very close synonyms for nr. But as their position (economic and/or political power) increased, they ceased (except for purely ceremonial occasions) to be Irish, Italian, etc. and became generic whites. There was a large Irish migration apparently to the Boston area in the 1980s, at the same time there was also a large Haitian migration. The Irish migrants _could_ have kept their position as migrants and joined with the Haitians in a joint struggle for migrant rights. Manning Marable in a speech in Chicago a few years ago summed it up in the phrase, They got on the boat Irish, they got off whites. If my suspicion is correct, are there any models for people confronting those who try to whip up divisions? See Foner's history of labor, particularly his report on a lumbermen's strike in Louisiana (or Mississippi) around the beginning of the 20th century. When _all_ the divisions broke down, the governor called out the National Guard and crushed the strike. I believe Foner also reports on both occasions of unity and of division between white miners and black convict labor in the mines. It's been quite a while since I read it. Carrol -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
