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xssve -> RE: Misogyny and BDSM (1/2/2010 7:35:35 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Psychonaut23
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I agree that the racial prejudices held by the majority/in-power group are more likely to be institutionalized, but to say it's more problematic and dangerous is IMO a stretch. And it's not a simple white-black issue: one of the strongest form of racial tension is between inner city blacks and Asian or Middle Eastern shop owners. There is some serious hatred there, and it has nothing to do with either white people or institutionalized prejudice - it's just two groups of people from different cultures who seriously get on each others nerves.
Without going into a whole thing about white supremacy being the root cause of inter-racial tensions, I'll just point out that neither inner city blacks and Asian or Middle Eastern shop owners is a particularly powerful or influential group, and their prejudices have almost no impact outside of their interactions. In the grand scheme of things the racial prejudices of these two groups towards each other is as relevant as the fandom prejudices Star Wars and Star Trek geeks hold against each other.
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And finally I think the whole "racism is only a problem if white people do it" is such a huge stumbling block that's being thrown in the way of the progress of race relations. On both sides. If you tell minorities that their prejudices against whites are "legitimate" and "excusable" they'll have little motivation to change, and if you tell whites that their only role in race discussions is to listen and apologize, they'll be a lot less likely to devote themselves to being the bad guy.
Prejudice is an incurable and untreatable condition of humanity. Prejudice is simply an irrational and unproductive way of organizing facts. It is stupidity, and that's all it is. There is no cure for stupid.
The idea of some form of racism separate from white supremacy is silly. Racism is white supremacy, they're the same thing. And please bear in mind that by white supremacy I do not mean neo-nazis.
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I think that unique sociological cultures have formed in the US, mostly based off of the sociological cultures of our ancestors, and I really can't see the idea of the "melting pot" working out evenly. In fact, I don't even know if that's a desirable outcome. I think we're pushing ourselves really hard to overcome our instinctive dislike/distaste for cultural differences, now that it's become taboo to expect assimilation to American-European values and behaviour, and I really don't think it's ever going to happen.
The error in your thinking is the wrong-headed assumption that in a melting pot everyone would come to embrace European-American values. The reality is that most of the growth and progress in the West in the last 50+ years has been a result of Western thinkers shedding colonialist assumptions about manifest destiny and the white man's burden and opening up to the ideas, perspectives and values of other cultures.
I think this has been a pretty insightful train of thought, I was particularly impressed by the distinction between "reverse racism" vs. racial radicalization - i.e., essentially a fairly predictable reaction formation to unjust conditions.
I think the tension between inner city Asians and Blacks is probably similar since the whole "race as caste" paradigm is fairly deeply embedded in American culture, although it is an abstraction, it's didn't exist during the colonial era: it was deliberately introduced when Black slaves and White indentured servants found common cause and began revolting against the patrician landowners (see Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the United States). It doesn't exist in Shakespeare for example, where the Moor Othello is presented no differently than if he had been German or French, or some other nationality.
In the case of inner city Blacks and Asians, while there have been and are, successful Black business owners, a high percentage of them were burned out over the years when they became too competitive with White business owners.
Blacks tended to own similar types of businesses to whites, whereas the Chinese benefited from Three basic differences: first, they were able to maintain cohesive communities, segregated from the Caucasian community for the most part.
Second, they already had a lengthy tradition of urban business planning, they were no strangers to urban capitalism, had already worked out the details and externalities, capitalization, supply chains, protection and conflict resolution, etc. and were able to preserve this culture and transfer it it more or less intact , whereas African Americans had been constantly under attack, unable to even form and maintain cohesive family structures, let alone communities and community value systems.
And Third, they tended to specialize in businesses that are less commonly found in White communities, and where they overlap, there are still significant differences - i.e., a Chinese restaurant does not compare symmetrically to a restaurant serving American fare, it's in a category all it's own for all practical purposes, and there is less competition between restaurants serving ethnic cuisine and those offering more mainstream fare, who compete more directly with each other. The Chinese specialized in things like laundries competing not with White businesses, but with domestic servants and home laundry businesses. The move into neighborhood groceries occurred during The late Seventies and Eighties, when White neighborhood groceries were being bought out and replaced by chains, or simply cannibalized for their assets in the leveraged buyout feeding frenzy, etc.
Possibly, African Americans were simply caught flat footed here, undercapitalized and unorganized, their inner city communities had not been long established - these are largely populations displaced from rural areas by mechanization, used for seasonal agricultural labor (see Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor), and discouraged from forming their own economies. Even as this was happening, the CIA, or rogue elements within it were flooding inner city Black communities with crack cocaine (see the review on the DOJ's investigations and prosecutions), which is suspected to have been part of a plot to drive down real estate values to make way for urban renewal, new development and gentrification (see Catherine Fitts at Solari).
In any case, I see it as stemming from a simple basic resentment at differences in levels of competitiveness:, capitalization, networking, etc., exacerbated by the usual cultural difference issues - resolve the former, and the latter will tend to resolve itself - money tends to be the great leveler, oddly enough, it's all green.
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