On "White skin privilege", ruling class ideology and careerism
January, 2016
By David Moros
The ruling class perpetuates privilege politics to hide class politics, confusing the working class as to where the real power lies in the U.S. today.
The ruling class, their media and propagandists, are glad to propagate the "white supremacy", "white privilege" lie because it helps their cause by confusing and dividing the working class along racial lines. If the working class are fighting amongst themselves, so much the better for the ruling class. For the ruling class, racial conflict is absolutely preferable to class conflict. However, biology (genetics), anthropology, empirical science has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that "race", at least in the case of homo sapiens sapiens, does not exist.
"Thus, given current scientific data, biological races do not exist among modern humans today, and they have never existed in the past. Given such clear scientific evidence as this and the research data of so many other biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists that demonstrate the nonexistence of biological races among humans, how can the "myth" of human races still persist?"
see: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea - By Robert Wald Sussman
excerrt @ http://www.newsweek.com/there-no-such-thing-race-283123
The theory of "white skin privilege" that progressives constantly use as a tool or concept to analyse contemporary United States society gives the impression that the white proletariat has the power to force the capitalist to give them a job, as opposed to black, brown or immigrant workers who can't. Actually though, these social powers reside exclusively with the capitalist.
Capitalists and their hangers on (regardless of skin color) are those who're privileged. Privilege, under capitalist social relations, is the result of private property and specific social relations of production. Thus, today, those who control the means of social production and reproduction make such decisions as hiring and firing, wage rates, when social production takes place, what's produced, how the social production process is organised and how the products of the social labor process are distributed as commodities.
White skin privilege is invoked by Democratic Party "progressives" as a "system" without describing its structural/institutional features. Privilege, they say, is "bestowed" upon whites, but don't say how or by whom. Thus, "white skin privilege" creates a set of privileges that white people can't avoid having and don't acquiesce to? How can one accept something that they have no idea exists, that they don't recognise, or from whence it came? White workers are supposed to feel shame.
Marx ...showed how capitalism and colonialism created hostility and racism among English workers against Irish workers, even though the latter were, by definition, "white." In an 1870 letter written to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt in New York[4], Marx wrote:
Every industrial and commercial center in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker, he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation, and consequently, he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the "poor whites" to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.
This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organization. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this. http://socialistworker.org/2013/10/30/is-there-a-white-skin-privilege
This illusion of privilege has no reality in fact and when progressives attack "white skin privilege" they actually reinforce this illusion/fallacy. They reinforce it by treating it as an actual spontaneous social phenomena and in so doing reinforce ruling class ideology. This falsehood opens up space for "progressives" to attack whites in general, lumping all whites into a monolithic group and thus, instead of attacking the ruling class, "progressives" attack white workers instead.
from Democracy Now Dec. 29, 2015
Amy Goodman:
Interestingly last week in Torrington, Connecticut police arrested a 66 year old white woman
after she brandished a fake handgun outside the police department. Police said Elaine Rothenberg pointed a gun at civilians asked if they were police yelled about hating cops shouted to police quote 'what are you gonna do shoot me?' she reportedly raised the gun pointed at officers yelling 'Boom. Boom! Boom!' A photo of the BB gun she had shows that it did not appear to have an orange tab indicating its fake. Rothenberg was arrested without incident after throwing down the gun.
Activists have compared this to what happened to Tamir Rice, Elle Hearns what is your comment?
Elle Hearns:
I think that it is exactly what white privilege looks like and I think that America has a way of
denying that privilege in this country exists and and going even outside of the murder of Tamir that we also have to look at the murder of Tamisha Anderson who was also brutally murdered by the police in a response to a mental health episode that they were obviously not able to respond effectively to because of their lack of training towards black individuals who suffer from mental health issues. So the fact that this 66 year old woman who made public threats towards the police outside of a police department was able to walk away and only, I don't even know if she was arrested, but so the fact that she was able to walk away with her life still intact speaks to the deeper systemic structural racism that exists and also what it looks like to be white in America um and the privilege that black individuals do not have and unfortunately Tamir did not have that opportunity. Within one second his life was taken and so it is an insult for there to be accountability laid on the life of a child for the reason why he was murdered and a 66 year old responsible elder walks away with life, it's a insult.
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/29/when_will_the_killings_stop_calls
It would appear that this Black Lives Matter "activist" is "insulted" not only that this 66 year old "white woman" wasn't arrested but also that she wasn't shot like Tamir Rice was?
And why is Amy Goodman asking such a provocative leading question anyway? One might conclude that Amy Goodman is promoting "white skin privilege" ideology not only supporting capitalist ideology but also dividing the working class along racial lines?
But if one actually examines the number and color of the people killed by the police in the United States in 2015 one discovers that nearly twice as many European-Americans were shot down as African-Americans:
"Persistent efforts have been made to portray the violence in purely racial terms, eliding factors such as growing social inequality, the militarization of the police, and the domestic impact of America’s endless wars overseas. But according to the Guardian count, 567 of those killed by the police were-like Mould, Achstein and Niesen-white. Nearly twice as many whites have been killed as the 292 African Americans, though, as a share of the population, blacks are killed at nearly 2.5 times the rate of whites, a ratio that roughly corresponds to the disparity in the black-white official poverty ratio. Tellingly, 27 percent of those killed in 2015 suffered-like Niesen and Velega-Nuufolau-from mental health problems." http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/30/poli-d30.html
See also: - Proportion of people killed by police in 2015 - http://killedbypolice.net/ S
o, it appears Black Lives Matter "leadership" take note only of African Americans that are killed by police to opportunistically advance their own careers rather than fighting against the current relations of social production that enslave all workers in the US. They opportunistically exploit the deaths of young African-Americans at the hands of the police to integrate themselves into the ranks of the privileged.
For example, Barbara Lee's guest Alisia Garza co-founder of BLM at State of the Union.
Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, was invited by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). Garza sent out a tweet last week about the invitation, lauding Lee over her advocacy "against war and militarism, and [for] Black liberation." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/state-of-the-union-guests_56948a69e4b09dbb4bac6b23
Also:
Earlier this week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders named appointed a new national press secretary: 25-year-old Symone Sanders, an outspoken #BlackLivesMatter activist who is passionate about achieving economic justice. http://www.essence.com/2015/08/12/6-things-bernie-sanders-press-secretary-symone-sanders
Black Lives Matter and progressives generally, today, are using social contradictions that can engender class struggle as a springboard for career advancement. They hide class politics by bandying about racial politics. They retard working class conscientization by replacing revolutionary theory with reactionary bourgeois racialist propaganda.
LabourPartyPraxis discussion - subscribe
