Я когда-то писал про своего леворадикального веганутого кузена. Сейчас он поступил на graduate program in Women's Studies and Feminist Research в один из канадских университетов. На днях прикол с ним был - его отец попросил не публиковать антиизраильскую пропаганду в фейсбуке под его фамилией - поэтому он сменил фамилию (пока только в фейсбуке) на ФриПал. Это для меня кстати хорошо, потому что раньше, если я себя гуглил - в первую очередь всегда попадал на него.
А вот его беседа о расизме с каким-то единомышленником:
ФриПал: I think that the difference between racism and bias is that racism is bias times power. While non-white people can hold biases against white people as long as it does not result in institutionalized degradation, violence, and inequality it is not the same as racism. (Of course, white people can be interchanged with any dominant race/ethnic group depending on context, for example Jews in Russia experience extreme racial discrimination, while Jews in Israel are the hegemonic group ruling an occupying ethnocratic state). While we live in a very racialized world that perpetuates and celebrates racist realities it is of course wrong to say that "everyone is racist, ergo racism is just the fact of life". Of course there are power relationships, ideas, and circumstances that are more racist as there are those which are less racist, or even anti-racist. Consequently it is everyone's moral responsibility to both educate themselves and fight racism wherever it rears its ugly head.
Eдиномышленник: Are you serious?! Why do you think it's ok to hold biases based on skin color?
and why is it ok only as long as they're "not white"?
what you're saying is that having a common skin color,with a group that happens to be a majority makes you somehow responsible for the racism exhibited by that majority.
i call bullshit!
in my opinion , the fact that you even categorize people by being white,or non-white is racist.
you are implying that among the human species there are actually "races" different groups that are somehow mutually exclusive.
while all research points to all humans having a recent common ancestor no more than 2000-4000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/
that means that the idea of "race" itself is superficial.
i also disagree that people hold a "historical responsibility" to what people of the same skin color did throughout history.
should germans forever be held responsible for the holocaust even after enough generations have passed,that no more nazis even exist?
i honestly think the only way to get rid of racism is to stop talking about it.
the more you bring it up,the more the odds are that the next generations will give the idea,that humans are divided by race,legitimacy.
if for instance,hypothetically,no
in the era of global communication,that generation will not even be aware that there is such a thing as "black people" "white people" "jews" etc...but rather "people with different pigmentation due to mutations passed on to successive generations",and that's it!
that's the only real solution to racism.
ФриПал:
you raise a number of interesting points and I think all in all your heart is in the right place on this (ignorant and privileged as fuck place, but right) so I will take the time to address the points you bring up both based on my own experiences of racial privilege and disadvantage as well as some stuff I have picked up through my activist and academic careers.
I'll start from "Historical responsibility" and I'll start with a parable. Hey, remember those 50 shekels I owe you? Well, fuck you, I don't believe in historical responsibility. Now, giggles aside, of course there is a historical responsibility, more than that, I would go as far as to say that there are many kinds of historical responsibilities. Let's take the holocaust and name few obvious responsibilities. The -country- Germany has a responsibility to help rehabilitate and restore holocaust survivors. Elderly surviving Nazis who participated in the final solution have responsibility for genocide and other crimes against humanity. Another responsibility is carried by all Germans, Jews and other citizens of the world and it is to learn the lessons of the dangers of racism, militarism, fascism etc. from the holocaust. All those are historical responsibilities and all of those are different kinds of responsibilities. When we discuss historical responsibility in relation to race we are first and foremost discussing how things come to be the way they are: What are the historical causes to contemporary, present time, here and now inequalities and oppression? Lets briefly look at the genocide in Rwanda. Much coded language (and upfront bigotry too) explain the genocide as a living testimony to the inherent evil of those barbaric black people. However, some of the most prominent causes of the Rwandan genocide lie in its colonial history. As you probably know Belgium that colonized Rwanda has created the Tutsis and the Hutus from people who shared one ethnicity. The Tutsis were installed as a local sub-elite to control the rest of the population and facilitate Belgian extraction of resources. Rwanda is of course far from being the only country to be on the wrong end of colonialization. To really simplify the way I see it, the white European countries have physically occupied the colonized countries, using race as a vehicle for the dispossession and enslavement of the local population. Once colonialization "ended" it was replaced by neo-colonialization (economical and political control without, most of the time unless some empire feels really adventurous, direct military intervention). To put it simply, the countries that were stripped bare entered the global market economy on worse terms than the countries that have been pillaging them for centuries. At that point the powerful countries "lent" money to the disempowered countries while forcing on them laws and rules that will always keep the global north on top and the global south exploited- thus preserving relationships of racial injustice -today-. It is the racist realities of today and tomorrow that we must to fight against and we can't do that without recognizing histories of racial injustice.
Now, back to defining race. First of all, I did not at any point say it that holding biases is "good". Holding a bias is simply much less destructive in its consequences than racism. Another thing I did not say at any point, is that I believe that race has any biological, essential or god given basis. That's why I look at your arguments that humans cannot be separated into different species and can only react with NO SHIT FRECKLES. However, as I have pointed out before, racialized realities exist. Race, as follows, exists as a social construction that is made real (usually through intense amounts of violence). Also, it is a historical process where the boundaries of the racial groups are defined by the economic, social, gender etc. interests of the dominant group. For example, at one point in space and time the Irish people were not white and in another they can be very white indeed. To complicate things further, race is produced and lived through other social systems of power such as gender, class, age, ability, sexuality, etc. Just as race is reified (made real) through oppression it has also been reified through histories of resistance such as Black Nationalism. It is beyond absurd that you think that you can come to people who have struggled all of their collective lives against institutions that want them exterminated and tell them that they got it all wrong and you have a great solution to racism. If anything can be learned from the histories of racism is that it is re-emerges time after time with a new form. For example, while the biological basis for racism was struck down as pseudoscience we have a vibrant variety of social and cultural justifications for racism. After all, if we for example forget racial histories as you suggest and take a look at black people in the states- their life circumstances (which are themselves result of race based dispossession, criminalization and other fun stuff) suddenly become a proof that, hey, there must be something wrong in their nature for them to be so disproportionally poor and incarcerated. What you are proposing is a colour blind brand of racism. Let's be very politically correct in our presentation but keep all of our good ole racist beliefs and our dear murderous apartheid states intact. While it might be easy for you to give up your race, since your skin colour is not marked by racial meanings and is not constantly read by others (seriously read this for a short checklist of privileges that a white person might have