A Response to JoeUser's Postmodern Racism
Per posting strategy of certain JoeUser ultra-right authors, I thought it might be educational to re-post a response I made to a specific form of Postmodern racism.
I believe the original article in this series was posted by ModerateMan, with point and counterpoint provided by Little Whip and CityGuy, respectively, here: Link.
Little Whip subsequently provided the enlightening article, "What It's like to Be White" here:
Link.
Before I quote my response, I find it necessary to clarify this particular condition of contextual racism about which I am discussing.
My quote provides a brief, general history of Western Civilization, which finds its moral and philisophical roots in a overwhelmingly white perspective. When every institution on which our society rests stems from a white perspective, we should feel a moral obligation to consider our responses to other cultures, more so when our current culture claims to incorporate other societal elements. Western Civilization rests upon a foundation of both Platonic and Aristitelian logic, while our religious foundation rests on a completely subsumed Judeo-Christian monotheism. I use the word "subsumed" to indicate that the Roman (a conglomerate of Germanic populations absorbing the cultures birthed near the Mediterranean Sea) Empire fully translated the doctrines of early Judeo-Christian culture into a Roman aesthetic.
Subsequently, we can trace all of our religious, literary, philisophical, and mathematical evolutions to this Roman, white perspective (including the absorption of Moorish algebra), and then, of course, we could trace the perspective beyond. What does this all mean? It means that our perspective is a united perspective, but also a limited one. Lingustically this implies that our system of sign and symbol, the development of memory both individual and communal, is based on a white system.
More importantly, it is through this system of understanding that we interpret the world--through this system we were capable of dominating and subhumanizing all other cultural elements. By transplanting subhumanized cultures (those of the various African racial identities and those found throughout the Americas during the period of the "explorers") into our own, we forced those cultures into an environment where their own systems were forced to the fringes, where their languages were also forced to the fringes. Similarly, language theorists have suggested that women have been marginalized in our society by forcing the female-specific system of sign and symbol to a position external to mainstream language.
I mention all of this to suggest that it is not an obsolete mode of thinking to refer to historical conditions imposed by our white system of conquest. If we intend to equalize the condition of human beings, regardless of gender or skin color, we must understand why our current condition pushes black people and women to the fringes. Does this excuse specific instances of black racism toward white people? Of course not. Does this absolve the black community of taking an active role in claiming ground in the "American Dream"? No, of course not.
Nevertheless, it DOES demand that the white element of society understand why a dynamic shift is taking place. Through the workings of our white civilization, we have forced, for example, the black element to fight through a white system. History shows where the system comes from, why we are stuck inside a very white, contextual racist perspective.
Here was my quote:
"man,
it is too late at night and i shouldnt respond to this but what can you do? i mean, you cant let something like this go by, can you, and still feel okay about yourself, get some sleep, wake up refreshed as if you never read . . . .
because it would be so easy to let it go. so easy to pretend that nothing ever happened. so easy to . . .
im just too tired to take responsibility . . .
but you know what? sometimes something happens, i don't know, let's say an inquisition, just one, a small one, say, like the one in spain. those religious fellas. they were, well, religious, so you can just kinda go about your business . . .
okay, but then you can look at what happened in the americas, i dont know, maybe you read tristan, maybe you just learn about it in class. still, you can kinda think, well, they were far away from their homes, those explorers, those guys who had everyone nonwhite scrounging for non-existent gold. i mean, they gotta bring home the gold. they really had to. 'course, there wasn't any, 'course there wasnt, but what are you going to do, you've promises to so many people . . .
okay, and them thar injuns, well, they were fighting too, those bastards, fighting each other for their homes, just like the brave white explorers who were also fighting for their homes, well, not their OWN homes, but for the injun homes, those injuns who were fighting before we even GOT here to steal their land, huh, and it's not like the whites were the only ones to sneak that sneaky smallpox virus in with the blankets we donated . . . okay, yes, it was just the whites who did that one.
okay, but see that all happened so long ago, just as the slave trade happened so long ago, and those pesky world wars, i mean look at all them black people fighting all over africa, i mean, it's not like the white man is the only guy starting wars, it's not like the white man was the cause of the warring in africa . . . all right, maybe in africa, what with the british and german and french (what? oh right) and the italians and the other representatives of our brilliant whitey-whites civilization taking over and enslaving and selling land to other people, then fighting each other, then mysteriously disappearing . . .
you know, if there's just one pesky little inquisition five hundred years ago, maybe no one would bat an eye. and maybe white people wouldnt be responsible for century upon century of racializing our society. yes, i suppose that you never owned a plantation? or you never use the "n" word? of course not. some of your closest friends are "b". i assume thats why you have the chutzpah to say this:
"Notice I didnt say "good or bad" like you did. It's not cool these days to aknowledge that white people have ever contributed anything good or worthwhile to this world of ours."
unreal, LW. you have to take an african studies course or an alternative lit course to read a quality selection of black authors. and if you get one, you've probably already read it. what about in history? cool to have a black history month. that way you can spend at least one month searching for references to influential black citizens. world of science, world of art, world of . . . why go on? as if you did not know, this western world is a white world, built on white philosophies and religions, built on the backs of two old civs, greek, roman, and every ounce of our language and our understanding of the world comes through WHITE SENSES.
so? you're going to get blamed, then, when you're trying to whitewash the remaining instances of nonwhite in the knowable universe. so? who cares? go back to sleep everyone, it's late, we can forget about in the morning, if we like, it's not our responsibility, it's not our fault . . . it's not our fault . . . it's not our fault . . . ."
tbt
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