Racism is Not a Personal Problem. It's a System Problem

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO GED

6-15-21

I was reading an article in the Guardian this morning about Michel Foucault and his philosophy that appears to me, a person that never read any of his works, as all about the self, the individual and how change comes though conquering our failings like racism, sexism and so on. The article points out that this world view led to the self-help gurus of the late 60’s and early seventies. I don’t think I ever had an inkling to read books by gurus about how change is all about me and my individual will. We do not exist and our conscious doesn’t develop outside of society.

 

When I first arrived in the US my friend and I laughed at the title of a book a liberal middle-class university educated friend was all agog about called I’m OK, You’re OK and how it changed her and if she was able to change herself she could then help change the world. It’s really the reverse of the way things are it seems to me. We mockingly referred to the book’s title as I’m OK You’re OK the rest can fuck off.

 

The Guardian article points out how this individualistic approach to the world and its problems has led to a whole array of apologies and public confessions by celebrities and other rich famous people. I saw the nauseating advertisement on TV with rich white Hollywood types publicly “’taking responsibility’ for ‘every unchecked moment’, every ‘stereotype’, every time they ‘remain silent’ or ‘turn a blind eye’”.  A banker’s daughter who is also an actor apologized the other day for all the things she said that were not correct decades ago.

 

I listened to Robin DiAngelo, describing the contents of her trashy book, White Fragility which has the same approach, that the first step toward eliminating racism is confessing to it and apologizing basically. Here in the US you will often be told that you have to leave your white privilege at the door and certainly cop to it publicly. If you have white skin, you’re born racist basically according to Robin DiAngelo.I should add that in my experience it is overwhelmingly white liberals and both black and white academics that promote this nonsense. I rarely if ever heard this from black blue-collar workers.

 

I commented on Ms DiAngelo’s book here: Fighting Racism, Liberal Academia to the Rescue With White Fragility  and the Black American linguist and professor of English literature John McWhorter added his views from a different perspective in The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility. Ms DiAngelo has done very well from her book, the woke liberals love it as it appeals to their guilt complex and the ruling class both liberal and conservative find it most useful in undermining any notion of class in society. It’s all about identity politics.

 

Naturally, workers, especially white workers when it comes to confronting racism, are not drawn to this approach and are not supposed to be; it’s an approach designed to divide the working class not unite us and to make white workers feel guilty because they have white skin tone.

 

The millionaire actor Ann Hathaway got in on the game stating publicly:

White people- including me, including you- must take into the marrow of our privileged bones the truth that ALL black people fear for their lives DAILY in America and have done so for GENERATIONS.  White people DO NOT have equivalence for this fear of violence.
Given those givens, we must ask our (white)selves- how “decent” are we really?  Not in our intent, but in our actions?  In our lack of action?

 

Again, it is important to note that that “white” here is a race of people, a collective whole. The white factory worker, the white truck driver, nurse, office worker or worker in one of those poultry factories in the US South are all included in Ann Hathaway‘s world. Hathaway had a billionaire boyfriend at the time and spent time sailing around the Mediterranean in his yacht according to reports in the media. I know no white person with such luxury, or spare time to do that.

 

This is why I always avoided the term “White Supremacy” or “White Privilege” that types like Hathaway like to throw around because it is always devoid of class content. I let Ann Hathaway know how I felt about her advice. At one time, the Ford Foundation was sponsoring conferences on white supremacy and financially supported the work of the Equal Justice Society go check out the individuals and companies behind this group and decide if they support the unity of workers along class lines.

 

The capitalist class and corporate America is on board with this divisive approach to racism. The authors of the Guardian article point that out when they write:

“This political phenomenon is echoed and reinforced by corporations and self-help industries that march ever deeper into our psyches, encouraging us to practice “mindfulness techniques” at work, for example.”

 

Racism and other forms of social division are worn in to the fabric of class society. Malcolm X understood that when he said that, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”

 

Rather than embrace all the individual self-help cures and psycho analysis, it is worth learning that lesson from one of the most influential revolutionaries of the 20^th century. But Malcolm X’s profound statement, present’s a problem, it means challenging the system which is the root cause. It’s much safer to leave the capitalist system out of it and push DiAngelo’s claim that, “I try, as hard as I can, to counter it,……..but we can never be free of it.”  In other words, it is an individual failing so woman up and apologize.  

 

Similar is Ibram X Kendi’s argument that society needs an department of anti-racism not elected by the public and with him or who he selects on it I assume. Kendi comes from a very privileged background and both he, DiAngelo and others like them while right in the sense that we can’t be free of it, refuse to deal with the system and the class that promotes it.

 

A friend of mine from Ireland was accused of being a colonizer by a US person of color one time without the slightest idea that Ireland has never colonized any other country. It was the first colony of English then British capitalism; many of the practices and policies British capitalism applied in India and Africa were first put in to place in Ireland. But for those like Ibram Kendi and many others their aim is to improve their own class interests in capitalist society. Both DiAngelo and Kendi’s books are NY Times best sellers. The liberals love it, the conservatives opportunistically use it as a means of winning working class support for their anti-worker agenda knowing that life has become ever more difficult for white workers in the US.

That the life expectancy of whites, a so-called privileged group, is declining tells us something and should, if our goal is to really eliminate the causes of racism, allow us recognize that it has become much more difficult for the US ruling class to provide white workers with the advantages possible in the past and keep workers apart. This makes class unity an easier prospect assuming there are social forces promoting it in a serious way and building a movement along those lines. When the leadership of the working class, whether it be organized labor or political forces, fails to play that role, the right will be quite willing to do so and is stepping it to that vacuum with some success.

 

When approaching workers of any background about socially divisive issues and the gradations of privileges that one group of workers has over another we should always start from a position of which class benefits from our division. The class that does will be the source of the divide and rule strategy.

 

When we understand origin of the source we can combat it. White privilege is real as is patriarchy. But the term white as a racial definition is a social construct aimed at undermining working class unity, the same way that support for the ideas expressed by Kendi and DiAngelo do.

 

As I always do, I send the reader to Theodore Allen’s two volumes on The Invention of the White Race that are reasonably priced at Verso Books. Or visit Professor Jeffrey Perry’s website.  There is also a short introduction here.

 

The authors of the Guardian article are correct when they write: “With material stakes of politics growing ever more urgent many in the liberal center would much prefer us to busy ourselves with loud rituals announcing our inner battles.”

 

The consequences of dealing with capitalism and racism as an integral part of it means the end of privileges for a lot of folks who want desperately to maintain them and will go to extreme lengths to achieve that.