My immediate reaction to that summary is "Will Shetterly is white."
I like WIll, but this feels uncomfortably like the endless ways that women are told that we can worry about sexism after we've dealt with $other_problem.
Racism is a real problem, though in this country race and class are entwined.
Sure, he probably is white. At the same time, there is a design flaw with having the prevalence of and solutions to ick-ism being declared exclusively by Ick civil rights leaders (where Ick is some value that could be, but is not limited to "sex", "race", "Semite", "Mormon", and so on). We can hardly expect Jesse Jackson to let us know when racism has been eradicated and then fire himself, nor should we expect sensitive white males to say "Yes sir, I'll get right on that" when every charge has been filed.
I think it would be pretty clear to establish in New Orleans that rich blacks got out and poor whites couldn't, and so the charges of racism in this instance strike me as both false and insulting. It seems like it should be cleansing for people like Laura Bush to stand up and say essentially "Fuck you" to people who make such spurious claims. There IS racism in our society, but we'd be better able to work on it if people stopped clouding the waters with false positives.
Will is white -- I've met him, and I'd guess redbird has, too, or at least seen pictures.
But your second paragraph is dead on -- we need to stop looking at classism and calling it racism. I'm not saying there is no racism, but the real cases are getting lost in the noise.
Racism is still a problem, but not like it was 40 years ago.[1] It seems to me that classism is a much more serious problem now, one that needs to get much more focus thaqn it does. Because race and cass are entwined, and because we're used to thinking about race, there appears to me a tendency to point at class issues and say "Look! Racism!" Focusing on the larger issue of privilege, regardless of race, would make it easier to see the remaining tendrils of racism, in my opinion.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 04:24 pm (UTC)I like WIll, but this feels uncomfortably like the endless ways that women are told that we can worry about sexism after we've dealt with $other_problem.
Racism is a real problem, though in this country race and class are entwined.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 05:11 pm (UTC)I think it would be pretty clear to establish in New Orleans that rich blacks got out and poor whites couldn't, and so the charges of racism in this instance strike me as both false and insulting. It seems like it should be cleansing for people like Laura Bush to stand up and say essentially "Fuck you" to people who make such spurious claims. There IS racism in our society, but we'd be better able to work on it if people stopped clouding the waters with false positives.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 05:32 pm (UTC)But your second paragraph is dead on -- we need to stop looking at classism and calling it racism. I'm not saying there is no racism, but the real cases are getting lost in the noise.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 05:29 pm (UTC)[1] I wasn't there, but I've read about it.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 02:23 pm (UTC)