Handwringing Over Whiteness Lets Capitalists Off the Hook - Adolph Reed & Walter Benn Michaels
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- Опубліковано 8 лис 2024
- Adolph Reed and Walter Benn Michaels address the longstanding contention that white workers are too committed to their white identity to fight for universal public goods.
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"We all want to feel morally superior. And god gives us people like Kendi and Diangelo, so we can feel morally superior." Hahaha
I always say the same about Jordan Peterson
I still have know idea what "valuing my whiteness" or "benefiting from whiteness" means.
It just seems to be something people who are richer than me tell me in order to suggesting I have it too good.
The whole concept of “whiteness” is meaningless . I have yet to hear a coherent definition
Totally agree
Hey Jacobin! Please keep these segments free to watch in their entirety! I feel like I've learned so much from watching the Jacobin Show and all of the great guests you guys regularly have on, I don't think there's anything quite as accessible as the stuff you guys put out. I subscribe to the magazine and want to support Jacobin's growth but the youtube media side of things feels like something that should stay free.
Paywalls are capitalist oppression ✊🏾
Whites has done so much good in world that these open rasism against whites is just dumb. But yea you coloured ppls are the rasists compared to whites.
Im a federally recognized native american, I have to dig deep but I can recognize why native americans may have been against chinese, residential school taught racism, america relocated us, we cant sue for genocide land back because the supreme court ruled in favor of king henrys 1496 claim to all land in north america not under latin or catholic control, whiteness may have meant christianess to folks back then, it started with the declaration claiming we are savages which means to be cool today but meant terrorist back in the day. Then lincoln sent black freed slaves in with guns to relocate us and next it was white folks hiring chinese to run the railroads through our treaty land and claiming that we are backward people while refusing to pay on said treaties, standard things countries go to war over according to the news today or at least sanction. So today native american reds are kept off the social media talking points list and weve left them out of the conversation, ones like these. I dont feel morally superior but i do want my land back and would like to explain the possible paths forward while not missing the colonial beginnings of whiteness. We natives have to go by federally recognized blood percentage or quantum for legal reasons which adolf doesnt mention here. Native americans did not write chinese exclusion laws those were made by white people claiming whiteness while depending on the religious news papers to ignore actual nation to nation agreements that should have kept us paid and educated based off owning the means to production like the white dudes instead of them doing all this racist stuff.
8:50 - 'There was no whiteness until the end of the 19th century'. OK, this is interesting and intriguing, but the question arises how the African slavery in the Antebellum South and the Civil War are to be understood without any resort to a notion of whiteness. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's far from obvious either, so I'd expect Adolph Reed to explain it.
I think that it’s that there are writings about black slaves and their particularities, but there was very little literature that brought English, Irish, and Germans into one group.
@@specialdead Thanks! (Sorry for the delay, I've stopped reading replies regularly). Still, I would imagine that the impossibility of keeping English, Germans and even Irish people as slaves or in reservations implicitly grouped them together. The default constituted by 'non-black' and 'non-Indian' did not need to be named or described, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist. But I suppose it's true that it wasn't as consolidated as now and there was more of a continuum.
I am German-American and if you read about the First Red Scare, Wilson Era, and the anti-German sentiment you will get an understanding as to the inter ethnic prejudices 100 years ago. The German population was forced to Americanize and every other ethnic group was then forced to Americanize and that attitude lasted til the present.
The liberal socialistic Germans were also often part of the trans-Atlantic abolitionist movement, were the dominant ethnicity in the Union army, and had integrated trade unions and seminaries. Every man in my very German Illinois county joined the Union army.
There was an idea of black and white of course. But these multi-ethnic differences was the common fabric in the USA.
There was a common slogan before and during the civil war was “free the black and give him land” written in the Northern press. Reparations was a slogan of the war.
I am not saying there was no racism but I think this was a common attitude of the 19th century of “we are all workers and we all deserve to be free.”
Going back to Woodrow Wilson he outlawed the German language, closed the German presses which were often unionist and socialist. And Insisted on Americanization. And propped up the KKK by claiming “Birth of Nation” was the greatest piece of art of all time while in the White House. And during his presidency many Germans were tarred and feathered and Robert Prager was lynched ten miles from my hometown for being a “socialist anti-American German”.
Judging from this, I think the idea of being “white” was invented to end the labor and socialist movements and gain popular consent for US imperialism.
The tragedy of the East St. Louis riots is another example of capitalist power purposely trying to stoke race and ethnic divisions so that unionism would fail.
Today the German population is more Right than Left but there are specific historical reasons of the trauma of the Big Wilson government violating their lives. I actually think the most general sentiment is more libertarian than conservative.
In technical terms Americanization whether towards Blacks, Native Americans, Germans, and others would be considered ethnocide. Ethnocide is when you don’t kill the people off altogether you destroy a people’s culture. And most Americans have been Americanized.
Bringing in history: WEB DuBois tried to bridge racist gaps in the movement, but he was ultimately defeated in his efforts by those failing from the ‘white’ side of the ledger. Granted that was a long time ago, but it is a real fact that racism harmed the labor movement and materially helped the actual KKK.
Walter Benn Michaels looks like Steven Spielberg mixed with Bruce Cockburn.
What is the difference between a worker and a capitalist? Nothing: the worker worries 24/7 about earning his salary, the capitalist, on the other hand, worries 24/7 about earning the worker's salary.
That maybe a way in which they are similar. So we're all the same based on our worries?
@@specialdead When push comes to shove, yes.
Bot's that you said?
@@DEWwords Robots don't worry, at all. They are the happiest people of all.
LOL. If only the capitalist would worry about earning their own salary instead of taking the workers salary
Can someone link me to this full video? I can’t find it and I should have access as a member
Hey there, the link is at the bottom of the description box! Also here: ua-cam.com/video/Hkraxqk671A/v-deo.html
@@JacobinMag thank you kindly (not sure why I didn’t see it)
Very interesting - but I did want to point out that at 4:38, Reed means Alexander (not Andrew) Saxton. Also, the ILWCH issue that he brings up later is # 60, Fall 2001.
i disagree with Reed
whiteness is not bullshit
it's real ad so is blackness
culturally
there is a clear difference between the two
@@robinsss "Whiteness" is a metaphysical concept: it transcends historical contexts and material determinations because it never changes. It's used as an "essentializing" attribute of white people, generally, which means attributing "whiteness" is, itself, racist. If "whiteness" is actually capitalism, then it's just capitalism, but there are many poor whites who've been victimized by capitalism, just as Jim Clyburn, who was against M4All, e.g., can be considered to exhibit "whiteness" more than Bernie Sanders, e.g., which is obviously a problem, given that he's obviously black. Best just to give up on these monolithic concepts, comrade.
@@justanotherguy1794 to me whiteness is
European middleclass culture
by that standard a black person could be more culturally white than a redneck white southerner
When I learned about Whiteness in my rhetoric theory grad course last year, I'm pretty sure our readings and professor explicitly made clear it wasn't a transhistorical concept but one that shifts through social and historical contexts
I learned in DET that its a collection of paints comprising the Dulux colour chart
@@georgecostanza9392 sounds good dude!
@@WinstonSmithGPT uh oh someone is using mockery to feel better about themselves!
all learning means in this instance is that I read some stuff. doesnt mean I have to agree with it
whiteness is pretty objective
middle class European culture
it keeps you out of jail for marijuana. free t-shirt if you want it. hashtag and at symbol safershirts
I find it interesting that this channel has such a focus on those challenging racial disparity within this capitalist system, but don't call out those women challenging the systemic sexism in that same structure.
Why are black people calling out disparity the only group to be used as foils in answering these questions?
Simplest answer is that social discourse and consciousness are more focused on racial disparities after the racially charged police killings and subsequent BLM movement last summer. Feminism and women's representation have been on the back burner as a result of this and also internal conflicts within the left between trans inclusion/exclusion from the feminist movement.
All "minority" movements were appropriated by Neoliberal capitalism increasingly from the 1970s onward and this was completely by design.
Have any African Americans replaced King, Malcolm X, or Hampton in regards to class consciousness? Maybe for a moment Rev Jeremiah Wright, and look what happened to him. He was shunned by Obama and the liberal media.
As far as women/feminism it is more than obvious to me but ought to be revealed too. 1970's feminism resulted in a inundated workplace, wage stagnation, two working parents and latchkey kids. Capitalism appropriated feminism before they appropriated African American politics.
And LGBT is another sad example.
The issue is people believe Obama, Clinton, or Buttigieg represent their interests because of their immutable traits, when they don't, in many ways the represent the opposite of said interests.
So hopefully everyone gets a clue and works together.
Class politics are consistently defeated by race politics; getting around this isnt to claim race isnt a factor; its to convince some racist people to work toward their own interests alongside those they normally wouldn't. It has not gone well to a large extent so far.
No one's actually doing any class politics. These people are just talking about it and blaming anti-racism for their ineffectiveness. You go out there and do some good for people and they will follow you. That simple.
@@specialdead Actually, there are many politicians in the Sanders wing of the Dem party who do class politics. They have been attacked by the so-called 'antiracist' crowd from the very start, b/c it wants to monopolise the appearance of rebellion against the status quo, while actually defending it. To a great extent, their lack of success can be connected to these attacks and, more generally, to their voices being literally drowned out by the identitarian war drums on both sides - as has often happened in history. The focus of the public's attention very much is a zero-sum game.
I'm not sure exactly what you're objecting to or advocating here, but: 1. Realising one's common interests with other races and abandoning racism go hand in hand. 2. It is not true that class politics has always been defeated by race politics. The socialist forces in the Russian revolution - not only the Bolsheviks after October, but also the parties that dominated the Provisional Government and the Constituent Assembly before October - were very much international, with bona fide Russian nationalists/supremacists being fairly marginalised.
@@dumupad3-da241 the Sanders wing of the Dems were trying to bring class interests to liberal politics. Good on ‘em. I don’t call that class politics, but I’ll concede. My point is that any leftist party can go into areas that are economically choked and do some good: organizing labor, rent strikes, feeding the poor, whatever. The anti-racists have not set up barricades to keep out the Left, so any leftist party can walk in and start organizing.
@@dumupad3-da241 I’ve been a communist for thirty years. Soviet history simply doesn’t mean as much to me as working class history in the US. What I have seen is that leftists spend a lot of time organizing and just being socially approximate to liberal activists who will never join us. You’re not getting static from anti racist liberals in the streets, and if you are, there is probably a working class area nearby where the libs are not festering. Back in my day world hunger was the big liberal issue, and we never blamed the feed the world movement for why we couldn’t organize a rent strike in a blighted neighborhood. It was because of poor leadership, internalized liberalism and pessimism on our parts. Crit warrants self-crit, and I see no self-crit from the “dirtbag left.”
8:15
Phrenology enters the conversation
Commenting for the algorithm
Why do these discussions about the white working class and whiteness always have to be had by non whites?
Because it is not really appropriate for me to speak for people of color. I do not share their problems. I know nothing about the biases they have to overcome every day. I can not say anything useful about solutions that won't sound condescending. I had an easy time in school. Getting a university education was a matter of "fun" for me, not part of an economic struggle. I don't have everybody looking at me when I enter a room. I am invisible and privileged. If I told anybody how to overcome the challenges of their race, I would sound like an a-hole. Having said that, if you are white and struggling, then we know what went wrong: you didn't pay attention in school, kid. It's your own fault that you aren't making ends meet. Are we cool?
Caucasian people aren't white there lite brown, Nubian people aren't black there dark brown and white and black workers have more incoming with each other than the rich
“The extreme, northeast coast of Africa: Sicily.” 😂 FRT, good luck distinguishing most Sicilians from most North Africans… In college/my early 20s, I had a Sicilian lover, a Libyan lover, a Lebanese lover, and a Greek lover (at different times ffs, I’d probably be dead if that was all at once) , and culturally from what I could gather they were all different enough, but put them in a lineup, and I’d bet every dime I have that the overwhelming majority of people aren’t going to be able to tell who’s who; at least definitely not your average progressive lib super hung up on race…
I guess there’s not much of a point here, just that it’s been my go to example for years, and I could (and usually do) throw in various other surrounding countries and the point remains the same. It wouldn’t mean shit, or matter, except “per race”, in spite of appearances, some of those people are clearly categorized as POC, even “light skinned black” (that’s more if you bring surrounding countries in), and others white. I realize it’s a part of history, and it’s structured our current social relationships, so it’s not like we can just say, “this is dumb, let’s drop it”, but idk, for me this Southern Europe, Middle East/West Asia, and North Africa, (or basically just Mediterranean areas/environments) example of comparing people in a lineup, and attempting to make sense of how race has been constructed has always spoken volumes… ✌️❤️🏴♾
@Nikola Demitri 💗 That was fascinating 😝
Dud any of them own Su ba rus?
@@wcheaney lol
The term whiteness is kinda annoying
@E Ardlow This is a retarded take and you should be ashamed of yourself. "Whiteness" is an obnoxious term that purports to describe some sort of essence that doesn't actually exist. It's an externally-created and externally-sustained political phenomenon that was invented by the ruling class to be used for social control, and continues to be so.
@E Ardlow Adolph Reed.
For it to be merely a political phenomenon it crept into the hard sciences and religion awfully quick.
It just seems like a way of grouping all white people together as being complicit in white supremacy. Generally people don't respond well to that. Not just white people either, no one wants to be stereotyped into a monolithic culture.
@@Will-xf3qe what if the stereotypes are positive? Plenty of people like(d) that.
Now colonialism and imperialism that has plagued the poor for centuries... that's what needs to be addressed. Stand with NESARA!
It's called democracy aka imperial democracies. Imperial powers establishing democracies around the world.
One thing that’s really helped me is to view racism primarily through an economic/trauma lens.
These markers (trauma & poverty) are so egregiously disproportionate between the races that an unlearned white mind often intuitively views themselves as belonging to the superior race, because most white people/workers in proximity to them tend to seem en-masse more abundant & put-together than other races. This is one of the many reasons we need reparations, to bridge the unexamined racial bias gap.
It’s one thing to be racist after you’ve learned the in-depth systemic factors that perpetuate racism. It’s another thing to sort of “pick up” racism in a more intuitive, less self-aware way. The first kind of racists are psychopaths; the second kind simply lack self-awareness.
We need to organize to tackle both kinds.
The problem is in the fact that racism doesn't have anything to do with economy. Racism is an idea that some races are better than the others. It's as simple as that. The narrative that turns racism into a complex phenomenon which is then blamed for the F in math class is downright stupid. And yes, there are racists in every society. However, most of the civilized societies, including America, shuns them. It is not possible to be "accidentally racist", without knowing it.
@@lokiprankster9177 racism has nothing to do with the economy? What do you think hundreds of years of forced unpaid labor does to the economy of a community? I swear Jacobin breeds class reductionism.
@@lokiprankster9177 I'd venture to say racism isn't the belief that one race is better then others but simply the belief that race is real.
@@comradetrashpanda8777 That's real.
@@comradetrashpanda8777 Race is not ontologically or biologically real, but it is real in the sense that (as Reed says in the video) race is an invented legal & social category that has real effects on people's material lives.
This new thumbnail thing doesn’t look good
Is Adolph Reed talking about degrees of whiteness and how whiteness is perceived across time?
in the end he said the entire concept is bullshit
i disagree
When one’s voice becomes strained and viewers hearing decreased (me) u may want to consider subtitles. I barely understand Walter. Bummer
The Closed Captions option at the bottom of the vid is pretty good.
@@DrOstentorious On my screen, it's on the upper right (marked 'CC').
"Whiteness" is a low quantity of melanin in the skin, nothing more, nothing less. There is no universal white culture or universal white condition (beyond the human condition). Of course, who is or isn't "white" isn't universally agreed upon, changes with political fashion, and is often arbitrary to fit the rhetoric needed at the moment; when I was growing up Hispanic people were considered white, but now supposedly they are brown (a category that didn't exist 30 years ago) -- at least until a Latino kills a black kid, then that one counts as white. Similarly, "whiteness" is also attributed to non-white people who are on the wrong side politically.
Then, "whiteness" is also a fairly recent neologism -- at least outside likely rare occurrences in the very informal language of children in reference to inanimate objects or pure colors -- so I guess it can refer to anything (even a fantasy construct).
That is true, but that missing melanin in my skin has made my life an order of magnitude easer. That's all that counts for me.
you all might try a wider study on Dr. Jose Rizal's thoughts.
- there is sure a historical connection above the normal white people. one main component was the royal houses, who married among each other and shared mores and knowhow.
this means, there is very few different types of colonizers, one was eg. spanish plus austrian hapsburg, another one was england. portugal was early, and the difference is mainly based on developments of the particular era, including trigonometric math (oversea navigation), or the inquisition, or tricky british protestant liberalism.
- you will learn about other factors of supremacy connected to colonization, the most important is mental engineering of a whole complex society following a hitech blueprint. the soldiers and friars had studied their parts of this complexity, including preachings and rhetorics. their goal was to implement "social cancer" in the minds of the colonized people.
this means basically "divide et impera" but Rizal is most important to get a glimpse about the detail and hitech factor in this social engineering. he made it visible to his folks with writing sarcastic persiflage novels that make fun of these habits and behaviors that were basically created by the influence of the colonial lords and their corrupt priesthood. Rizal was NOT an enemy to god.
- eventually, it becomes clear that the whole West itself is full with domestic colonization and evil social engineering, that splits people into factions and sectors and castes. because the very same people have been doing this all the time. they shared their knowledge among their kin and kind. so, the conclusion is, what does really hurt, it is the supremacy and the split-up and distrust. and here we see, that skin color is actually OBSOLETE since quite some time, and it has become just another red herring to quarrel about in the sense of Social Cancer.
Whiteness is more than just that. Sally Hemmings was 3/4 white, visibly indistinguishable from her half sister Mary Jefferson, and was never granted manumission because she was not white. Whiteness has always been an issue of figuring out who isn't Black and not an identity of it's own right.
I guess where Adolf and I disagree, while it is true that Capital has used race to maintain power, it is also true that it was hard workin, blue collar, church goin' members of the White Working Class™️ were doing the heavy work of hanging our people....so they shouldnt get off the hook either
@@fatsmith6977 but that's today, and different yesterday and tomorrow, race for humans NOT being a scientific concept (other than sociology etc.), so claims are very arbitrary and politically distorted.
@@neovxr Your average, everyday racist doesn't give a frell.
Idk about wanting to feel morally superior but looking for ways to improve flawed biases, policies, personal actions and thoughts come to mind for me.
Aren't they repeating the main point of DiAngelo's book? That people are attached to their whiteness, this white identity politics, and the emotional elements of this attachment is revealed in the phenomenon of "white fragility", and the goal is to decouple that? DiAngelo distills many of the ideas from Af-Am Studies & CRT for a broad, non-academic white audience. Here diagnosis is right but here prescription is wrong. I agree w/ Reed & Michaels that the cure for white identity politics is class politics.
DiAngelo’s analysis of “whiteness” is right; however, any proscription that does not consider the Ego’s inured depravity will miss the mark. In the context of the US aspirational experiment, racial & color identity trumps class.The evidence is overwhelming.
Consider James Baldwin’s comment, that America doesn’t have class, “…only candidates for the hand of the bosses’ daughter.”
@@artman2119 What do you mean by the "ego's inured depravity"? Do you mean "ego" in a Freudian or Buddhist sense?
I think of it like the 80/20 rule. Focusing a majority of effort on class will solve most of the problem, we can buff out the edges later
@@cptfullsack6373 Never thought of the 80/20. Thanks!
Actually, they acknowledged that some people are racist, not that *all* white people are racist and that any specific accusation of racism by a member of a minority must always be assumed to be correct and something to 'learn from'. 'White fragility' is what DiAngelo calls - not racism - but any white person's attempt to reject an *accusation* of racism.
Is there a video with this whole thing, or y’all kickin it for 10+, idealize for revenue young jacobin, not too long now, erryday
they're on that VladTV tip lol