Yeah, I'm not talking color blindness, obviously we all see color, I'm saying what we see is ancestry, not race. Race was invented and reinfied to justify the racism of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, those things didn't happen because of race. Saying things happened because of race places the onus on the concept of race and the person b…
Yeah, I'm not talking color blindness, obviously we all see color, I'm saying what we see is ancestry, not race. Race was invented and reinfied to justify the racism of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, those things didn't happen because of race. Saying things happened because of race places the onus on the concept of race and the person being raced, instead of racism (racism creates race). Its a broader conceptualization that helps us understand much more about the current moment. For example, how the holocaust was racist
Yeah, absolutely. As you may have noticed, I try to avoid using the word "race" wherever possible. Racism is the word we've inherited, and as my aim is to be understood, I use it rather than inventing a new term. But I tend to talk about the colour of people's skin rather than race, as I have done here.
So my issue isn't with avoiding the word "race", I think that's a good idea. It's with any attempt (however well intentioned) to obscure the fact that all the enslaved people had one particular characteristic, and if they didn't have that characteristic, they wouldn't have been slaves.
Talking about "ancestry" obscures that, because no black person could have improved their lot in life at that time by pulling out their family tree. "Free vs other" obscures that, because freed black people were still treated like subhuman, and, as I said, in some cases sold "illegally" into slavery.
The only way I can see to give an honest accounting of what happened is to recognise the actual reason why these people were slaves, and later, why they were discriminated against in the form of Jim Crow, segregation, etc.
Yeah, I'm not talking color blindness, obviously we all see color, I'm saying what we see is ancestry, not race. Race was invented and reinfied to justify the racism of chattel slavery and Jim Crow, those things didn't happen because of race. Saying things happened because of race places the onus on the concept of race and the person being raced, instead of racism (racism creates race). Its a broader conceptualization that helps us understand much more about the current moment. For example, how the holocaust was racist
Yeah, absolutely. As you may have noticed, I try to avoid using the word "race" wherever possible. Racism is the word we've inherited, and as my aim is to be understood, I use it rather than inventing a new term. But I tend to talk about the colour of people's skin rather than race, as I have done here.
So my issue isn't with avoiding the word "race", I think that's a good idea. It's with any attempt (however well intentioned) to obscure the fact that all the enslaved people had one particular characteristic, and if they didn't have that characteristic, they wouldn't have been slaves.
Talking about "ancestry" obscures that, because no black person could have improved their lot in life at that time by pulling out their family tree. "Free vs other" obscures that, because freed black people were still treated like subhuman, and, as I said, in some cases sold "illegally" into slavery.
The only way I can see to give an honest accounting of what happened is to recognise the actual reason why these people were slaves, and later, why they were discriminated against in the form of Jim Crow, segregation, etc.