Re: The fact is that racism, at its institutional level, is merely a power structure --a master-slave relationship-- not a pathological negrophobia.
That's a good way of putting it. I felt it was more an act of social acceptance.
Yet another way of construing it is to posit "racial hatred" and "class warfare" as two mutually challenging, if overlapping, hierarchies... Part of the American gospel is the belief that the US is a class-free society that gratifies each and every "hardworking" white --unfailingly. History, however, has shown that the US is much like any other country: over time, social mobility slackens and dynasties of billionaires slowly, surreptitiously, but surely, start to share the spoils among themselves.... Now, in a country where the media, the opinion makers, etc. keep on claiming that if you can't make it here, you're but a hopeless loser, a sinner, a misfit, it's increasingly difficult and frustrating for the so-called crackers to remain loyal to their social order. Enter the racial "quick fix": US ruling elites can't guarantee their fellow white wannabes a piece of the action at the top --it ain't "success, happiness, and money... or your lifetime back!" So, my point is that, blacks and other non-white minorities are merely fulfilling a "buttress" function to give the "white trash" the cheap illusion that they don't lay at the bottom of society... Somehow, the racial pecking order makes up for capitalism's failure to gratify its lower (white) castes properly.
Gus |
