Reddit reviews The Racial Contract

Let's see. This'll be long, but I hope it helps out with the understanding.

"Bad things" is a bit of an understatement if we are talking about the experiences of black folks in this country throughout its history, as present day situations (i.e., discriminatory law enforcement and legal consequences, wealth gaps, gentrification, educational deficits, food deserts, etc.) are often the direct result of historic marginalization and oppression. Black folks are more likely to live in impoverished communities due to the recently-illegal-but-still-occurring practice of redlining that denied them the ability to purchase homes in certain areas. Funding for public services, like schools, are typically tied to the wealth of the community they serve, leading to underfunded schools in black communities that contribute to gaps in education and earning potential. High rates of poverty are always correlated with higher crime rates, and black communities tend to be the poorest. Since enslavement there has been a systematic effort to destroy and distort black cultural practices, with much of our current "culture" being derived from cobbled together pieces created during the darkest time in our history, and tinged with the poverty and crime in our communities. These negative messages are often perpetuated in mass media--as mass media is known to do--and regurgitated back to us as internalized racism; we accept that poverty, crime, and less-productive cultural efforts are what "real" blackness is (that last bit is my personal hypothesis, and what I'll probably be focusing on as I start work on my PhD).


I think revolting against the system is the plan for any manner of revolution, but the armed and violent kind is not the method being advocated here. Rather, we must do all we can to restructure the system so that it is just as beneficial to black and brown bodies as it is to white ones, and that is generally achieved through sociopolitical changes.

As for whiteness, I don't think there was an intent to portray "white folks as the devil", but more to think of how destructive the idea "whiteness" can be. To better understand this sentiment, one must understand how "whiteness" in this country came to be, a topic that I couldn't possibly go into in depth here, but I can give you the cliff notes. Essentially, European explorers and colonizers devised the idea of "race" as a method of categorization after nationality was no longer the biggest identifying factor. In other words, how can we fair-skinned Europeans differentiate ourselves from the darker skinned African slaves, and the darker skinned Native "savages". Notions of race and color were the simplest methods, but this became complicated when Mexico came into the picture (particularly the descendants of fair skinned Spanish colonizers, who were considered white), the approach to race and mixed heritage present in Louisiana, and the arrival of Asian immigrants. The idea of who was and was not white changed over time, but whiteness has always been used in this country as a way to differentiate those who were normal and could have things (land, votes, business, education, etc.) from those who were different and thus could not have. This divide was especially detrimental when it came to the idea of blacks, who were considered no better than property or livestock for a large chunk of our history. Today, the benefits of this system of classification are readily apparent, as whites outpace every other racial group in this country in nearly every positive metric, and white folks in this country continue to receive special favor due to the nature of the system underpinning our society. This favor is often unconscious and given without awareness, but it readily exists as privilege. A few really good books on this are The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills, White by Definition by Virginia R. Dominguez, and Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi & Howard Winant.

So, the general idea of the speech simply echos many of the calls to action that have been made in recent years. It calls attention to the systems of oppression that have been put into place, the disastrous consequences of those systems for black and brown folks, the need for those in position of power and influence (regardless of race) to work towards dismantling unfair systems, the ongoing benefits white folks have in this systems (and the sense of complacency this gives rise to, since they of course stand to lose privilege and not gain much tangibly from equal rights), and the need for people rise up and fight for equality in oppressive systems.

>So racism is a combination of that inherent distrustfulness, tied together with cultural stereotypes about different groups. So maybe we'll never be truly rid of racism; the best we can do is teach our children about these negative thoughts, and learn to examine those thoughts for real truth.

I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with you on this point. While there is certainly a personal aspect to racism, to reduce it to a mere combination of "inherent distrustfulness" and "cultural sterotypes" is to ignore the vast systemic issues that constitute true racism. Under your definition, only persons can be racist. How then are we to critique - for example - the carceral state in America, in which blacks are imprisoned at a significantly higher rate than whites. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population in 2009.[41] According to the 2010 census of the US Census Bureau blacks (including Hispanic blacks) comprised 13.6% of the US population. (Elizabeth Anderson recently wrote a very well argued book on this issue)

Any constructive discussion of race in America (which I am attending to specifically, forgive me if you are a non-American, it is the area in which I am familiar) must, necessarily, attend to systemic issues of economic exploitation, cultural devaluation, and political disenfranchisement as well as the personal prejudice and cultural stereotypes that underlie individual participation (not to discount apathy and fear, which play a significant role) in the maintenance of a system of racial domination.

Some critical race theorists whose work I find very prescient are David Theo Goldberg and Charles Mills.

(thanks for jump starting the conversation by the way, it is much appreciated)

Edit: realized they were Aussies, but I find that the point about focusing on individual prejudice rather than systemic oppression still stands.

The Racial Contract by Charles Mills is a classic work in political philosophy.

You recommend a book, I recommend a book. Only fair:

The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills http://www.amazon.com/dp/0801484634/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_XUo8tb14PRS3F

>But if the students were really to learn something of the minds of any of these non-Western cultures—which they do not—they would find that each and every one of these cultures is ethnocentric. All of them think their way is the best way, and all others are inferior. ... Only in the Western nations, i.e., those influenced by Greek philosophy, is there some willingness to doubt the identification of the good with one’s own way.

This is a grand, sweeping claim. He quite literally says all other cultures are ethnocentric and believe their ways are the best way. Given that he's using a universal quantifier, one needs but a single counter example for this claim to be refuted. And I submit that Buddhism is that counter example, and any and all individuals acquainted with the basic tenets of Buddhism will instantly recognize the absurdity of his claim that all other cultures and belief systems are inherently self-described as superior to all others. This is quite simply empirically false, and he'd have an extremely difficult time finding much by way of anthropological evidence to support it.
Secondly, there's no need to tell me about the value of a philosophical education. I have one, up to the master's level. I'm set.

LOL.. you're living in denial man. White supremacy rules the world.