From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: The Changed World Unchanged (Re: WARNING)
Date: 15 Oct 92 03:38:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: macc.1992Oct15.033803.14709
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <16880D957.CJR10@CCCVM.CCC.AMDAHL.COM>
cjr10@cccvm.ccc.amdahl.com (Chris Russell) writes:

Responding to a prior exchange between us,

>Memory is an integral part of human evolution

Actually, this is an iffy statement, on the scientific
face of it.

>and remembering our past successes and failures, and more so
>the latter, is necessary.

I assume you're talking about the form of memory we call
history, that is, an interpretation of such primary and
secondary sources as the past leaves us, buttressed by
living memories.

>Perhaps it is cliche to say that we should learn from those
>memories and then move on.

But moving on does not include forgetting, and most of the
time "move on" is a coded signal for "don't let's bother
ourselves with this problem." I think that's an especially
common subtext of the context (racism) under discussion.

>You're right, we should not forget the oppression and
>struggles that have occurred in the past, whether for one of
>the groups with which we identify or are a part, or for
>others groups.  I would not discount or trivialize
>sufferring and oppression, and did not mean to give that
>impression.  Being tortured and put to death is not a trivial
>issue to me.

Good.

>I recognize that many inequities and wrongs still exist and
>it is difficult to separate the threads of present
>oppression from former opression.

I think the more common phenomenon, and especially where
racism is concerned, is that the threads of present
oppression and past oppression cannot be separated from one
another except in trivial ways.  The slavery of legally
(what a perversion of that fine word) buying and selling
human flesh in the open market is gone, but its direct and
lineal descendants, a variety of "legal" means of enforcing
inequality, are as alive as can be today.

Again and again -- and again -- we find in the history of
this oppression that the master class (only the neo-Nazis
use this idea in the open; others use it covertly) has found
a way, yet another way, to make sure the tradition of white
privilege is not weakened.  The bottom line, despite
unbelievable amounts of high-sounding cant, is that the yoke
of oppression is *so* bad, that any talk of "it's getting
better" is mostly an additional affront to the intelligence
of those most directly under the boot.

As you note ...

>And depending upon which part of the world you are currently
>observing, one may argue that conditions have not improved
>at all.  

... at which I see more than failure to improve in the
United States.  In some ways, things are worse now than
ever.

>If I may restate my original (somewhat sarcastic) comment, I
>would ask whether we should always hold against a former
>oppressor,

And I would say that we should, but not in a way that
obscures the present or blinds us to it, which is what
mostly happens, in terms of real change.

>as a class group, for what once was done after that wrong
>has been righted,

In the topic area, righted wrongs amount to a dust mote in a
very large desert of unrighted wrongs.

>particularly when the individuals which comprise the class
>identified as the former oppressor are not now the same
>individuals that were originally responsible?

It seems to me the evidence of one's senses, and not too much
of it, is all it takes to show this is an illusion.
The history of white privilege is integral with the entire
history of European settlement of this hemisphere, complete
and intact down to this very day, isn't it?  The originators
of that oppression are long dead, though in that connection
one might note that the victims of it tended to have rather
less genteel deaths.

Look at one simple item (there are indeed many one might
choose): unemployment.  I don't know the latest statistics,
but I know that if white unemployment rose to half or even a
third (in some cities, even an eighth) of the level of
present black unemployment, the majority would demand that
the government either respond effectively or make it fall
because it didn't.  The present election campaign shows this
(among other things) quite clearly, I think.  And you *know*
that the present campaign is not exactly leaping at the
chance to take up the cause for ending white privilege, as
it does its little egg-dance trying to get into power while
giving away as little of the farm as possible.

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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