Root Cause Core - HSS 2014

Explanation
This is a collection of answers to various Ks for cap, fem, race, and policy positions.
Capitalism
Cap A2 Fem
Capitalism is the root cause of patriarchy economic is used as
a weapon to maintain existing gender hierarchies
Pharr, 98. Suzanne Pharr. Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism. Race, Class, and Gender in the
United States. 6th edition. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9I7ExPk920C&oi=fnd&pg=PA160&dq=capitalism+root+cause+sexism+patriarchy&ots=r8Sy4j_EAN&sig=G0zDnqAQK7YeETkia0qO14HQ1Y#v=onepage&q&f=true clawan
Economics is the great controller in both sexism and racism. If a person

can't acquire food, shelter, and clothing and provide them for children, then that person
can be forced to do many things in order to survive. The major tactic,
world- wide, is to provide unrecompensed or inadequately recompensed
labor for the benefit of those who control wealth. Hence, we see women
performing unpaid labor in the home or filling low-paid jobs, and we
see people of color in the lowest-paid jobs available. The method is
complex: limit educational and training opportunities for women and for people of
color and then withhold adequate paying jobs with the excuse that
people of color and women are incapable of filling them. Blame the
economic victim and keep the victim's self-esteem low through invisibility and
distortion within the media and education. Allow a few people of color
and women to succeed among the profitmakers so that blaming those
who don't "make it can be intensified. Encourage those few who succeed in gaining
power now to turn against those who remain behind rather than to use their resources to make change for
Maintain the myth of scarcity that there are not enough jobs, resources, etc., to go
around among the middle class so that they will not unite with
laborers, immigrants, and the unemployed. The method keeps in place
a system of control and profit by a few and a constant source of cheap
labor to maintain it. If anyone steps out of line, take her/his job away.
Let homelessness and hunger do their work. The economic weapon works. And we end up
all.
saying, I would do this or that be openly who l am, speak out against injustice, work for civil rights, join a
labor union, go to a political march, etc. if l didnt have this job. I cant afford to lose it." We stay in an
Violence against women is

directly related to the condition of women in a society that refuses us
equal pay, equal access to resources, and equal status with males. From this
condition comes men's confirmation of their sense of
ownership of women, power over women, and assumed right to
control women for their own means. Men physically and emotionally abuse
abusive situation because we see no other way to survive ....
women because they can, because they live in a world that gives them permission. Male violence is fed by
their sense of their right to dominate and control, and their sense of superiority over a group of people
who, because of gender, they consider inferior to them.
AT: Intersectionality/Micropolitics
Material relations cannot be changed through personal action
culturalizing class relations displaces any serious challenge to
capitalism
McLaren 4
, Distinguished Fellow Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA urban schooling prof, and ScatamburloDAnnibale, associate professor of Communication U Windsor
(Peter and Valerie, Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference, Educational
Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199) //ghs-nr)
Eager to take a wide detour around political economy, post-Marxists tend

to assume that the principal political points of departure in the current
postmodern world must necessarily be cultural. As such, most, but not all postMarxists have gravitated towards a politics of difference which is largely
premised on uncovering relations of power that reside in the arrangement and
deployment of subjectivity in cultural and ideological practices (cf. Jordan & Weedon,
1995). Advocates of difference politics therefore posit their ideas as bold steps forward in advancing
the interests of those historically marginalized by dominant social and
cultural narratives. There is no doubt that post-Marxism has advanced our knowledge of the
hidden trajectories of power within the processes of representation and that it remains useful in
adumbrating the formation of subjectivity and its expressive dimensions as well as complementing our
understandings of the relationships between difference, language, and cultural configurations. However ,
post-Marxists have been woefully remiss in addressing the constitution

of class formations and the machinations of capitalist social organization. In some instances,
capitalism and class relations have been thoroughly otherized; in
others, class is summoned only as part of the triumvirate of race, class, and
gender in which class is reduced to merely another form of difference.
Enamored with the cultural and seemingly blind to the economic,
the rhetorical excesses of post-Marxists have also prevented them from
considering the stark reality of contemporary class conditions under global
capitalism. As we hope to show, the radical displacement of class analysis in
contemporary theoretical narratives and the concomitant decentering of
capitalism, the anointing of difference as a primary explanatory
construct, and the culturalization of politics, have had detrimental
effects on left theory and practice. Reconceptualizing Difference The manner in
which difference has been taken up within post-al frameworks has tended to
stress its cultural dimensions while marginalizing and, in some cases, completely
ignoring the economic and material dimensions of difference. This
posturing has been quite evident in many post-al theories of race
and in the realm of ludic1 cultural studies that have valorized an account of
differenceparticularly racial differencein almost exclusively superstructuralist terms (Sahay, 1998).
about the relative autonomy of race

have been enabled by a reduction and distortion of Marxian class
analysis which involves equating class analysis with some version of economic determinism. The
But this treatment of difference and claims
key move in this distorting gesture depends on the view that the economic is the base, the
cultural/political/ideological the superstructure. It is then relatively easy to show that the (presumably
non-political) economic base does not cause the political/cultural/ideological superstructure, that the latter
is/are not epiphenomenal but relatively autonomous or autonomous causal categories (Meyerson, 2000, p.
2). In such formulations the cultural is treated as a separate and autonomous sphere, severed from its
embeddedness within sociopolitical and economic arrangements. As a result, many of these
culturalist
narratives have produced autonomist and reified

conceptualizations of difference which far from enabling those subjects most
marginalized by racial difference have, in effect, reduced difference to a question of
knowledge/power relations that can presumably be dealt with (negotiated) on
a discursive level without a fundamental change in the relations of production (Sahay, 1998). At
this juncture, it is necessary to point out that arguing that culture is generally
conditioned/shaped by material forces does not reinscribe the simplistic and
presumably deterministic base/superstructure metaphor which has plagued some
strands of Marxist theory. Rather, we invoke Marx's own writings from both the Grundrisse and Capital in
there is a consolidating logic in the relations of

production that permeates society in the complex variety of its empirical reality. This
emphasizes Marx's understanding of capitalism and capital as a social
relationone which stresses the interpenetration of these categories, the realities which they reflect,
and one which therefore offers a unified and dialectical analysis of history,
ideology, culture, politics, economics and society (see also Marx, 1972, 1976, 1977).2 Foregrounding
the limitations of difference and representational politics does not suggest a disavowal of
which he contends that
the importance of cultural and/or discursive arena(s) as sites of contestation and struggle. We readily
acknowledge the significance of contemporary theorizations that have sought to valorize precisely those
forms of difference that have historically been denigrated. This has undoubtedly been an important
development since they have enabled subordinated groups to reconstruct their own histories and give
have also tended to redefine

politics as a signifying activity generally confined to the realm of
representation while displacing a politics grounded in the mobilization of
forces against the material sources of political and economic
marginalization. In their rush to avoid the capital sin of economism,
many post-Marxists (who often ignore their own class privilege) have fallen prey to an
ahistorical form of culturalism which holds, among other things, that cultural struggles
external to class organizing provide the cutting edge of emancipatory politics.3 In many respects, this
posturing, has yielded an intellectual pseudopolitics that has served
to empower the theorist while explicitly disempowering real
citizens (Turner, 1994, p. 410). We do not discount concerns over representation; rather our point is
that progressive educators and theorists should not be straightjacketed by
struggles that fail to move beyond the politics of difference and
voice to their individual and collective identities. However, they
representation in the cultural realm. While space limitations prevent us from elaborating this point, we
culturalist arguments are deeply problematic both in terms of their

penchant for de-emphasizing the totalizing (yes totalizing!) power
and function of capital and for their attempts to employ culture as a construct that would
diminish the centrality of class. In a proper historical materialist account, culture is
not the other of class but, rather, constitutes part of a more
comprehensive theorization of class rule in different contexts.4 Post-al
theorizations of difference circumvent and undermine any systematic
knowledge of the material dimensions of difference and tend to segregate
questions of difference from class formation and capitalist social relations. We
therefore believe that it is necessary to (re)conceptualize difference
by drawing upon Marx's materialist and historical formulations.
Difference needs to be understood as the product of social
contend that
contradictions and in relation to political and economic organization.

We need to acknowledge that otherness and/or difference is not
something that passively happens, but, rather, is actively produced. In
other words, since systems of differences almost always involve relations of
domination and oppression, we must concern ourselves with the
economies of relations of difference that exist in specific contexts.
Drawing upon the Marxist concept of mediation enables us to unsettle our categorical approaches to both
class and difference, for it was Marx himself who warned against creating false dichotomies in the situation
of our politicsthat it was absurd to choose between consciousness and the world, subjectivity and social
organization, personal or collective will and historical or structural determination. In a similar vein, it is
equally absurd to see difference as a historical form of consciousness unconnected to class formation,
Bannerji points to the need

to historicize difference in relation to the history and social
organization of capital and class (inclusive of imperialist and colonialist legacies).
development of capital and class politics (Bannerji, 1995, p. 30).
Apprehending the meaning and function of difference in this manner necessarily highlights the importance
of exploring (1) the institutional and structural aspects of difference; (2) the meanings that get attached to
categories of difference; and (3) how differences are produced out of, and lived within specific historical
formations.5
AT: Modern Oppression Disproves

Turn - trying to explain away the historical record of capitalism
through appeals to race is a main component of the neoliberal
strategy of sanitation
Reed 2013 professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in race and
American politics. He has taught at Yale, Northwestern and the New School for Social Research. An expert
on racial and economic inequality, he is a founding member of the Labor Party and a frequent contributor
to The Nation (2/25, Adolph, Nonsite, Django Unchained, or, The Help: How Cultural Politics Is Worse
Than No Politics at All, and Why, http://nonsite.org/feature/django-unchained-or-the-help-how-culturalpolitics-is-worse-than-no-politics-at-all-and-why)
The tendency to craft political critique by demanding that we fix our

gaze in the rearview mirror appeals to an intellectual laziness. Marking
superficial similarities with familiar images of oppression is less
mentally taxing than attempting to parse the multifarious, often contradictory
dynamics and relations that shape racial inequality in particular and politics in general
in the current moment. Assertions that phenomena like the Jena,
Louisiana, incident, the killings of James Craig Anderson and Trayvon Martin, and
racial disparities in incarceration demonstrate persistence of oldschool, white supremacist racism and charges that the sensibilities of Thomas Dixon and
Margaret Mitchell continue to shape most Americans understandings of slavery do important,
obfuscatory ideological work. They lay claim to a moral urgency that, as Mahmood
Mamdani argues concerning the rhetorical use of charges of genocide, enables disparaging
efforts either to differentiate discrete inequalities or to generate
historically specific causal accounts of them as irresponsible dodges
that abet injustice by temporizing in its face.38 But more is at work here as well. Insistence on the
transhistorical primacy of racism as a source of inequality is a class
politics. Its the politics of a stratum of the professional-managerial class whose material location and
interests, and thus whose ideological commitments, are bound up with parsing, interpreting and
administering inequality defined in terms of disparities among ascriptively defined populations reified as
groups or even cultures. In fact, much of the intellectual life of this stratum is devoted to shoehorning into
the rubric of racism all manner of inequalities that may appear statistically as racial disparities.39 And
that project shares capitalisms ideological tendency to obscure races

foundations, as well as the foundations of all such ascriptive hierarchies, in historically specific
political economy. This felicitous convergence may help explain why proponents
of cultural politics are so inclined to treat the products and
production processes of the mass entertainment industry as a terrain
for political struggle and debate. They dont see the industrys imperatives as fundamentally
incompatible with the notions of a just society they seek to advance. In fact, they share its
fetishization of heroes and penchant for inspirational stories of individual
Overcoming. This sort of politics of representation is no more than an
image-management discourse within neoliberalism. That strains of an ersatz left
imagine it to be something more marks the extent of our defeat. And then, of course, theres that Upton
Sinclair point.
AT: Permutation/Intersectionality
The permutaton is worse than the aff alone. Intersectionality
strips a class focus of its revolutionary potential by treating it
as another form of difference
McLaren 4
we need to include an important caveat that differentiates our

approach from those invoking the well-worn race/class/gender triplet which
can sound, to the uninitiated, both radical and vaguely Marxian. It is not.
Race, class and gender, while they invariably intersect and interact,
are not co-primary. This triplet approximates what the philosophers might call a category
mistake. On the surface the triplet may be convincingsome people are oppressed
because of their race, others as a result of their gender, yet others because of their class but this is
grossly misleading for it is not that some individuals manifest certain
characteristics known as class which then results in their oppression ;
on the contrary, to be a member of a social class just is to be oppressed and
in this regard class is a wholly social category (Eagleton, 1998, p. 289).
Furthermore, even though class is usually invoked as part of the aforementioned and much
vaunted triptych, it is usually gutted of its practical, social dimension or
treated solely as a cultural phenomenonas just another form of difference. In these
instances, class is transformed from an economic and, indeed, social category to
an exclusively cultural or discursive one or one in which class merely signifies a
subject position. Class is therefore cut off from the political economy of capitalism
and class power severed from exploitation and a power structure in which those
In stating this,
who control collectively produced resources only do so because of the value generated by those who do
Such theorizing has had the effect of

replacing an historical materialist class analysis with a cultural analysis
of class. As a result, many post-Marxists have also stripped the idea of class
of precisely that element which, for Marx, made it radicalnamely its status as a
universal form of exploitation whose abolition required (and was also central to) the
not (Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997, p. 2).
abolition of all manifestations of oppression (Marx, 1978, p. 60). With regard to this issue, Kovel (2002) is
particularly insightful, for he explicitly addresses an issue which continues to vex the Leftnamely the
priority given to different categories of what he calls dominative splittingthose categories of gender,
we need to ask the

question of priority with respect to what? He notes that if we mean priority with respect to
class, race, ethnic and national exclusion, etc. Kovel argues that
time, then the category of gender would have priority since there are traces of gender oppression in all
other forms of oppression. If we were to prioritize in terms of existential significance, Kovel suggests that
we would have to depend upon the immediate historical forces that bear down on distinct groups of people
he offers examples of Jews in 1930s Germany who suffered from brutal forms of anti-Semitism and
The question of
what has political priority, however, would depend upon which
transformation of relations of oppression are practically more urgent
and, while this would certainly depend upon the preceding categories, it would also depend
upon the fashion in which all the forces acting in a concrete situation
Palestinians today who experience anti-Arab racism under Israeli domination.
are deployed. As to the question of which split sets into motion all of the others, the priority
would have to be given to class since class relations entail the state as
an instrument of enforcement and control, and it is the state that shapes and
organizes the splits that appear in human ecosystems. Thus class is both logically and
historically distinct from other forms of exclusion (hence we should not
talk of classism to go along with sexism and racism, and
species-ism). This is, first of all, because class is an essentially manmade category, without root in even a mystified biology. We cannot
imagine a human world without gender distinctionsalthough we can imagine a
world without domination by gender. But a world without class is eminently
imaginableindeed, such was the human world for the great majority of our species time on earth,
during all of which considerable fuss was made over gender. Historically, the difference arises because
class signifies one side of a larger figure that includes a state apparatus whose conquests and regulations
create races and shape gender relations. Thus there will be no true resolution of racism so long as class
society stands, inasmuch as a racially oppressed society implies the activities of a class-defending state.
Nor can gender inequality be enacted away so long as class society, with its state, demands the superexploitation of women's labor. (Kovel, 2002, pp. 123124)
AT: Personal Experience

Experiential knowledge is valuable in its appliclation to a
broader social context, but fetishization of experience as a
means to itself priveleges personal relations over larger
structures
McLaren 4
we are not renouncing the concept of

experience. On the contrary, we believe it is imperative to retain the
category of lived experience as a reference point in light of misguided post-Marxist
critiques which imply that all forms of Marxian class analysis are dismissive of subjectivity. We are
not, however, advocating the uncritical fetishization of experience
that tends to assume that experience somehow guarantees the
authenticity of knowledge and which often treats experience as selfexplanatory, transparent, and solely individual. Rather, we advance a
framework that seeks to make connections between seemingly
isolated situations and/or particular experiences by exploring how they
are constituted in, and circumscribed by, broader historical and social
circumstances. Experiential understandings, in and of themselves, are suspect
because, dialectically, they constitute a unity of oppositesthey are at once unique, specific, and
personal, but also thoroughly partial, social, and the products of historical forces about which
Another caveat. In making such a claim,
individuals may know little or nothing (Gimenez, 2001). In this sense, a rich description of immediate
experience in terms of consciousness of a particular form of oppression (racial or otherwise) can be an
Such an understanding, however, can

easily become an isolated difference prison unless it transcends the
immediate perceived point of oppression, confronts the social system
in which it is rooted, and expands into a complex and multifaceted
analysis (of forms of social mediation) that is capable of mapping out the general organization of social
relations. That, however, requires a broad class-based approach.
appropriate and indispensable point of departure.
AT: Colorblindness
Prioritizing class in revolutionary movements does not
diminish the importance of identity Their cooption argument
rests on the flawed assumption that working class people see
race as central to their identity
McLaren 4
A radical political economy framework is crucial since various culturalist
perspectives seem to
diminish the role of political economy and class forces in shaping the edifice
of the socialincluding the shifting constellations and meanings of difference. Furthermore, none
of the differences valorized in culturalist narratives alone, and certainly not race by itself can explain the
massive transformation of the structure of capitalism in recent years. We agree with Meyerson (2000) that
race is not an adequate explanatory category on its own and that the use of race as a descriptive or
analytical category has serious consequences for the way in which social life is presumed to be constituted
and organized. The category of racethe conceptual framework that the oppressed often employ to
interpret their experiences of inequality often clouds the concrete reality of class, and blurs the actual
structure of power and privilege. In this regard, race is all too often a barrier to understanding the
central role of class in shaping personal and collective outcomes within a capitalist society (Marable, 1995,
pp. 8, 226). In many ways, the use of race has become an analytical trap precisely when it has been
This, of
does not imply that we ignore racism and racial oppression; rather,
an analytical shift from race to a plural conceptualization of racisms
and their historical articulations is necessary (cf. McLaren & Torres, 1999). However,
employed in antiseptic isolation from the messy terrain of historical and material relations.
course,
it is important to note that race doesnt explain racism and forms of racial oppression. Those relations are
best understood within the context of class rule, as Bannerji, Kovel, Marable and Meyerson implybut that
compels us to forge a conceptual shift in theorizing, which entails (among other things) moving beyond the
ideology of difference and race as the dominant prisms for understanding exploitation and oppression.
We are aware of some potential implications for white Marxist criticalists to unwittingly support racist
practices in their criticisms of race-first positions articulated in the social sciences. In those instances,
white criticalists wrongly go on high alert in placing theorists of color

under special surveillance for downplaying an analysis of capitalism and class. These
activities on the part of white criticalists must be condemned, as must
be efforts to stress class analysis primarily as a means of creating a
white vanguard position in the struggle against capitalism. Our position is one that
attempts to link practices of racial oppression to the central, totalizing
dynamics of capitalist society in order to resist white supremacist
capitalist patriarchy more fully.7 We have argued that it is virtually impossible to conceptualize
class without attending to the forms and contents of difference, but we insist that this does not imply that
class struggle is now outdated by the politics of difference. As Jameson (1998, p. 136) notes, we are now in
the midst of returning to the most fundamental form of class struggle in light of current global conditions.
class struggle is not yet a thing of the past and

that those who seek to undermine its centrality are not only morally callous and
seriously out of touch with reality but also largely blind to the needs of the large mass
of people who are barely surviving capital's newly-honed mechanisms of globalized greed (Harvey,
Today's climate suggests that
1998, pp. 79). In our view, a more comprehensive and politically useful understanding of the
contemporary historical juncture necessitates foregrounding class analysis and the primacy of the working
This does not render as secondary

the concerns of those marginalized by race, ethnicity, etc. as is routinely charged by
class as the fundamental agent of change.8
It is often assumed that foregrounding capitalist social

relations necessarily undermines the importance of attending to difference and/or trivializes
struggles against racism, etc., in favor of an abstractly defined classbased politics typically identified as white. Yet, such formulations rest
on a bizarre but generally unspoken logic that assumes that racial and
ethnic minorities are only conjuncturally related to the working class.
This stance is patently absurd since the concept of the working class
is undoubtedly comprised of men and women of different races,
ethnicities, etc. (Mitter, 1997). A good deal of post-Marxist critique is subtly racist (not to mention
post-Marxists.
essentialist) insofar as it implies that people of color could not possibly be concerned with issues beyond
This posits people of color as

single-minded, one-dimensional caricatures and assumes that their
working lives are less crucial to their self-understanding (and survival)
than is the case with their white male counterparts.9 It also ignores the fact that class
those related to their racial or ethnicdifference.
is an ineradicable dimension of everybody's lives (Gimenez, 2001, p. 2) and that social oppression is much
more than tangentially linked to class background and the exploitative relations of production. On this
topic, Meyerson (2000) is worth quoting at length: Marxism properly interpreted emphasizes the primacy
the primacy of the working class as a

revolutionary agenta primacy which does not render women and people of
color secondary. This view assumes that working class means white
this division between a white working class and all the others, whose
identity (along with a corresponding social theory to explain that identity) is thereby viewed as
either primarily one of gender and race or hybrid [T]he primacy of class means
that building a multiracial, multi-gendered international working-class
organization or organizations should be the goal of any revolutionary
movement so that the primacy of class puts the fight against racism and sexism at the center. The
of class in a number of senses. One of course is
intelligibility of this position is rooted in the explanatory primacy of class analysis for understanding the
Oppression is multiple
and intersecting but its causes are not.
structural determinants of race, gender, and class oppression.
AT: Libido/Fanon/Psychoanalysis
Fanons theory of desire is based on flawed, deterministic
psychoanalysis that undermines agency
Gordon 1
(Paul, psycotherapist from the Philadelphia Assosiation,
Psychoanalysis and Racism: The Politics of Defeat, Race
Class 2001 42: 17, accessed via sage //ghs-nr)
Fanon is sometimes held up as an example the example perhaps of how to
approach racism psychoanalytically, of the value of a psychoanalytic `reading' of racism.
While it is true that Fanon wrote in the introduction to his classic text that only a psychoanalytic interpretation of `the black problem' could account for the structure of the complex, it has to be stressed that
his psychoanalysis is a highly idiosyncratic one.20 It is poetic, informed

by philosophy, particularly phenomenology, critically self-re exive,
turned upon itself. At one point, Fanon dismisses Freud's notion of a
universal Oedipus complex, one of the fundamental tenets of
psychoanalysis: Ìt would be relatively easy for me to show', he says, `that in the French Antilles 97
per cent of families cannot produce one Oedipal neurosis.'21 Researchers, he comments, are so imbued
with the complexes of their own society that they feel compelled to nd them duplicated in the people
they study. Fanon, in other words, is very far from being an orthodox follower of psychoanalysis. In his
hands, psychoanalysis becomes something altogether different from the dogma that prevailed either when
he was alive or now. It is somewhat galling, therefore, to witness attempts at the incor- poration and
accommodation of this radical spirit and revolutionary man into a psychoanalytic canon, even an
àlternative' one, or his incarnation as some kind of progenitor of `cultural studies'.22 Contemporary
psychoanalysis The followers of Freud since then have, with few exceptions, been remarkably silent on the
matter of racism. As for the exceptions, their thoughts are of little value, at best banal, at worst insulting.
we are told, racism is but a variant of group hatred or the release of

frustration against a socially permitted object or a form of sibling rivalry or a fear of
Thus,
shit, and so on.23 At a more rareed level, the prominent French psychoanalyst Janine ChasseguetSmirgel nds the origins of the Nazi genocide in the Oedipus complex, an actualisation, albeit an extreme
one, of the supposed universal unconscious phantasy24 to strip the mother's body of its contents in order
to return to that place that one originally inhabited. It is this phantasy, Chasseguet-Smirgel claims, that lies
at the heart of Nazi ideology and, in particular, the notion of a 1,000 year Reich cleansed of Jewry.25 As
for Joel Kovel's White Racism: a psychohistory, rst published in 1970, one must, I think, applaud the
ambitious attempt to produce a work rooted both in psychology, psychoanalysis in particular, and in the
material historical world.26 At the same time, Kovel was, at the time he wrote the book, much too wedded
which, at times at least, seemed to offer no

escape from a psychoanalytic fatalism or determinism. In his preface to
to a highly orthodox reading of psychoanalysis
the 1984 edition, Kovel distanced himself from his earlier position, rejecting any notion of an innate
impulse towards aggression and therefore racism and declaring in favour of the idea of a `peculiarity
in the state of being human which makes us so prone to racism', the degree of susceptibility being socially,
culturally and historically determined.27 Whatever the limitations of his work, Kovel's remains a unique
attempt to understand racism with a foot in both camps that of the mind and that of society. Racism,
the unconscious and the body But in the thirty years since Kovel wrote, that attempt to relate mind and
society has been fractured by the advent of postmodernism, with its subsumption of the
material/historical, of notions of cause and effect, to what is transitory, contingent, free- oating,
evanescent.
Psycho- analysis, by stepping into the vacuum left by the abandonment of all
metanarrative, has tended to put mind over society. This is particularly noticeable in the
work of the Centre for New Ethnicities Research at the University of East London, which purports to
straddle the worlds of the academy and action by developing projects for the local community and within
in marrying psychoanalysis and postmodernism, on the

basis of claiming to be both scholarly and action oriented, it degrades scholarship and
undermines action, and finds in discourse analysis a language in which metaphor passes for
education generally.28 But,
reality. The Centre's director, Philip Cohen, who established it in 1992 as the New Ethnicities Unit, first set
out his project in systematic form in a lengthy contribution, entitled `The perversions of inheritance:
studies in the making of multi-racist Britain', to Multi-Racist Britain, a book he co-edited with Harwant
The crux of Cohen's position seems to be this: racism does

not become unconscious because it is institutionalised; rather, racism
becomes institutionalised because it operates unconsciously , `behind the
Bains in 1988.29
backs' of the subjects which it positions within these impersonal structures of power.30 His second key
Cohen acknowledges that ideologies have a

`material history', a context of political and economic forces, but he does so only to
dismiss such material history with a theoretical sweep of his hand.
point has to do with ideology.
What he calls `the deep structure of ideology, its generative grammar', is, he makes clear, ìn no way
dependent on these factors'. It belongs, rather, to the language of the unconscious, the `discourse of the
Cohen's particular psychoanalytic

framework draws heavily on post-Kleinian developments and the idea of race as
an èmpty category' put forward by Michael Rustin, a colleague of Cohen's at the Univer- sity of
Other, embodied in myths, rituals and fantasy'.31
East London. Rustin, a sociologist considerably in uenced by psychoanalytic thought, especially the work of
Melanie Klein and the British Kleinian tradition, argues that racism is what Kleinians call a psychotic
attribute. This does not mean that such attributes are held only or mainly by people designated psychotic,
but that psychotic attributes of mind are ùniversal, original and latent components of human mentality;
never wholly banished from the self; liable to become more salient in conditions of fear and anxiety than in
more benign settings; and of course more central and pathogenic in some individuals than in others,
sometimes for explicable reasons in an individual's psychic history'. Racism is, in this schema, the
expression of `powerful doses of bad psychic stuff'. acism should be understood, Rustin says, as a state of
mind rather than in terms of its `phenomenal content' and, in this view, racist states of mind are but one of
many possible forms of irrational and negative projections of group feeling. `Race' is, as mentioned above,
Rustin
claims that racism's power lies at an unconscious level and thus any
attempt to challenge it `by anti-racist teaching or propaganda' is bound to fail.32 For
an empty category which can be lled with whatever people want to fill it with. Like Cohen,
Cohen, one of the principal ways in which the racist imagination works is through fantasies about the body.
Popular racism, he writes, does not rely on theories about society but is à behavioural ideology, one which
works through everyday cultural practices to shape basic bodily images of Self and Other'.33 In particular,
Cohen argues, racism operates through an idealised fantasy image of

the white body and, the converse, its `monstrous negation'. If I understand
him cor- rectly and it must be said that much of the time it is not at all clear what he is saying Cohen
argues that the alienation involved in labour `sets in motion' a compensatory desire for a different kind of
body, one that is self-generating and dependent on nothing outside itself. `The habitus is magically
transformed into a kind of second womb that will give birth to a new man or woman, the embodiment of
living labor freed once and for all from the dead hand of alienation.'34 What is being racialised or
nationalised is the maternal body or, rather, the body in its maternal functions related to the womb or the
breast. As he says elsewhere, `the lethal aspect of racial harassment is not the material damage done, but
the hidden wounds in icted as it sets in motion the ancient regression from room to womb and turns the
womb into a kind of tomb'.35
The libidinal explanation for racism removes a material

problem and individualizes it that precludes action
Gordon 1
Given that racism works at an unconscious level, it follows, in Cohen's view,
that strategies to challenge it at a conscious level are doomed to failure.
They are bound to fail precisely because they are rational and fail to appreciate that the power of racism
To deinstitutionalise racism `will not in itself

abolish the power of the racist imagination' which will continue to ourish through the
lies in the fact that it is unconscious.
media of popular culture long after its state forms have withered away.42 Àll the evidence to date',
Cohen writes elsewhere, `shows that the racist imagination is not

accessible to rationalist pedagogies, and almost effortlessly resists
their impact'. What is all this evidence? Certainly it is neither presented

nor cited.43 Rustin, too, claims that classroom teaching can have the effect of ìncreasing kinds of
defensive organisation'. But he cites no evidence other than referring to Cohen's work and seems to
believe that all ànti- racism' in education is a matter of seeking to change attitudes, rather than opening
racism is taken out of

society and material reality and lodged very firmly in the minds, the
unconscious minds, of individual subjects. Although in his 1988 article, `The perversions of
up new ways of looking at the world.44 In Cohen's schema, then,
inheritance', he distanced himself from a position that afforded absolute autonomy to the ideological, and
thus ran the risk, as he acknowledged, of `substituting changes in personal attitude or societal values for
is less
and less sense of any political project of anti-racism and an almost
exclusive concentration on dealing with the beliefs and attitudes of
racists. Ideology has become all. In placing racism in the unconscious, Cohen is very much in line with
structural reforms', this is, in fact, where he has ended up. As his work has developed, there
the most orthodox of psychoanalysis which claims to nd ìnside' individuals (whatever that might mean
the notion of an ìnter- nal world' is always taken for granted and never really put into question) what
one of the
earliest Marxist critiques of Freud's theories made precisely this point,
accusing Freud of rendering individual what was irredeemably
social.45 In the same vein, and particularly germane to the present discussion, the refusal of
actually belongs in society, in what psychoanalysis calls `the external world'. Indeed,
psychoanalysis to acknowledge social and political reality, to see what is in front of it, is exemplied in the
following story.
The application of psychoanalysis to race is false its based

on unverifiable pseudoscience their co-option arguments
presents a one dimentional, essentialist view of social
relations
Gordon 1
Cohen's work unavoidably raises the question of the status of psychoanalysis as a social or political theory, as distinct from a clinical one. Can
psychoanalysis, in other words, apply to the social world of groups, institutions,
nations, states and cultures in the way that it does, or at least may do, to individuals? Certainly there is now a
considerable body of literature and a plethora of academic courses, and so on, claiming that psychoanalysis is a social
it is now a commonplace to hear of nations

and societies spoken of in personalised ways. Thus `truth commissions' and the like,
theory. And, of course, in popular discourse,
which have become so common in the past decade in countries which have undergone turbulent change, are seen as
forms of national therapy or catharsis, even if this is far from being their purpose. Never- theless, the question remains:
does it make sense, as Michael Ignatieff puts it, to speak of nations having psyches the way that individuals do? `Can a
nation's past make people ill as we know repressed memories sometimes make individuals ill? . . . Can we speak of
nations ``working through'' a civil war or an atrocity as we speak of individuals working through a traumatic memory or
The problem with the application of psychoanalysis to social

institutions is that there can be no testing of the claims made. If
event?'47
someone says, for instance, that nationalism is a form of looking for and seeking to replace the body of the mother one
has lost, or that the popular appeal of a particular kind of story echoes the pattern of our earliest relationship to the
The pioneers of psychoanalysis, from Freud onwards, all

derived their ideas in the context of their work with individual patients
and their ideas can be examined in the everyday laboratory of the therapeutic encounter where the validity of
an interpretation, for example, is a matter for dialogue between therapist
and patient. Outside of the con- sulting room, there can be no such verification
maternal breast, how can this be proved?
process, and the further one moves from the individual patient, the
less purchase psychoanalytic ideas can have. Outside the therapeutic encounter,
anything and everything can be true, psychoanalytically speaking. But if everything is true, then nothing can be false
and therefore nothing can be true. An example of Cohen's method is to be found in his 1993 working paper, `Home rules',
subtitled `Some re ections on racism and nationalism in everyday life'. Here Cohen talks about taking a `particular line of
thought for a walk'. While there is nothing wrong with taking a line of thought for a walk, such an exercise is not
necessarily the same as thinking. One of the problems with Cohen's approach is that a kind of free association, mixed with
deconstruction, leads not to analysis, not even to psychoanalysis, but to . . . well, just more free association, an endless,
indeed one might say pointless, play on words. This approach may well throw up some interesting associations along the
way, connections one had never thought of but it is not to be confused with political analysis. In `Home rules', anything
and everything to do with `home' can and does nd a place here and, as I indicated above, even the popular lm Home
Cohen's method also relies to no

little extent on various caricatures. There is the parody of an
undifferentiated anti-racism which is always crude and simplistic in
its explanations, always dogmatic and authori- tarian in its prescriptions. Ìt is no longer possible', Cohen
Alone is pressed into service as a story about `racial' invasion.
claims at one point, `to call a spade a spade . . . because the level of connotations, which is always open to multiple
associations, including racist ones, has been shut down ``By Order''.'48 No one would deny that much that is called antiracism has been ill-considered or counter-productive or simple-minded, but to suggest that this is the whole story and
this is the picture one gets from Cohen's account appears simply bad faith. Nor does one get any sense from his
account that some forms of anti- racism have been subjected to the most rigorous critique from other anti-racists,
there is the distorted depiction of teachers bearing the antiracist message. In Cohen's world, they are always middle class,
relying on a `deficit model' of working-class culture, and engaged in a
`civilising mission', believing themselves to be `the bringers of reason
and tolerance to those gripped by unreason, prejudice and ignorance'.49 Doubtless such attitudes exist, but
Cohen's depiction is so one-dimensional; it has no room for complexity
or difference. If it did, he could not take up the position that he does, of the one who really knows. It is also a
notably in this journal. So, too,
position that takes Cohen on to dangerous ground in which, at times at least, it seems as though all authority is bad (in
the language of Foucault, it is tutelary and constitutes surveillance) and all resistance to authority good, or at least
understandable.50
This is the worst form of defeatism abandoning the potential

for collective action of the working class based on junk science
makes oppression inevitable
Gordon 1
Cohen is in many ways representative of those `radicals' who, in response to the
setback of the radical political project of the 1960s and 1970s, abandoned not just the Marxist
framework within which they had worked, but anything which they saw as in any way
connected to the idea of the Enlightenment. It is here, goes the thinking, that the roots of so much that is
wrong with radical politics are to be found, for it is with the Enlightenment that men (yes, men) begin to
think that they, rather than God or fate, may be able to make history. But for the postmodernists, this is
not only hubris, it is a hubris that leads inexorably to the nightmares of the twentieth century, in particular
the Holocaust and the Gulag. Cohen adds to this the claim that the very notion of ènlightenment' (his
inverted commas) is deeply impli- cated in a practice of reason which is historically rooted in certain
The
postmodernists' problem is that they cannot live with dis- appointment. All the
tragedies of the political project of emancipation the evils of Stalinism in
particular are seen as the inevitable product of men and women trying to create a better
society. But, rather than engage in a critical assessment of how , for instance,
radical political movements go wrong, they discard the emancipatory
project and impulse itself. The postmodernists, as Sivanandan puts it, blame modernity for
dominant forms of European race thinking. Reason, he appears to be saying, is racist.57
having failed them: `the intellectuals and academics have ed into discourse and deconstruction and
representation as though to interpret the world is more important than to change it, as though changing
To justify their flight from a

politics holding out the prospect of radical change through self-activity, the disappointed
intellectuals find abundant intellectual alibis for themselves in the very
work they champion, including, in Cohen's case, psychoanalysis. What Marshall Berman says of
Foucault seems true also of psychoanalysis; that it offers à world-historical alibi' for
the passivity and helplessness felt by many in the 1970s, and that it has nothing but
the interpretation is all we could do in a changing world'.58
contempt for those naive enough to imagine that it might be possible for modern humankind to be free.
At every turn for such theorists, as Berman argues, whether in sexuality, politics, even our imagination, we
are nothing but prisoners: there is no freedom in Foucault's world, because his language forms a seamless
web, a cage far more airtight than anything Weber ever dreamed of, into which no life can break . . .
There is no point in trying to resist the oppressions and injustices of

modern life, since even our dreams of freedom only add more links to our chains; however, once
we grasp the futility of it all, at least we can relax.59Cohen's political
defeatism and his conviction in the explanatory power of his new faith of psychoanalysis lead him
to be contemptuous and dismissive of any attempt at political
solidarity or collective action. For him, `communities' are always ìmagined', which, in
his view, means based on fantasy, while different forms of working-class
organisation, from the craft fraternity to the revolutionary group, are dismissed as
`fantasies of self-sufficient combination'.60 In this scenario, the idea that
people might come together, think together, analyse together
and act together as rational beings is impossible. The idea of a
genuine community of equals becomes a pure fantasy, a `symbolic
retrieval' of something that never existed in the first place: `Community is a
magical device for conjuring something apparently solidary out of the thin air of modern times, a
mechanism of re-enchantment.' As for history, it is always false, since `We are always dealing with
invented traditions.'61 Now, this is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense at that. Is history àlways
false'? Did the Judeocide happen or did it not? And did not some people even try to resist it? Did slavery
exist or did it not, and did not people resist that too and, ultimately, bring it to an end? And are
communities always ìmagined'? Or, as Sivanandan states, are they beaten out on the smithy of a people's
all attempts to legislate against ideology are

bound to fail because they have to adopt `technologies of surveillance
and control identical to those used by the state'. Note here the Foucauldian
collective struggle?Furthermore,
language to set up the notion that all `surveillance' is bad. But is it? No society can function without
surveillance of some kind. The point, surely, is that there should be a public conversation about such
moves and that those responsible for implementing them be at all times accountable. To equate, as Cohen
does, a council poster about `Stamping out racism' with Orwell's horrendous prophecy in 1984 of a boot
stamping on a human face is ludicrous and insulting. (Orwell's image was intensely personal and
Cohen
reveals himself to be deeply ambivalent about punitive action against
racists, as though punishment or other firm action against them (or anyone else transgressing agreed
destructive; the other is about the need to challenge not individuals, but a collective evil.)
social or legal norms) precluded ùnderstand- ing' or even help through psychotherapy.It is indeed a
strange kind of ànti-racism' that portrays active racists as the `victims', those who are in need of `help'.
But this is where Cohen's argument ends up. In their move from politics to the academy and the world of
postmodernists may have simply exchanged one grand narrative,

historical materialism, for another, psychoanalysis.62 For psychoanalysis is a grand
`discourse', the
narrative, par excellence. It is a theory that seeks to account for the world and which recognises few limits
the claimed radicalism of psychoanalysis, in the hands of the

is not a radicalism at all but a prescription for a politics of quietism,
fatalism and defeat. Those wanting to change the world, not
just to interpret it, need to look elsewhere.
on its explanatory potential. And
postmodernists at least,
AT: Ross
It is impossible to attribute symbolic racist motives to policy
and individuals in policy debates
Sniderman and Tetlock 86
[Paul M. Sniderman, Stanford University and UC Berkeley Survey Research Center, and Philip E. Tetlock, UC
Berkeley, 1986, Symbolic Racism: Problems of Motive Attribution in Political Analysis, accessed 3/31/14]
At what point is one justified in concluding that racist motives

determine a policy preference? Not surprisingly, different groups set different
thresholds of proof. Some civil rights activists View opposition to
affirmative action quotas as inspired in large part by racism. Some
conservatives see the same programs as threats to fundamental
(nonracial) values such as equality of opportunity. Dis- agreements of this sort, of course, are the
stuff of politics. One persons reason is frequently anothers rationalization
(cf. Mills, 1940; Tetlock, 1985). Symbolic racism theory, in its fundamental sense, is an
attempt to apply the methods of social science. to the problem of
political motive attribution. It is therefore important to consider an especially basic question:
to what extent are political debates over the true motives" underlying
racial policy preferences resolvable through the techniques of causal
analysis available to the social sciences? The answer to this question is by no means
obvious. Problems of political motive attribution may roughly be divided into easy and hard cases. An
example of the former is old-fashioned racism; of the latter, symbolic racism. Consider old-fashioned
racism: what analytical tools might the investigator draw upon to determine whether traditional racism
underlies opposition to quotas? The classical strategy is to locate attitudes toward quotas in a nomological
network of relevant constructs-constructs that should theoretically relate to attitudes toward quotas (cf.
Cronbach & Meehl, 1955). Thus, one would explore the relations among affect toward blacks, crude
stereotyping of blacks, policy stands that contemporary American political culture would label as
unambiguously racist (erg., support for segregation), and policy stands whose meaning is politically
controversial (e.g., minority job quotas). Now a case such as this, though easy in principle, may in
practice be quite hard. (What third variables" moderate the relation between traditional racism and
To what extent does the relationship hold when one

controls for alternative explanations such as traditional values or
attitudes toward the federal government?) Even so, a hard case, such as
symbolic racism, represents a quite different order of difficulty . The
difficulty is as follows: There is no nomological net in the case of symbolic
racism. Many of the motive attributions are contestable, not merely
by the person to whom they are attributed, but also by other
analysts generally. And they are inherently contestable because the
symbolic racism approach begs the questionhow, after all, is one to
tell whether opposition to affirmative action is racist or not when, in
the case of symbolic racism, racism is not related to an agreed-on sign
of racism, for example, crude stereotyping? Lacking positive evidence of racist
motivation, one might turn to negative evidence. Perhaps one could infer racist
opposition to quotas?
motivation by a process of elimina- tionby ruling out other plausible motives for, say, opposing
affirmative action. Thus, an investigator might propose that because the well-being of the individual
respondent is not directly threatened by quotas, the individual is not driven by concern for his or her self
Negative arguments, however, are inherently weak ways to

resolve problems of motive attribution (cf. Tetlock & Manstead, i985). The
variety of alternative motives for taking a particular policy stand is
interest.
practically endless. How exactly should one go about operationalizing

"self-interest"-objective life circumstances (the presence or absence of a quota
system in ones place of work), perceived life circumstances (do the respondents believe, in
competing for scarce societal resources, they are at a comparative disadvantage by virtue of
being white?), or the perceived life circumstances of individuals or groups with whom the
respondent identifies (e.g., friends, family, neighbors)? Moreover, self-interest is only one class of
motivational counterhypothesis. Perhaps the respondent objects out of belief that color-blind decisionmaking procedures provide the fairest method of guaranteeing equality of opportunity (or social harmony)
in the long run. Or perhaps the respondent perceives quota systems as one more manifestation of an
increasingly intrusive and legalistic federal bureau- cracy that restricts individual freedom and market
Symbolic racism researchers have only skimmed the surface of

such potential motivational counter-hypotheses. But, supposing they
went deeper: Is the attribution of symbolic racism falsifiable? We
believe not. The list of counter- hypotheses is, in principle, infinite. Furthermore,
the flow of causality, even when studied by the most sophisticated
statistical modeling procedures, will remain highly ambiguous as long
as symbolic racism researchers reserve the right to label a wide range
of (nonracial) values and policy preferences as racist. Suppose, for
example, that one were to find that all the variance in white opposition
to government assistance for blacks could be statistically explained as
a function of commitment to economic individualism, antipathy toward the
efficiency.
federal government, and the belief that market mechanisms are the most efficient method of alleviating
Assume, moreover, that affect toward blacks did not

even emerge as a significant predictor of opposition to government
assistance to blacks. Would this at first glance, quite devastating evidence count
against the symbolic racism thesis? Not necessarily. Symbolic racism researchers
could respond that such data only buttress their case. After all, the data
reveal a connection between traditional values (support for economic individualism
and capitalism) and opposition to assistance for blacks, and these traditional values are
the very essence of symbolic racism. In short, as currently formulated, symbolic racism
theory fails the fundamental test expected of any scientific
theory falsifiability. It is unclear what evidence it would take to convince symbolic racism
the plight of the poor.
researchers they are wrong.
Gender
Gender A2 Cap
Analyses of capitalism alone cannot confront gendered
violence only including interrogations of sexism can solve
Hartmann, 76. Heidi Hartmann. Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex. Signs, Vol.
1, No. 3, Women and the Workplace: The Implications of Occupational Segregation (Spring, 1976), pp. 137169. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173001 clawan
The emergence of capitalism in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries

threatened patriarchal control based on institutional authority as it destroyed many old institutions and created new ones, such as a "free"
market in labor. It threatened to bring all women and children into the
labor force and hence to destroy the family and the basis of the power of men over women (i.e., the
control over their labor power in the family).2 If the theoretical tendency of pure capitalism would have
been to eradi- cate all arbitrary differences of status among laborers, to make all laborers equal in the
why are women still in an inferior position to men in the labor

market? The possible answers are legion; they range from neoclassical views that the process
marketplace,
is not complete or is hampered by market imperfections to the radical view that production requires
hierarchy even if the market nominally requires "equality."3All of these explanations, it seems to me,
ignore the role of men-ordinary men, men as men, men as workers-in maintaining
women's inferiority in the labor market. The radical view, in particular, emphasizes
the role of men as capitalists in creating hierarchies in the production
process in order to maintain their power. Capitalists do this by
segmenting the labor market (along race, sex, and ethnic lines among others) and
playing workers off against each other. In this paper I argue that male workers
have played and continue to play a crucial role in maintaining sexual
divisions in the labor process. Job segregation by sex, I will argue, is the
primary mechanism in capitalist society that maintains the superiority
of men over women, because it enforces lower wages for women in the
labor market. Low wages keep women dependent on men because they
encourage women to marry. Married women must perform domestic chores for their hus- bands. Men
benefit, then, from both higher wages and the domestic division of
labor. This domestic division of labor, in turn, acts to weaken women's position in the labor market.
Thus, the hierarchical domestic division of labor is perpetuated by the
labor market, and vice versa. This process is the present outcome of
the continuing interaction of two interlocking systems, capitalism and
patriarchy. Patriarchy, far from being vanquished by capitalism, is still
very virile; it shapes the form modern capitalism takes, just as the
development of capitalism has transformed patriarchal institutions. The
resulting mutual accommodation between patriarchy and capitalism has created a vicious circle for
women. My argument contrasts with the traditional views of
both neoclassical and Marxist
economists. Both ignore patriarchy, a social system with a material base. The
neoclassical economists tend to exonerate the capitalist system,
attributing job segregation to exogenous ideological factors, like sexist
attitudes. Marxist economists tend to attribute job segregation to
capitalists, ignoring the part played by male workers and the effect of
centuries of patriarchal social relations. In this paper I hope to redress the balance. The
line of argument I have outlined here and will develop further below is perhaps incapable of proof. This
paper, I hope, will establish its plausibility rather than its incontrovertability.
Gender A2 Race
Patriarchy root cause of racism differing gender relations
causes antagonism between racial groups
Ingraham, 94. Chrys Ingraham, July 1994. The Heterosexual Imaginary: Feminist Sociology and
Theories of Gender. Sociological Theory, Vol. 12, No. 2. http://www.jstor.org/stable/201865 clawan
Patriarchy is also historically variable, producing a hierarchy of

heterogender divisions which privileges men as a group and exploits
women as a group. It structures social practices which it represents as natural and
universal and which are reinforced by its organizing institutions and
rituals (e.g., marriage). As a totality, patriarchy organizes difference by
positioning men in hierarchical opposition to women and differentially
in relation to other structures, such as race or class. Its continued success
depends on the maintenance of regimes of difference as well as on a range of material forces. It is a
totality that not only varies cross-nationally, but also manifests
differently across ethnic, racial, and class boundaries within nations. For
instance, patriarchy in African-American culture differs significantly from
patriarchy in other groups in U.S. society. Even though each group shares certain
understandings of hierarchical relations between men and women, the historical relation of AfricanAmerican men to African-American women is dramatically different from that among Anglo-European
Among African- Americans, a group which has suffered

extensively from white supremacist policies and practices, solidarity as
a "racial" group has frequently superseded asymmetrical divisions
based on gender. This is not to say that patriarchal relations do not exist among African
Americans.
Americans, but that they have manifested differently among racial-ethnic groups as a result of historical
necessity. Interestingly,
racism has sometimes emerged in relation to

criticisms of African-American men for not being patriarchal enough by
Euro-American standards. As a totality, patriarchy produces structural effects that situate men
differently in relation to women and to each other according to history.
Race
Race A2 Anthro
Conceptions of racism and the racial Other provide the
foundation for the oppression and exploitation of nonhuman
animals perm is key
Eckersley, 98. ROBYN ECKERSLEY, Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social
and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia. Beyond Human Racism. Environmental Values,
Vol. 7, No. 2 (May 1998), pp. 165-182. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30301627 clawan
In a recent critical examination of the anthropocentrism debate, Tim Hayward has suggested that the term anthropocentrism is something of a
misnomer and that we need a more appropriate vocabulary to capture the main gist of the critique (Hayward 1997, 49). It is certainly true that
the terms anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism have generated as much heat as light, and critics have continued to recycle a range of
familiar arguments to show that non- anthropocentrism is impossible (how can we avoid being human-centred?), unnecessary (Human Welfare
Ecology can perform all the necessary work [e.g. Wells 1993]) and undesirable (non-anthropocentrism is an insult to humanism [e. g. Bookchin
l995]).2 Obviously, we cannot avoid being anthropocentric if all it is taken to mean is, without explanation and qualification, simply being
human-centred in the sense of perceiving and interpreting the world from a human vantage point. If it is accepted that we cannot break out
of the hermeneutic circle, then it is naive to expect that we can avoid being anthropocentric in this formal sense of the term. Thus, one might
readily accept that humans are the source and centre of meaning in the world (that we are interpreting animals), while rejecting the
proposition that this must necessarily mean that humans are the sole centre of value or agency. However, this argument about the impossibility of formal non-anthropocentrism misses the main point of the substantive, moral critique of anthropocentrism. Yet the confusion is
perhaps understandable, since the core term anthropocentrism carries multiple meanings. For this reason alone (although there are other
reasons as well) we should probably dispense with it and find another that reduces the considerable burden of explanation and qualification.
The point, as Lynch himself has succinctly put it in another context, is

to establish the possibility of a human point of view - a view of the
world possible to creatures like us - which does not place anything
objectionably human at the centre of concern (Lynch 1996, 152). By
objectionably human I would suggest viewpoints which reveal human
prejudices based on some form of invidious comparison. Such
viewpoints can serve to legitimate the domination of both humans and
nonhumans - a point which connects human emancipatory movements
with the radical ecology movement. What is common to this broader
emancipatory critique is a rejection of the view that the other must in
some way be like us before we accord him/her/them/it any recognition
or respect. Human chauvinism (coined by the Routleys [1979] and favoured by Hayward and many others) seems to come closest
to describing the crux of the problem, although I am suggesting here that human racism might possibly do better (at least descriptively analytically they are the same) since the critique of human racism (and the defence of its corollary, nonracist humanism) is less likely to be
the particular kind of prejudice that is

revealed in racism, while structurally similar to (and often linked with)
the hierarchical dualisms and logic of sexism, is often directed towards
more radical forms of difference or otherness (i.e, the differences
between particular human races and cultures can be much greater
than the differences between men and women in any given race or
culture). This would seem to be more relevant to a discussion of the
even more radical forms of difference which may be found between
humans and nonhumans. Whatever descriptive label we might choose to replace anthropocentrism - human
chauvinism, human racism, human speciesism or perhaps even human colonialism -the analytical point is the same. That is, the
excluded groups are excluded because they lack something that is
possessed and deemed by the more powerful group to be the measure
of worth (such as reason, civilisation, moral agency, or language). As
Plumwood and many other ecofeminist philosophers have pointed out, these comparisons reveal a deep
structure of mastery based on self/other dualisms which create a web
of incorporations and inclusions (Plumwood 1993, 143). And it is therefore a fatal flaw , as Evemden (1985,
misinterpreted as an attack on humanism per se. Moreover,
10) calls it, for environmentalists to try to squeeze some of their moral constituency (say apes and some other mammals) into the dominant
Conforming to the requirements and

modes of rationality of the dominant culture has rarely served the
criteria, reckoning that saving some is better than saving none.
interests of diverse minority cultures. Such a strategy is even less likely

to permit the flourishing of biological diversity. Now it must be emphasised that there is
nothing in the critique of human racism which demands that we cannot celebrate the dignity of each and every human, the achievements of
humankind, and what is special about the human race, and we may (indeed ought) go to great lengths to help our own kind. But we ought not,
as part of those celebrations of specialness, belongingness and compassion for each other, thereby ignore the needs of other beings who are
The line
between patriotism and xenophobia is sometimes a fine one and it is
likewise not always immediately obvious when the line between
humanism and human racism is crossed. This is because nowadays it is not so common to find
not like us when we have a choice, least of all persecute them, simply because they are not of our own kind.
environmental destruction justified in terms of a Promethean model of human destiny, a hierarchy of creation or as a means of enlarging
Just as racism has become more subtle
human empire vis-a-vis the rest of nature.

(for example, willful
blindness or indifference towards the structural disadvantage that is suffered by some racial minorities has tended to replace the more
so too has human racism become

more subtle. These days, many unnecessary and environmentally destructive
developments are more usually justified as necessary to create
employment or improve human welfare in some way, in which case
critics of development are easily typecast as either indifferent or
hostile to the needs of the unemployed or humans generally. (Here the problem of
outlandish expressions of racial superiority of the nineteenth century),
invidious comparison takes a different form. We no longer persecute the other because it is not like us. Instead, some of us are admonished for
caring for nonhuman others because they are not like us.) Thus destructive development is justified as natural and inescapable, since there
are no viable alternatives. It is under circumstances such as these, when otherwise worthy humanist sentiments are made to perform an
ideological function (i.e., concealing and/or delegitimising alteratives) that humanism is transformed into human racism. That is, it is this
refusal to make an effort to acknowledge or explore alternatives which might possibly enable the mutual fulfillment of human and nonhuman
needs that should alert us to the prejudice of human racism. IS IT HUMANS PER SE OR THEIR CHARACTERISTICS? It is noteworthy that the form
of reasoning employed by Lynch and Wells to undermine non-anthropocentrism (now read ecocentrism) is exactly the reverse of the form of
reasoning that has been typically employed to undermine anthropocentrism (now read human racism). That is,
critics of
anthropocentrism
or speciesism, such as the Singer (1975), Routleys (1979), Regan (1983), Rodman (1977), Evemden
(1985), Noske (1989), Fox (1990), Eckersley (1992) and Plumwood ( 1993) have pointed to the self-serving way in which a human racist
morality selects certain special human characteristics or traits (language, tool making, rationality, moral sensibility or whatever) as the basis
of allocating moral considerability but nonetheless fails to systematically and consistently apply such criteria. That is, when it is shown that
some members of the human community lack the requisite characteristics or that some members of the nonhuman community possess them,
there appears to be no genuine attempt to adjust practices to live up to the moral criteria. In effect, the moral criteria is revealed to be an
admit attempt to disguise what is really a basic prejudice in favour of humans simply because of the fact of their humanness. And as we have
seen, Lynch and Wells openly and wholeheartedly embrace this so-called prejudice, this simple fact of humanness, as the fundamental
reject attempts to develop supposedly more objective characteristics of moral considerability (such as sentience), because they
wish to avoid making moral choices on the basis of the presence or
absence of such characteristics. Indeed, they point out that to exclude
certain humans from moral considerability simply because they lack
particular characteristics is to introduce a hierarchy of moral worth
among humans - something that most of us would find repugnant. It is the
modality of moral concern. They also
fact of humanness which should count. Of course, not all of the critiques of human racism mentioned above are necessarily also suggesting
that we ought to rely on objective characteristics and thereby introduce a hierarchy of moral worth (only Singer and Regan do this). Rather,
the primary point of the exercise has been to expose the self-serving and inconsistent character of human racism. Nonetheless, defenders of
ecocentrism face a real problem here, which has recently been noted by Tim Hayward in his critical examination of the anthropocentrism
debate. The problem as Hayward puts it, has to do with a lack of concern with nonhumans but the term anthropocentrism can all too
plausibly be understood as meaning an excessive concern' with humans (Hayward 1997, 57). Despite repeated attempts by ecocentric
theorists to emphasise that non-anthropocentrism should be understood as a more inclusive ethical orientation than humanism, critics have
continued to interpret it as a perspective that is opposed to humanism and as necessarily antihumanist or misanthropic. Why has this
message been so difficult to convey? If there is a moral bedrock in western, post-Enlightenment political thought, it is the idea of the inherent
dignity and value of each and every human being. This is_ fundamental to the democratic revolution and to the doctrine of human rights. As
Agnes Heller explains, the very notion of humankind raises the claim that there are some common or universal norms which should apply to
all humans, something which links us in a moral, rather than merely species, sense. Indeed, the very idea of humankind is constituted by such
norms; it is raising the claim that humankind per se 'should become a social cluster (Heller 1987, 37). For example, the idea of crimes against
humanity - central to the Nuremberg Trials - invokes the idea that there are certain rights or entitlements which all humans should be free to
enjoy qua humans. The verdict in those trials was widely accepted not simply as a matter of revenge against the perpetrators but rather
because it was considered just in some sublime sense - as a vindication and honouring of our commitment to the dignity and worthiness of the
human subject and to our collective moral connectedness. As Heller put it: We feel it; we are aware of it; we are committed to it. But we
cannot explain it (Heller 1987, 37). It is this moral commitment to the community of humankind, and each of its members, which lies behind
the impulse to go to the aid of our own kind, and if necessary, save our own kind ahead of other species. It is the same commitment which
often feels some resistance to the idea that we should care more for other species, as if caring is a zero-sum game. Caring more for other
species - especially in situations of scarcity and conflict- is assumed to mean that we must care less for our own kind. It is the same
commitment which lies behind the moral indignation that is so widely expressed in relation to the idea that the pets of the affluent may be
growing fat while many less fortunate humans are starving. And it is the same commitment which informs the critique of deep ecology by
social ecologists and many on the left. Bookchins recent book Reenchanting Human- ity is a typically feisty and eloquent reiteration of the
importance of our humanist heritage and a fierce tirade against any drift towards anything which might dilute this commitment. To Bookchin
and many others, humanism can never be arrogant, as David Ehrenfeld (1981) has suggested. However, this commitment to humanism need
not be an impasse for ecocentrism, if ecocentrism is understood as a moral perspective that is opposed to human racism rather than
humanism per se. In any event, as Hayward (1997, 57) notes,
in most cases of environmental conflict,
the problem is not an excessive concern with humans but rather a lack
of concern for some humans and the rest of the environment by a
privileged minority of humans in positions of power - a point, Bookchin and many on the
left have laboured. Val Plumwood - one of the pioneers of the human chauvinist critique - has also rejected those critics of
anthropocentrism who merely condemn a blanket humanity in ways
which obscure the fact that the forces directing the destruction of
nature and the wealth produced from it are owned and controlled
overwhelmingly by an unaccountable, mainly white, mainly male, elite
(Plumwood 1993, 12). Seen in this light, the primary task of ecocentric ethics and politics
should be to cast the critique of human racism in terms which expose
these power relations while also exposing the limited moral horizons,
or lack of moral inclusiveness, which informs the exercise (or to follow
Foucault, the production) of power.
Note: the term human racism more closely means anthropocentrism, not normal racism. When
Eckersley uses the term racism alone, she means regular xenophobia-type racism.
Contemporary movements against anthropocentrism are

overwhelmingly white only by integrating a discussion of race
and countering racism can the negs movement succeed
Hamanaka and Basile, 05. Sheila Hamanaka is a childrens book author and illustrator.
She has studied anti-racism with The Peoples Institute and is a member of the Justice and Unity Campaign
of WBAI. Her books include Grandparents Song, All the Colors of the Earth, and The Journey: Japanese
Americans, Racism and Renewal. She is currently working on an animal liberation novel for children. Tracy
Basile is a freelance journalist who also teaches animal and nature courses at Purchase College, SUNY, and
Pace University. June/July 2005. Racism and the Animal Rights Movement. Satya Magazine, A Magazine of
Vegetarianism, Environmentalism, and Animal Advocacy. http://www.satyamag.com/jun05/hamanaka.html
clawan
We love animals. We hate racism. So whats to talk about? In fact, two South
Asian activists I interviewed both felt that they had not experienced any overt racism in the animal
rights (AR) movement. Yet, like the peace and environmental movements, the AR movement is
predominantly white and middle class. Andrew Rowan, a VP at the Humane Society of
the U.S., said surveys indicate the AR movement is less than three percent people of color. In April, 316
people from over 20 states attended the first Grassroots AR Conference in NYC, but the people of color
caucus numbered only eight. If no one is racist, why is the movement largely segregated? Is it us or
them? Most of us want to be inclusive. But why? Is it because it is the right thing to do? Because then
our march would look like a beautiful rainbow? Because we have to be diverse to get funding? Pattrice
a
predominantly white movement will not and indeed cannot bring about
animal liberation. Jim Mason, a well-known white AR activist and author of An Unnatural Order
Jones, a white AR activist who has a page about racism at bravebirds.org states, The fact is that
(reprinted by Lantern Books, 2005) which looks at the history of racism as part of dominionism, agrees.
the imbalance keeps AR from being a mass movement. It adds

to the perception that it is just another trivial concern of the
comfortable classes, which repels people who might otherwise be
involved. But is it just looking white that keeps people of color away from the movement? Or are
He feels
white activists who lack awareness making people of color feel uncomfortable? Patrick Kwan, founder and
Executive Director of the Student Animal Rights Alliance, said, At the first demonstration I went to
someone asked me Do you speak English?and that was in New York City! Hes gotten these comments
from white staffers of pretty big AR organizations: I cant believe how Asians treat animals and I dont
like Asians. Kris, an African American activist, describes how it feels to experience tokenism: They
havent done outreach to the community, but they callHey we need

a black face at the protest. I go, but its not a unifying way, its a
marginalizing way of organizing. Youre not one of us, but we need
you.
Are AR Organizations Serious About Outreach? According to Patrick, People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the only major group doing active outreach into communities of color. A
PETA employee concurs, PETAwith its outreach to Hispanics, African Americans, and Indians, has made
fantastic inroads into those communities. PETA assigns several staff members to this work and has two
separate websites, one in Spanish and another, PETAWorld.com, geared toward African Americans. On the
other hand, Kris calls it lip service when one organization failed to put the human capital and provide
enough leadership into their efforts to reach the African American community. Large organizations have
there is a
preconception that people of color do not care about animals. But , he
says, surveys have shown that African Americans are actually more
likely to consider vegetarianism than whites after being informed about
the plight of farmed animals. Surveys of Latinos and Asians also show positive attitudes
no excuse, says Patrick. Do People of Color Care About Animals? According to Patrick,
toward animal protection. Olivia, who grew up in the projects and lives in Spanish Harlem, reports that
people eagerly take her flyers. Another African American activist found people snapped up samples of
vegan cooking. A young white woman active in the PETA KFC campaign noticed that older white men
never take our flyers. The people who show the most interest in talking to us are African American men
and women and Latino men and women, and young white people. Another self-defeating attitude is that
people of color are too busy organizing around civil rights or other issues. But, as in the white
communities, only a small percentage of people are active. There are still millions of others out there. The
attempts by white AR
activists to set the agenda for other cultures bears an uncomfortable
resemblance to the historical pattern of suppression by dominant
nations. Instead of exporting democracy, AR activists are exporting
their cultural concepts of the proper relationship between human and
nonhuman animals. Lets step back for a moment from what may seem to outsiders like a
Big Picture Its one thing for a white person to pass out vegan flyers. But
tempest in a teapot. Okay, the AR movement needs to be more diverse, but whats all the fuss about?
we are
engaged in a battle for life. For the compassionate, it begins with the lives of
more than 52 billion land animals slaughtered globally every year, and
expands to the lives of millions of humans lost to the wars and
privations of a vastly unequal society where darker and poorer are
often synonymous. Causing or benefiting from this situation are
powerful militarized states, multinational corporations, and an intricate
web of civil and penal institutions so heartlessly interlocked they are often referred
to in popular culture as one entity: The Machine. Its an unequal
battle. Animals have no power. Defending them are pockets of
Indigenous peoples and a small AR movement. The same could be said for every
Cant we all just get along? I opened with a quote from Sun Tzu because as we see it,
injustice: small groups confronting gargantuan tasks, and sometimes, each other. Indian writer Arundhati
Roy sagely notes what she calls the N-G-O-ization of the movement. (NGO = Non-Governmental
Organization.) Governments and corporations, lacking roots in communities but needing to stem social
unrest, toss out thousands of carrots to activists who otherwise might have channeled their anger into
revolutionary movements. Closer to the ground and quicker on their feet, they can perform social services
more efficiently than huge government bureaucracies. They tend to the sores of social injustice like
overworked allopathic doctors: treating the symptoms while, some observe, the patient dies. Racism =
Given the sheer might of The

Machine, youd think everyone would be talking about how to get
power. After all, it is power that keeps animals oppressed. But is power just a
Racial Prejudice + Power The Peoples Institute
numbers game? When a million people demonstrated for peace in New York in February 2003 I was struck
by two things: how white the crowd was, and how the next day everyone was gone and the war in Iraq
proceeded. David Billings, a white anti-racist trainer with The Peoples Institute and historian of the
Racism is
a powerful tool of disorganization that has been used against potential
allies for centuries. It justified the European invasion, enslavement and genocide of Native
Americans and Africans. Many immigrant European workers and landless
grassroots movement says, Nowadays we know how to mobilize, but not how to organize.
peasants traded their class consciousness for the fabricated notion of

whiteness and were rewarded with land grants and a chance to share
in the profits of slavery. Even now textbooks hide the long history of
African, Indigenous, and multiracial rebellion. The mid-19th century
saw the rise of the Abolitionist movement as whites joined in; a few
privileged whites also formed the humane movement, which
advocated for animals but ignored the plight of slaves. Historically humane
education was upheld as a means of cultivating moral values amongst white children, especially boys who
would become tomorrows leaders. Is todays liberal commitment to help those less fortunate rooted in this
Well-meaning whites, sometimes armed with

the comment I do not see colorwhich often causes people of color to smile inwardly
continue to build essentially segregated organizations because to them
overcoming racism is still about cultivating moral values and not
sharing power. Whereas to oppressed peoples of color, race has always
been about power. They do not fight for social justice to make white people feel better about
themselves. The Machine also understands that race is about power , and its
generals also read Sun Tzu. Much the way the suffering of animals is
invisibilized, so too is the suffering of peoples of color and Indigenous
peoples. Beneath the radar of mainstream media, these groups more often get the stick instead of the
same racist, missionary tradition?
carrot. David Hilliard, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, recounted in his April 04 interview
with Satya, some 40 are still in prison, 28 of us were murdered. They were killed because they were
black and wanted Power to the People, not because they were vegetarian. In Colombia, almost 4,000
labor organizers have been murdered in the last 15 years. In one state in India, 4,000 farmers committed
suicide between 1999-2004 in desperation over free trade and privatization policies. This is a far cry from
most large AR organizations, which model themselves after corporations

and in fact are characterized by the same institutional racism: no matter
how colorful their brochures, the vast majority of positions of power are held by
white people, albeit nice ones who like animals. According to one activist, outreach to
communities of color is approached like a marketing challenge, not as
a desire to share power. A corporation is a legal person, but without a mind. As such, no one is
accountable for de facto segregation unless someone is stupid enough to use the n word. The Peoples
Institute, in its Undoing Racism workshops, asks social workers and other participants Do you make
money off the poor? One by one, people nod their heads. Is it possible that AR workersfrom the CEOs of
large nonprofits who may make a third of a million dollars, to grassroots grunts who make minimum wage
are making money off of animals? The Peoples Institute states: Any organization that is not intentionally
anti-racist inevitably benefits white people. Where Will We Find Power? Language to the contrary, white
people are the minority on the planet. As the minority it only makes sense to want to hook up with the
majority with great urgency, as if billions of lives, and the future of the earth itself, were at stake. Global
agribusiness, which feeds The Machine will only be undone by a powerful global movement. The truth
hidden by Eurocentric media is that some of the most dynamic, holistic political organizing on the planet is
happening in the developing world. You should know these names: Vandana Shiva, Wangari Maathai,
Alfredo Palacio, Evo Morales, Lula da Silva. Twelve thousand landless peasants recently marched in Brazil.
The 2004 World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai, India drew 200,000 people. Across the street was another
forum for groups excluded from the WSF for political reasons. Some were militant revolutionary groups,
some werent. The 2005 WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil heard Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela.
Chavez, a former military officer, is an advocate for the poor and landless. If the AR movement wants
power, it should study how President Chavez got it. It should join in on the ground floor of the global
peoples movement, which is inherently anti-agribusiness, to become part of the agenda. Maybe, just
maybe, power lies with the powerless. Asked how he would build a united front with Indigenous cultures
that might eat animals but who live in balance with nature, Jim Mason replied: I would start with
campaigning to insure their survivalthe survival of their native lands, their natural habitat, their
traditional ways of living. The dominant cultures that are destroying the living world willif they ever wake
upneed to draw from the older cultures to make the changes in thinking needed to stop the destruction
dominant white culture also writes

humane history. It starts with European philosophers and reform movements. Native
concepts of human equality with, or even inferiority to, animals are
and develop a culture of balance with nature. The
omitted. Indigenous cultures which do not divide humans and animals into classes, into exploiter and
exploited, do not have the need for the concept of animal rights. Tiokasin Ghosthorse, producer of First
Voices (WBAI, 99.5FM Thursdays at 10 a.m.) calls for nature rights. Onondaga elder Oren Lyon says the
term human rights is a misnomer. In 1999, AR activists tried to physically stop the Makah people in the
Pacific Northwest from resuming their whale hunting after an endangered species ban was lifted. Kent
Lebsock, Executive Director of the American Indian Law Alliance, said non-Indian activists focused not on
commercial whalers but on people who were reclaiming their traditional way of life. It was taken as a racist
act of cultural suppression. They showed a lack of understanding of what we have experienced in the last
500 years. Lebsock said, During the incident, every Indian person I spoke to thought the Makah were
This bitter, complex dispute has many lessons. One is that there is
a potential for alliances with progressive, traditionalist groups which
already exist within these communities, and which could use the
access to media, etc. that privileged whites often have. Because
racism in the movement goes unaddressed, we all lose and the
animals lose.
right.
Race A2 Fem
Color-blind critiques of patriarchy will inevitably fail only by
evaluating the effects of racism can feminists movements
succeed
Roberts, 92. DOROTHY E. ROBERTS, Associate Professor, Rutgers University School ofLawNewark. B.A. 1977, Yale Col- lege;J.D. 1980, Harvard Law School. RACISM AND PATRIARCHY IN THE
MEANING OF MOTHERHOOD. JOURNAL OF GENDER & THE LAW.
http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/genderlaw/01/roberts.pdf clawan
Understanding the connection between racism and patriarchy expands the feminist project. Its goal cannot be to eliminate the subordination of women, divorced from issues of race. Racism
subordinates women.198 "If feminism is to be a genuine struggle to
improve the lives of all women, then all feminists must assume responsibility for eliminating racism."' 99 The struggle against racism is
also a necessary part of uniting women in political solidarity. Ra- cism divides
women. 20 0 Some feminists may find their motivation to oppose racism within the dreams of feminism: "It
can spring from a heartfelt desire for sisterhood and the personal, intellectual realiza- tion that racism
among women undermines the potential radicalism of feminism. ' 2 I I do not mean that feminists should
Because racism is part of the

structure of patriarchy in America, anti-racism is critical to dismantling
it.202 Difference is such a pleasant word. It applies to everyone. It does not call anyone to action. We
need only acknowledge that it exists, and then move on with our preconceived plans. Racism is quite
different. It destroys. It condemns. It speaks of power. It demands a
response. Adrienne Rich calls on feminists to use the word, racism: If black and white
feminists are going to speak of female accounta- bility, I believe the word
racism must be seized, grasped in our bare hands, ripped up out of the
sterile or defensive consciousness in which it so often grows, and transplanted so that it
can yield new insights for our lives and our movement .... I thought of trying to
see anti-racism as an important extra-curricular project.
claim other language in which to describe, specifically, the white woman's problem in encountering the
black woman; the differences that have divided black and white women; the misnam- ing or denial of those
differences in everyday life. But I am con- vinced that we must go on using that sharp, sibilant word; not to
paralyze ourselves and each other with repetitious, stagnant doses of guilt, but to break it down into its
elements, comprehend it as a female experience, and also to understand its inextricable connections with
Acknowledging each other's differences is not enough.2 0 4

Rela- tionshipsofpowerproduceourdifferences.205 We must face the awful history and
reality of racism that helps create those differences. We do not need
to focus less on gender; we need to understand how gender relates to
race. If we see feminism as a "liberation project" that seeks the
emancipation of all women, then we must address the complexity of
forces that bind us.2 0
gynephobia.203
Contemporary feminism fails to take into account matters of

race that eliminates space for black female identity
Carby, 82. Hazel V. Carby is professor of African American Studies and of American Studies at Yale
University. White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood.
https://crabgrass.riseup.net/assets/163126/versions/1/carby%20white%20woman%20listen.pdf clawan
Much contemporary debate has posed the question of the relation

between race and gender, in terms that attempt to parallel race and gender divisions. It can
be argued that as processes, racism and sexism are similar. Ideologically for example, they
both construct common sense through reference to "natural" and

"biological" differences. It has also been argued that the categories of race and gender are
both socially constructed and that, therefore, they have little internal coherence as concepts. Furthermore,
it is possible to parallel racialized and gendered divisions in the sense that the possibilities of amelioration
through legislation appear to be equally ineffectual in both cases. Michele Barrett, however, has pointed
out that it is not possible to argue for parallels because as soon as historical analysis is made, it becomes
obvious that the institutions which have to be analyzed are different, as are the forms of analysis needed.
We would agree that the construction of such parallels is fruitless and often proves little more than a mere
academic exercise; but there are other reasons for our dismissal of these kinds of debate. The experience
of black women does not enter the parameters of parallelism. The fact that black women are subject to the
simultaneous oppression of patriarchy, class, and "race" is the prime reason for not employing parallels
most
contemporary feminist theory does not begin to adequately account
for the experience of black women, we also have to acknowledge that it is not a simple
that render their position and experience not only marginal but also invisible. In arguing that
question of their absence, and consequently the task is not one of rendering their visibility. On the contrary
we will have to argue that the process of accounting for their historical
and contemporary position does, in itself, challenge the use of some of
the central categories and assumptions of recent mainstream feminist
thought. We can point to no single source for our oppression. When white feminists
emphasize patriarchy alone, we want to redefine the term and make
it a more complex concept. Racism ensures that black men do not
have the same relations to patriarchal/capitalist hierarchies as white
men. In the words of the Combahee River Collective: We believe that sexual politics
under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women's lives as are the
politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex
oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is
such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of
rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression. Although we are feminists and
lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalisation that white
Our situation as Black people necessitates

that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not
women who are separatists demand.
need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle
together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism. (Combahee
River Collective 1983, 213) It is only in the writings by black feminists that we can find attempts to
theorize the interconnection of class, gender, and race as it occurs in our lives, and it has only been in the
autonomous organizations of black women that we have been able to express and act upon the
Many black women had been

alienated by the nonrecognition of their lives, experiences, and
herstories in the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM). Black feminists
have been and are still demanding that the existence of racism must
be acknowledged as a structuring feature of our relationships with
white women. Both white feminist theory and practice have to rec- ognize
that white women stand in a power relation as oppressors of black
women. This compromises any feminist theory and practice founded on
the notion of simple equality.
experiences consequent upon these determinants.
Race A2 Irigaray
Irigarays critique ignores the role of race in shaping gender
relations whiteness takes the place of masculinity
Hom, 13. SABRINA L. HOM, Lecturer of Philosophy at Georgia College. Between Races and
Generations: Materializing Race and Kinship in Moraga and lrigaray. Hypatia vol. 28, no. 3 (Summer 2013)
clawan
Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo argues that to claim an ontological status for sexual difference is to construct
sexual difference as unmarked by race (Bloodsworth-Lugo 2007, 45); this claim is plausible only if sexual
difference is taken as fixed rather than dynamic, and it fails to acknowledge the ways in which race is
I will take sex as

an irreducible, ontological difference, but I will argue that it is marked
and transformed through racialization. Seshadri-Crooks argues for a Lacanian
materialized on and through the sexed body. With Irigaray and Seshadri-Crooks,
conception of race that at once acknowledges the intricate relation between race and sex and recognizes
important differences between the workings of the two. She acknowledges that race is not like sex in that
sex is indeterminate and exceeds language (Seshadri-Crooks 2000, 4) and is in the Real, sexual
difference is significant and existent in human bodies before cultural meaning is imposed upon them, as
humans are always generated on the condition of the existence of at least two sexes of human being, and
Whereas Irigaray argues

persuasively that we should take sex as irreducible difference, the
genesis of race in the history of colonialism attests obviously to its
arbitrariness.3 As theorists like Evelynn Hammonds and Sander Gilman demonstrate, race is
426 Hypatia always already marked by this difference.
attributed through sexed means such as the miscegenation taboo and the myth of black hypersexuality
(among other means) (Gilman 1985; Hammonds 1994). We should note, then, that Seshadri-Crooks agrees
Irigarays notoriously problematic claim in I Love to You

that sexual difference is an immediate natural given ... the problem of
race is a secondary problem (Irigaray 1995, 47). It is the second claim, that
race can then be analytically separated from sex and subordinated as
a problem, that fails to comprehend the ways that racialization morphs
the sexed body. Seshadri-Crooks argues that race should be understood both as
functioning through sexual difference and as a consolation for the
disappointments of sex (or, more precisely, that whiteness is a
consolation for the disappointments of masculinity) (Seshadri-Crooks 2000, 43;
with the first clause of
59).4 Seshadri-Crooks and I follow theorists such as Lacan in taking phallogocentric and racial dominance
to be rooted in the specular; sexual and racial hierarchies depend largely on visible differences, always
read as lacks. In classical psychoanalytic thought, the woman is always marked by the nothing to see, the
visible lack of a phallus. Sexual difference offers an inferior other that promises to shore up the male ego,
but since the spectacle of castration is simultaneously anxiety- producing (as castration looms as a threat
to masculinity) and mysterious (since the female sex is marked not by a lack but by a genuine difference,
one that may not be immediately visible but that is nonetheless present as a troubling excess to the phallic
sexual difference is not fully successful as a means of assuring

male wholeness and value. Where language necessarily fails to capture
the excess of sex, racial differen- tiation and the logic of colonialism
promise to present an other who can be wholly mastered. Although the
phallic ideal of power and hardness is ultimately impossible to sustain
even for a man, whiteness is posited as a new form of specular
assurance. Here whiteness signifies precisely the wholeness, value,
and purity that, as Irigaray argues, the imperfectly flat mirror of
woman fails to project (Irigaray 1985). Femininity represents lack because to specular logic
system),
women have nothing to see; the enigma of the female sex, however, which would be better said to exceed
The rhetoric of race

as visibility, however, promises an unambiguous visual signifier of
the gaze, can of course be reappropriated as a threat to phallic specularity.
inferiority in the other; the inade- quacy of the non-white subject is to

be immediately and fully disclosed to the eye.5 Rather than taking race as a
secondary adjunct or perfect analog to sex, Seshadri- Crooks argues that whiteness
functions as a master signifier in its own right, signifying civilization,
dominance, reason, beauty, value, wholeness, and purity. This
argument demands that psychoanalytic feminists theorize race as well
as sex, and that that these differences be theorized intersectionally rather than assimilated to a single
axis of hierarchy (that is to say, a logic of the same). Clearly the addition of an other so-called phallus to
the hierarchy of sexual difference is transformative to the work of post-Lacanian theorists like Irigaray; as
with the recognition of other axes of difference, the hierarchy and array of subject positions produced
At least in our time,

cognizant of our colonial location, we cannot speak of women, for
instance, or of relations between men and women, without recognizing
that race and sex together shape these in ways that exceed Irigarays
account. Although many axes of difference similarly index the field of
sexual difference, probably few will do so as deeply as does race, which at
least in the current understanding has a stronger claim than, say, class to be in the body not only as
a visible mark but as a heritable quality in the blood.6 This, after all, is
the truth of any con- ventional description of racial passing: he may look and
act white, but hes really not that is to say, one or both of his parents were non-white, and this
characteristic is inherited in his blood if not on his skin. Hence the importance
therein are greatly multiplied and complicated. Sabrina L. Hom 427
of the rhetoric of purity as an element of whiteness (Haney-Lopez 2006); this rubric is sometimes used to
disavow and disinherit the children of mixed-race relationships under the one-drop rule, at other times to
it functions, along with

the miscegenation taboo, to make sense of the otherwise obscure truth
of blood that is, in the colonial context, always already mixed. These
legal conventions, along with the tortuous discourse around authentic
race in the blood, demonstrate that racialization is dependent on
controlling and rationalizing blood.
juridically whiten mixed children (see Lawrence 2003). At any rate,
Race A2 Education
Current education privileges the white perspective and
undermines the success of nonwhite people
Marable, 98. Manning Marable. Racism and Sexism, chapter 16 in Race, Class, and Gender in
the United States. 6th edition. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9I7ExPk920C&oi=fnd&pg=PA160&dq=capitalism+root+cause+sexism+patriarchy&ots=r8Sy4j_EAN&sig=G0zDnqAQK7YeETkia0qO14HQ1Y#v=onepage&q&f=true clawan
What we see in
general is a duplicitous pattern that argues that African Ameri- cans
and other people of color are moving forward, whereas their actual
material conditions are being pushed back. Look at Americas education system.
The number of doctoral degrees being granted to Blacks, for example,
is falling. The Reagan administration initiated budget cuts in education,
replacing government grants with loans, and deliberately escalated unemployment
for low-income people, making it difficult to afford tuition at
professional schools. Between 1981 and 1995, the actual percentage of young African American
What are some other characteristics of the new racism we are now encountering?
adults between the ages eighteen and twenty-six enrolled in colleges and universities declined by more
the
dropout rate for nonwhite high school students exceeds 40 percent.
Across the United States, more than fifteen hundred teenagers of color drop out
of school every day. And many of those who stay in school do not receive
adequate training to prepare them for the realities of todays high-tech
labor market. Despite the curricular reforms of the 1970s and 1980s, American education
re- tains a character of elitism and cultural exclusivity. The
overwhelming majority of faculty at American colleges are white males:
less than 5 percent of all college faculty today are African-Americans. The basic pattern of
elitism and racism in colleges conforms to the dynamics of Third
World colonialism. At nearly all white academic institutions, the power relationship between
whites as a group and people of color is unequal. Authority is invested in the hands of
a core of largely white male administrators, bureaucrats, and
influential senior faculty. The board of trustees or regents is dominated
by white, conservative, affluent males. Despite the presence of academic courses on
minorities, the vast majority of white students take few or no classes that
explore the heritage or cultures of non-Western peoples or domestic
minorities. Most courses in the humanities and social sciences focus
narrowly on topics or issues from the Western capitalist experience and
minimize the centrality and importance of non-Western perspectives.
Finally, the university or college divorces itself from the pressing
concerns, problems, and debates that relate to Blacks, Hispanics, or
even while working-class people. Given this structure and guiding philosophy, it shouldnt
surprise us that many talented nonwhite students fail to achieve in such a
hostile environment.
than 20 percent. A similar crisis is occurring in our public school systems. In many cities,
Straight-up Affs A2 Race

Political action is key to confront institutionalized racism
individual rejections fail to address forms of oppression such
as drug policy
Marable, 98. Manning Marable. Racism and Sexism, chapter 16 in Race, Class, and Gender in
the United States. 6th edition. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9I7ExPk920C&oi=fnd&pg=PA160&dq=capitalism+root+cause+sexism+patriarchy&ots=r8Sy4j_EAN&sig=G0zDnqAQK7YeETkia0qO14HQ1Y#v=onepage&q&f=true clawan
What else intensifies racism and inequality in the 1990s? Drugs. We are
witnessing the complete disintegration of America's inner cities, the home
of millions of Latinos and Blacks. We see the daily destructive impact of gang violence inside our
for twenty years

the federal government has done little to address the crisis of
drugs inside the ghetto and the inner city. For people of color, crack
addiction has become part of the new urban slavery, a method of disrupting lives
neighborhoods and communities, which is directly attributable to the fact that
and regulating masses of young people who would otherwise be demanding jobs, adequate health care,
this insidious cancer

has been unleashed within the very poorest urban neighborhoods, and
that the police concentrate on petty street dealers rather than
on those who actually control and profit from the drug traffic?
How is it possible that thousands and thousands of pounds of illegal
drugs can be transported throughout the country, in airplanes, trucks, and
automobiles, to hundreds of central distribution centers with thousands of employees, given the
ultra-high-tech surveillance and intelligence capacity of law
enforcement officers? How, unless crack presents a systemic form of
social control? The struggle we have now is not simply against the system. It's against the kind of
insidious violence and oppressive behavior that people of color carry out against each other. What Im
talking about is the convergence between the utility of a certain type
of commodity-addictive narcotics-and economic and social problems
that are confronting the system. That is, the redundancy, the unemployment of millions
of people of color, young women and men, living in our urban centers. The criminal justice
system represents one time of social control. Crack and addictive
narcotics represent another. If youre doing organizing within the Black
community, it becomes impossible to get people and families to come out to your community center
when there are crack houses all around the building. It becomes impossible to continue
political organizing when people are afraid for their own lives. This is
the new manifestation of racism in which we see a form of social
control existing in our communities, the destruction of social
institutions, and the erosion of people's ability to fight against the
forms of domination that continuously try to oppress them.
better schools, and control of their own communities. Is it accidental that

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Explanation

Economics is the great controller in both sexism and racism. If a person

Violence against women is

Eager to take a wide detour around political economy, post-Marxists tend

post-Marxists have been woefully remiss in addressing the constitution

about the relative autonomy of race

narratives have produced autonomist and reified

there is a consolidating logic in the relations of

have also tended to redefine

culturalist arguments are deeply problematic both in terms of their

contradictions and in relation to political and economic organization.

Bannerji points to the need

AT: Modern Oppression Disproves

The tendency to craft political critique by demanding that we fix our

that project shares capitalisms ideological tendency to obscure races

we need to include an important caveat that differentiates our

Such theorizing has had the effect of

we need to ask the

AT: Personal Experience

we are not renouncing the concept of

Such an understanding, however, can

white criticalists wrongly go on high alert in placing theorists of color

class struggle is not yet a thing of the past and

This does not render as secondary

It is often assumed that foregrounding capitalist social

This posits people of color as

the primacy of the working class as a

his psychoanalysis is a highly idiosyncratic one.20 It is poetic, informed

we are told, racism is but a variant of group hatred or the release of

which, at times at least, seemed to offer no

in marrying psychoanalysis and postmodernism, on the

The crux of Cohen's position seems to be this: racism does

Cohen acknowledges that ideologies have a

Cohen's particular psychoanalytic

Cohen argues, racism operates through an idealised fantasy image of

The libidinal explanation for racism removes a material

To deinstitutionalise racism `will not in itself

Cohen writes elsewhere, `shows that the racist imagination is not

their impact'. What is all this evidence? Certainly it is neither presented

racism is taken out of

The application of psychoanalysis to race is false its based

it is now a commonplace to hear of nations

The problem with the application of psychoanalysis to social

The pioneers of psychoanalysis, from Freud onwards, all

Cohen's method also relies to no

This is the worst form of defeatism abandoning the potential

To justify their flight from a

There is no point in trying to resist the oppressions and injustices of

all attempts to legislate against ideology are

postmodernists may have simply exchanged one grand narrative,

the claimed radicalism of psycho- analysis, in the hands of the

At what point is one justified in concluding that racist motives

To what extent does the relationship hold when one

Negative arguments, however, are inherently weak ways to

practically endless. How exactly should one go about operationalizing

Symbolic racism researchers have only skimmed the surface of

Assume, moreover, that affect toward blacks did not

researchers they are wrong.

The emergence of capitalism in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries

why are women still in an inferior position to men in the labor

both neoclas- sical and Marxist

Patriarchy is also historically variable, producing a hierarchy of

Among African- Americans, a group which has suffered

racism has sometimes emerged in relation to