I wrote this post long before the recent Wall Street news came out. That only makes it more interesting.
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Look closely at this chart. My 1981 research insight was that we were, via internal colonialism, deindustrialization and planned underdevelopment, beginning the project of concentrating wealth in the hands of the transnationals and a few individuals. The government, I announced, was unpatriotic and no longer even pretended to be for the people, and the concept of the nation was now irrelevant. As the economy weakened (and yes, it was and is weakening, not growing), the Republic would wither away, leaving only the state as guardian of the corporations and their top beneficiaries. I was not believed, of course, but I was perfectly right.
Now we will take note of related news from the same issue of the same magazine. I am sure you have heard that Barack Obama’s viability as a Presidential candidate shows that racism no longer exists in “America;” but it seems that median per capita income in the U.S. was, in 2005, $16,629 for Blacks and $28,946 for whites. Check it out. See if you can find an excuse for it that isn’t racial.
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(Many Brazilians, for instance, – said Professor Zero in a heavily sarcastic tone, having had some difficult experiences with race in that country – would say it wasn’t “because of” race but “because of” class, or that it wasn’t racial but about color, or that it only seems “racial” to Americans because Americans call darker people Black, while Brazilians just see them as people. They would explain this to you and then turn to their Afro-Brazilian servant and say “Boy! Shine my shoes!” But since they are Brazilian, not American, since they claim not to see the servant as Afro-Brazilian, and since somewhere in their distant past they have mingled blood, what they are doing is not about race, it is about class or color, which makes it unproblematic. And after all, they are nice people and can afford not to see race – the police take care of that dirty work for us, you see.)
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
The key is for nice people to become better people. I’m not so sure that we need to “see race” in order to become better. What is necessary is to see the injustice of the system that reproduces inequalities (along racial lines). However, that can be complex and hard to see. So the politics of “seeing race” can be introduced to help people to see the inequalities. It’s a way of daubing the probable locations of the inequalities with fluroescent markers. Thus people only need to see the race to see the inequality, henceforth. You see the black man and you feel guilty.
Perhaps this helps?
I’m not sure it goes a long way to humanising those who are systematically discriminated against, but maybe it does.
Except that if discrimination is by class or color instead of “race” it is still discrimination.
I don’t fully see the contours of the Brazilian situation, though. The arguments made make some sense *except* for the fact that as the Afro-Brazilian activists point out, the police see race there perfectly well. I could go on in a confused manner but I haven’t figured it out. This paragraph is residue of me fuming about a paper.
The problem there is:
– Brazilian scholars who claim B. doesn’t have race
– I think that’s a strategy of denial
– They say it’s American to think that because Americans see race and assume everyone else does
– I note that in fact the racial systems in the two places look a LOT the same, despite the fact that this is supposed to be a projection from me
– Various Afro-Brazilian types share my point of view, but they are invalidated because they are supposed to be under the influence of Americans
– etc. it is all very circular and there has to be some way out of the labyrinth. I would think I were crazier if this Puerto Rican hadn’t given a talk at this conference I went to in May that made the same points I would about the sophistry of all this, but better. I wish she would publish that – she said she hadn’t thought to do so…
So it’s much larger than my vituperations in the post.
I’d say though that what one would need to do is see the inequality and the behavior that perpetuates it. E.G. if I’m rude to anyone then I am rude, which is one thing, and if I am systematically rude to a particular group then I am also discriminating, and if I say well wait, I couldn’t be, because I don’t recognize this group to exist as such, then I am engaging in some form of sophistry, a strategy of denial … oder nicht?
Yes. I see what you mean!
You seem to be encountering a similar defence mechanism to that which I have encountered whereby white Westerners (obviously Australians and Americans and possibly the British to some degree) assert that they are out to seek, analyse and destroy colonial oppression in the third world. It is their mission, you know. From a Dog.
Yet I see that a very different standard is applied over there as compared to over here. Abuse isn’t really abuse over here, because we have a liberal democracy and everyone makes their own choices, don’t you know. But looking at someone strange or having an aloof attitude is certainly abuse over there.
And so it goes.
Defense mechanism – yes. Although I am confused by it. They are convinced they see race differently than the way it is seen in the U.S. I see no evidence of this and I think they just don’t know the U.S. too well. Then I wonder, maybe they are more familiar with the regular U.S. than I.
Yet there is something to it: they claim foreigners and Afro-Brazilians are not qualified to speak about race in Brazil, only Euro-Brazilians are, and they feel they do not see race, so they don’t. But if they don’t, then how do they know to disqualify Afro-Brazilians to disqualify from speaking?
USA has an historical tradition of new-leftist identity politics, so identity –when it is consciously noticed — is a category of oppression (and I would say, primarily so in terms of this system of values). Brazil does not have this cultural tradition, and so probably its culture continues along with its racism at the same level as there is racism in the US (hazarding a guess). Only USA types have particular tools by which they label their racism and Brazilians do not.
And I think it highly likely that given the ego boost that being in empire gives them, even those US Americans supposedly on the left go around with a righteous and condescending tone vis-a-vis the Brazilians, and purport to have greater insight into racism than do the Brazilians themselves.
Naturally, this would get anyone’s back up.
Comment 1 – major generalizations about history that need much more context & looking at though. This is for the paper not the blog. Key adjustment to this is that US had very overt legal segregation which was then an obvious thing to organize against. The mechanisms by which these things are organized, implemented, justified, etc. in Brazil are different even if the results have a lot of overlap.
Comment 2 – yes but that’s elementary and something to get over. Brazilian white to whitish elites are some of the biggest traders in identity politics there are and they appropriate Afro-Brazilian culture to benefit their discursive power. But I have to figure all of this out in the paper, there is something very confused in all of these arguments, I can tell because they are giving me a huge headache.
Yeah, well I was only hazarding some guesses…
I do find American identity politics has a rather special flavour, though. I also find that many Americans tend to somehow mistake their own historically engendered cultural perspectives for revealed truth, thus finding it right and appropriate to berate others who may just be coming at the issue from a different cultural perspective.
I also think that as humans we tend to defend our own in-group cultural perspectives against those whom we define as ‘out-group’. It’s the old primeval tendency to see ourselves as “humans” and the others as merely barbarians or whatever pejorative term.
Yes, this is the British way. But I’m talking not talking about tourists, Bush, or ethnocentric professors of English or History. I am talking about American scholars who are fans of Brazil, people who live abroad and speak foreign languages and have heard of U.S. imperialism before – including Black American ones who have had really bad experiences there because of race that people then apologized for having put them through when they discovered they’re American and not Afro-Brazilian. In that instance you have *Brazilians* privileging Americans because they are American and implying mistreatment of Afro-Brazilians on the basis of race is OK. And there is a lot to say about what goes into just *that.*
There are just so many elements to it all. It’s for the paper, not for the blog, and this post is really about race and the economy in the U.S. Are we post racist and is Obama the proof of it, as some allege – or is he going to lose the election because of race, as I fear?
AS you know I cannot comment in detail on the specific issue. I can only say that cultures tend to have their blind spots when it comes to the politics of identity. For example, it seems that many/most? postcolonial scholars on Africa do not pick up too well the African CULTURAL attitude to self-determination. Their scholarship is paternalistic in some ways — politically and culturally. They just don’t pick up certain things at all, and part of the reason is the particular brand of seriousness — the liberal narrative of redemption that these scholars bring to their work. But that has problems associated with it that they don’t see.
For example, there is a lot in Shona culture that is basically irreverent. That culture (I’m not sure about the Matabele — the other group in Zimbabwe) has a deep attitude of social irreverence built into it. It reveals itself as a kind of slapstick humour in some ways. For example, some politico on facebook recently sent me an “Idol” clip in which some black male youth, no doubt from Africa, was making a fool of himself singing in front of a critical black panel. Well, some people might think that it is racist to enjoy the naivety of the black youth who only thinks he can sing — but to laugh in such a way is a primary feature of black African culture.
The problem is that the liberal scholars strike an attitude of seriousness and apologetic demeanour, and so their own attitude screens out for them what they should see as being particularly poignant within African culture — its sense of humour.
And following from this type of screening, we have a rather more serious problem accruing. For expression of such humour is often misinterpreted as psychological distress or even psychosis — which, of course, it isn’t.
So this is what I have to say about blindspots.
Yes but what I have to say about that is that it is very English department. It’s exactly why I don’t like all postcolonial scholarship, etc. – it replicates colonial gestures and is sometimes even a colonizing act (this was our colony, so I am going to study it for my discipline because we need more raw material!).
I am reminded of a colleague who went to X place for 6 months and learned the language (in 6 months) and then wrote a book about cultural translation that made a big splash. He would never have been considered an expert like that if he had gone to, say, France, and made sweeping pronouncements about France and the French like that after only studying for 6 months. But 6 months is enough for academia, it appears, if it’s a non western culture.
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The thing about Brazil and Latin America generally is that they’re in the West too, if you’re talking about the large Western metropolises which have been that for as much as 500 years. It is possible to study Paris and speak with authority about it without being French by blood. Same thing Rio. White Brazilians of a certain type like to mystify themselves: “I am Brazilian, which nobody else could ever understand.” There are reams written about this Brazilian exceptionalism and it is an ideological maneuver I have not figured out.
Elements seem to be: they are related to France and the U.S., they are not in Latin America, they have absorbed the aspects of Africa they find interesting, etc., and nobody but them could ever understand what it’s like.
Well nobody but them can be them, of course, but really white society there is just another white society in this hemisphere, with its own characteristics but not THAT unrecognizable, and you can figure it out soon enough if you live there a few years, speak the language, read what people read there, live as they do and so on. Their childhood experiences, etc., etc., the things they believe, the way they think about things, are ultimately very familiar. Much harder to penetrate culturally would be the Amazon, or the high Andes, where the colonial languages aren’t spoken or aren’t spoken well and you’ve stepped out of the Western world, really and truly. It isn’t difficult to tell when you’re in such a place.
There’s also a logic problem with all of this. “Brazil cannot be known to non Brazilians” means it cannot be studied at all really, but can only be felt.
Their childhood experiences, etc., etc., the things they believe, the way they think about things, are ultimately very familiar.
Possibly so. But beware the blind spots created by an assumption of familiarity. Nietzsche was psychologically spot on when he made his emphasis on disinguishing differences that he found which were smaller rather than greater. “The smallest gap can be the hardest to bridge.” It is easy to see the great distances between one culture and another, but it is the smaller differences — the one’s you do not even anticipate — that trip you up.
See my comment in moderation.
As for this:
There’s also a logic problem with all of this. “Brazil cannot be known to non Brazilians” means it cannot be studied at all really, but can only be felt.
–I think this succintly spells out an element of truth (often overlooked) concerning most cultures. One must simply experience them in order to know them.
My view it that the human mind kind of patterns itself on the cultural and geographical environment. (See that earlier article on cultural “Secondary objects”.) So there will always be some aspects of the cultural experience closed off from those who were not born to a particular culture (unless they happen to be very good and persistent anthropologists). I don’t think we lose anything in the scholarly sense by accepting that — it just might make us more cautious and less logocentric in our postulations.
Additionally, perhaps what needs to be “felt” in the Brazilian culture is that which also needs to be felt in terms of African culture. It is something like an underlying drum-beat — something visceral.
Comment 1 – of course, that’s beyond elementary.
Comment 2 – yes, even recent arrivals to Brazil always say they have the drum-beat and nobody else has ever heard it the way they did, starting in 1991! MMM, MMM, they went them to a voodoo ceremony and got initiated in six weeks flat! MMM MMM can you believe it! They are the kings of authenticity now! MMM MMM Tocqueville could never have said anything perceptive about America, because he was foreign!
Seriously: my point is that white Brazilians including those who only hold green cards or work vises, and who make the sui generis argument, say ONLY BRAZIL is unknowable, so they are omniscient. They are the owners of Afro-Brazilian culture and all cultures, and they can talk about anyone but nobody can talk about them. This is my point.
Seriously it is for the paper. There is too much context and too many details to discuss this here, it’s pointless.
Or let me put it this way: it’s comparable to the Southern argument here, that nobody else can understand why they just had to have lynchings, you have to just feel it. “You have to understand this country” means “You cannot be in this conversation unless you share and collaborate with elite views and policies on the poor.” I’m not into that kind of cultural relativism and “tolerance,” I’m really not.
Yeah, well you are describing a very mystifying and defensive posture, which seems common among those on the right. (Why do you think that Camille Paglia believes in astrology?)
Where the comment on the Brazilians came from in the post was:
They are saying Obama is post racial and we may be post racial enough to elect him but: the income gap suggests we are hardly post racial, whether we vote for Obama or not.
And that the Brazilian style argument would be to say it wasn’t race, it was class, and it wasn’t about racism now, but about the residue of slavery. And this is an old argument which research shows isn’t true because there were all sorts of policies to keep the ex slaves in their places, although there wasn’t official segregation. Similarly, it is not justifiable to say that in the U.S. now, it is not race but class.
right. It is explained by systemic inertia? (Please note that for all sorts of reasons I am not following this argument very closely,so please excuse.)
Yes, inertia is a convenient excuse. But it is usually more than that at work, backed up by some intense lobbyists for keeping the system as it is.
Also: what I hate about a certain elite Brazilian discourse is its infantilizing assumptions and its willingness to say anything so as to defend the racial status quo.
The assumptions are that anyone they are speaking to is a leisure tourist in their first trip abroad. When I first arrived from coastal California it was assumed I had never seen the ocean but only prairies and snow. This is from highly educated and well traveled people.
The same level of supposition applies here. Have you ever thought of cultural difference? Do you realize that meanings are not the same in all places? (Do you know how to tie your shoes yet, dear?) Oh, by the way, help us slap and denigrate the servants, we know you’ll like that!
It is absolutely revolting.
Mystifying and defensive, that’s a good description and it is helpful to remember that those are common Right strategies.
Paglia on astrology … oh Lord. This is actually interesting. I believe in it, too. But not in Paglia. Say more on that!
Haha. I didn’t mean to take you back to the basics. I think this is just one of the pitfalls of communication — especially, perhaps, via the Internet. Also I am distracted (working) and I don’t know your subject areas as well as you do, so I am restricted to speaking on a certain (fairly basic) level.
On Paglia:
Well she thinks that the stars give us a basis for subjective order. I take it that she has a kind of pragmatic approach to the creation of meaning, but why does she rely upon something so conventional? She could get into new age shamanism, and be much more creative, in my view.
Anyway, my points earlier were less entailed in arguing that there are cultural differences at large, and more towards suggesting that these cultural differences are political differences, and that these politically differences are unconsciously embraced because they serve us.
I’m saying in a way that we inwardly congeal. Or rather more exoterically: We have an innate awareness of how to get our material and psychological interests met — and this awareness goes all the way back to the suckling infant (if not to the womb).
So, it’s not just cultural differences at stake (culture is just the epiphenomena of political processes taking place.)
Rather, we were born dependent, and rely upon power structures to keep us going. So we are innately conservative, and tend not to even see the degree to which we promote the status quo, until something hits us by surprise.
This is interesting/useful/:
“Anyway, my points earlier were less entailed in arguing that there are cultural differences at large, and more towards suggesting that these cultural differences are political differences, and that these politically differences are unconsciously embraced because they serve us.”
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But I did not like this argument because I don’t have time to explain to you what I am writing about and you don’t know anything about it and I’m busy – yet in your comments to this RECREATIONAL blog apeared many of the same condescending smoke screens they put up … they have bongo drums and so on. GOSH I HADN’T IMAGINED THAT, HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THAT, 30 YEARS OF GOING TO BRAZIL AND NOBODY HAS EVER SAID YOU JUST MUST LISTEN TO THE SOUND OF THE DRUM. JESUS I was not born yesterday. I don’t want to be rude to commentators on this blog but I just can’t engage in this kind of conversation here – I don’t have the energy or the time.
And also: I kept saying up thread I said please, this is not what I want to talk about, it is for the paper, not the blog.
I have lots of bile and pain about what I’ve watched happen in Brazil and all the mystifying things which were said about it, all to justify it and cloud vision. I react poorly and it is why I have trouble with this paper – it brings up all my issues about being lectured at by bombastic and condescending old men, being told that as an American I could not possibly see injustice but could only be being bossy, etc., etc. and it is all so utterly un intellectual and just wastes time.
I don’t know why I am always impelled to respond to intimations of this, why I don’t think I can just step aside, why I think it is more important to face those old men down than to just get on with things. Of course I do know why – I mean, I am not pleased that I can still fall into that trap.
Ok, Well I sensed your tension but I could not understand it, because I did explain that I didn’t know what I was talking about, only hazarding guesses.
I think that it can be difficult to explain that you don’t know something; that you are still working through something to find the answer — because contemporary society tends not to take “I don’t know yet” for an answer. Also prevalent cultural attitudes deny one the time and even the right to avoid giving an answer whilst you find out what it is you do not know.
However, I, myself, am not of the opinion that we can always have an answer, or that we should feel badly if we take time out in order to process difficult material. I, myself, have taken A LOT of time out — more than ten years — in order to think about my autobiography. I’ve engaged in a LOT of delay tactics, and felt incredibly challenged and not a little bit stupid as I persisted with my overwhelming goal.
So I, personally, do not think that your difficulties in battling with the issue at hand imply anything negative about you.
You just need to speak more directly about what you want from me, eg: “Please shut up now. I want to talk about something else. I’m doing a difficult chess calculation with my mind, so let us not disrupt the fragile calculatations.”
I did tell you more than once I hadn’t figured it out and couldn’t speak concisely and if you will, socially about it to someone who didn’t also have context for it.
As my friend Rick says: “Anyone who knows you knows that if you say ‘let us please not’ you mean business.”
I felt like saying: since you know nothing about it why do you keep making these elementary suggestions?
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NOTE TO SELF 1
I think the idea that “you have to feel” a culture is wrong. You have to be familiar, and know things. By this I do not mean just a passing familiarity or just a little knowledge. But “you have to feel it” is shorthand for knowlege and familiarity (not everyone’s knowledge and familiarity are expressed discursively, and so they are called “feeling” but they are knowledge and familiarity just the same), or is a right wing euphemism. When it is a right wing euphemism it means you have to be born there and identify with a certain politics and class.
NOTE TO SELF 2
I think lecturing Americans about imperialism as though they had never thought of it before is often not a political discussion. It is abuse of an easy mark, with a good cover. I put up with a great deal of this from Brazilians while watching them mistreat their servants and I was trembling with rage for months – yet it would have been yet ruder than I was already being to speak up more than I already was.
NOTE TO SELF 3
I should watch for my reactions on these things. MY tendency is to say nicely and casually, knock it off. When people don’t, I *want* to go absolutely ballistic and I get this weird feeling that is the mirror image of the abuse high. What I forget is that when people overstep the polite boundary you set, you can set it more firmly – even if this seems rude or bossy, it’s not as bad as trying to be polite while getting more and more unhinged inwardly – which is what I tend to do.
NOTE TO SELF 4
JENNIFER doesn’t realize the decades of pain she was prodding at by saying those things. But also didn’t want to take a hint. I could have been firmer. I could have said back off, or not responded, but I gave her power. I still do not think these explanations, I’m a fighter, you need to make it even clearer, etc., hold a lot of water.
I was writing to you inbetween work. I am not too feminine — actually generally avoid feminine company, so am not attuned to “hints”.
Also cannot understand the logic of them in this context. If you don’t want to do something, then stop. I cannot make you do anything at all — especially on the Internet. from Perth.
What did I say you were making me do? I reacted to some things you did.
I kept saying look, I don’t want to talk about this to someone who doesn’t have context for it. I was trying to end a useless conversation in a light and polite way. You wouldn’t let it drop and as I’ve said, I should have stopped engaging it.
“I am not too feminine — actually generally avoid feminine company, so am not attuned to ‘hints’.”
I’ve heard this before as an excuse for poor behavior, i.e. refusal to respect boundaries.
Please ignore me.