[Marxism] Notes on David Brion Davis' review

[bhandari at berkeley.edu]

Hi Mark,
I don't think the racialization of the Curse of Ham constituted racism
proper. What then is racism?
A naturalistic doctrine of deep difference, an insidious belief in some
groups' natural inferiority (if not subhumanity) maintained through the
intergenerational transmission of  some postulated germinal substance. At
least that's how I defined it in my dissertation. This is the ideology
which is novel, late modern and Western. It's not found in classical
antiquity or the medieval Islamic world. Or even early modern Castilian
Spain. It's obviously a repulsive ideology even for the superior race
which has analogized itself to a thorough bred animal. But bourgeois
society produced the ideology in own classical phase.
I don't look with rose colored lenses at pre capitalist societies. I just
don't think they produced racism.
To put it in terms of the scholarly field, I am closer to Audrey Smedley's
understanding of racism than I am to David Brion Davis'.
Yours, Rakesh


o: "'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'"	<>
Subject: RE: [Marxism] From: "Mark Lause" <MLause at cinci.rr.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:57:50 -0500
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Yeessss, that makes sense....

But whether such a view of the Bible (specifically the curse of Ham) is
"twisted" (as you say) changes absolutely nothing about the validity of
Prof. Davis' point about the use of the Bible to support an understanding of
race that is "novel, late modern and Western."





And why exempt any tradition contributing to the racialization of the curse
of Ham?

ML