[Marxism] "white privilege" vs "white supremacy" - can someone please explain?

[Ethan Young]

spencer asks: 'while i am familiar with the "white privilege" critique as developed by T. Allen and N. Ignatiev, I don't understand the distinction from "white supremacy" - which seems to be referring to a substantially different perspective, possibly a particular Third World Marxist notion with a long shelf life - ??

'Also - bonus points for anyone who can also explain to the origin of the "white skin privilege" idea, and how this is different from "white privilege".'




Allen & Ignatiev [nee Ignatin] were struggling with the obvious contradiction between a lionized working class cast as the historic agent of liberation, and intense racist attitudes held and openly expressed by most whites in the workong class. 'White supremacy' is a category referring to both [1] the relation of whites as a whole to blacks/people of color as a whole within US capitalist society, and [2] the active political institution of this relation, eg slavery, jim crow laws, lynch-mob terrorism, de facto segregation, racial profiling etc. 

The race/class contradiction has been traditionally sidestepped by the organized left, I believe due to the stronger identification with the white-dominated labor movement [which transformed working class political roles in the CIO period] over such powerful, but less overtly class-identified black community movements as the Garvey movement and the early NAACP. Socialist and populist hostility to black nationalist tendencies - which were a part of American opposition movements throughout history - was a reflection, intentionally or otherwise, of deep-rooted white supremacist/racist attitudes among the white majority of American workers.

The economist argument against workers' racist attitudes promoted by the main organized left parties is summed up in the slogan 'Black and white, unite and fight.' The argument has it that racist thinking and expression are dangerous, above all, because they divide the class - and are the result of a conscious conspiracy by the capitalists to set brother against brother, thus delaying the day of reckoning. A poorly paid lower tier in the workforce drags down wages; therefore whites have an immediate interest in opposing racism. Persuade whites to abandon race hatred, and blacks to see their common enemy not as the white man but as the capitalist class, and the main obstacle to overthrowing capitalism is overcome.

This view did little to expose the reality of structural racism at all levels of American society. After the CIO heyday, postwar labor reneged on its proposed challenge to jim crow in the south, leaving the task of fighting racism once again to the black community in isolation. The power of the civil rights movement and the tidal wave of revolt that arose in its wake forced the racism question on the New Left. By the late 60s, black nationalism was replacing the integrationist ethic advanced by King and the SP and CP, even as the workerist Progressive Labor Party made a bid to take over SDS, declaring black nationalism 'reactionary'. SDS leaders who opposed PL and supported nationalists like SNCC and the Black Panther Party needed an argument to counter both the more liberal and the more super-revolutionary versions of the 'black and white unite' position.

This was provided by Ignatiev and Allen, who argued that while white workers as workers had a longterm interest in black-white class unity, white workers as whites enjoy a privilege that serves as the material basis for their racist attitudes. Recognizing this privilege, and repudiating it, is the first step for radicals to make the break from social interests as whites to class interests, bringing the fight against racism to the center of the politics of all social movements arrayed against capitalism. 'Privilege' was just one, albeit crucial, aspect of an over-arching system of white supremacy that coexists and is interconnected with capitalism. The term 'white skin privilege' simply reflected Ignatiev's and Allen's concern that their theory provide no justification for arguments that racial categories have a scientific basis.

This position was embraced and reinterpreted by various groups, including RYM II SDS, the Weathermen, Sojourner Truth Organization, Prairie Fire, Proletarian Unity League, Line of March, James & Grace Boggs's National Organization for an American Revolution, the journal Race Traitor, and among existing groups, Freedom Road and Bring the Ruckus.

ethan young