[Marxism] white privilege - take 2

[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 working 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