[Marxism] white privilege vs white supremacy - please be more specific

[spencer]

well i openly admit to having a shattered and shoddy background to this, but ethan's answer lacks something according to how i've understood these terms, which is mostly via Race Traitor / Bring the Ruckus (i've read passing essays of Ignatiev, but little or none of Allen in the original)

this is my understanding, and please correct me where i'm wrong here:

"white privilege" is a specific concept developed by Allen & Ignatiev which claims that white people are given a triple set of advantages in our society: economic, social and psychological. it reads as a odd neo-marxism in the sense that whereas a traditionalist marxism has a single focus on class, 'white privilege' has a singular focus on race. the class struggle in the US is suppressed by the existence of a (biologically) mythical white race and the advantages given to the members thereof. Explode whiteness, unleash the submerged class struggle. Ignatiev's "black worker, white worker" is pretty explicit about this scenario as i recall.

Since there is a psychological component to this critique, it also is impossible for any white person to step out of it. and since race is the single focus, there is no sense of overlapping but ultimately discrete oppressions, as one would find in concepts of double or triple oppression.

i also understand "white skin privilege" as a prior and separate concept. I see it openly referred to in 60s literature, well before the Allen/Ignatiev thesis was developed. One of the main differences, as far as I can tell, is that it focuses on wholly on external perception rather than internal or familial factors. i.e. 'white skin privilege' is about how the external society perceives you and treats you. a person of color who passes as white, however, would not have 'white privilege' in the sense that they would not (necessarily) enjoy the internal, psychological benefits of white privilege (and of course their family would not necessarily either).

after reading Elbaum's book, it struck me how much the 'white privilege ideas' stood out against this larger NCM/TWM milieu which, as far as internal US politics went, seemed to mostly have a classic dual strategy of having a "nationally" mixed communist party which was in solidarity with movements of oppressed nations - the black belt thesis writ large. (of course stuff like 'false nationalism false internationalism' goes further to call for completely nationally separate political groupings). in fact white privilege advocates seem to deal with notions of "race" whereas others seem to deal with "internal nations" (and i never could figure out the difference between an internal nation and an internal colony - ??)

as i said i haven't looked closely at the specifics, but my experience is that i've never heard 'white privilege' advocates stump for national self-determination within present US borders. the theory reads to me like it was intentionally developed as a counter-critique to the traditional M-L perspective about communist revolution and/or self-determination of oppressed internal nations.

lastly there is the difference between the concepts of national self-determination being based (most often, although i suppose not necessarily) on essentialist racial categories, whereas 'white privilege' is anti-essentialist by its very argument.

so i still feel like when people invoke "white supremacy" they are making reference to a specific theoretical way of approaching race in the US that is none of the above.

but maybe i missing something - ???

Ethan Young <ethanyoung at earthlink.net> wrote: 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


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