Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Thoughts on race, class, and wealth

What else is white supremacism if not the ideology and practices of a class system? 

What else was US white supremacism founded on if not the desire to gain wealth by enslaving Africans? Because people didn’t just say, “Oh, yes, let’s go capture some slaves.” Oh, hell, no. They made money at it. Nor did this end with the formal abolition of slavery.

Social insurance undermines class systems. Social insurance programs are so effective that they have to be dismantled, and huge efforts have been made to persuade the public that they would gain from shutting such systems down. (“Put on those chains. You will be much safer wearing them.”)

Do I believe that an end to poverty would be an end to supremacism? I doubt it. The impulse to supremacism seems to be pre-human, and perhaps will turn out to be post-human. But we do not need to governed by it, and it is certain that impoverishing is one of the great strategies and tactics of supremacism.

2 comments:

The Blog Fodder said...

Historically, the overthrow of one class simply leads to another replacing it. But as you point out, we need not be governed by that and we need to keep trying to abolish classes based on race, birth, money or power. Not easy when as my mother used to say "Them that has, gets".

Raven Onthill said...

Thank you.