White privilege

Heavy. I just read the article and comments. If indeed the article does not misrepresent the activist press then the critique is a valid one.

However, I'd like to see more of the specific content of the activist press before I get too critical - I've only got that little bit of info to go on. It seems most of the commentators are arguing that they were trying to deflect the commercial-media hype about a dead american into something useful. If this is indeed the case then the critique may be a little misdirected. Nate, can you post up a few links or quotes that would help people make a more informed contribution?

Tbh I think that article is dead wrong. There had been a great deal on Oaxaca in the activist press before Brad Will's death, but it wasn't being read to the same extent it is now (check back through the indymedia archives, and of course Freedom has been running stuff since late July).

If something has been latched on to it is that the US activist set are more likely to read/care about the death of one of their own, which is, I'm afraid, a fairly basic response pattern (indeed if you ever do any journalism training you’ll find you’re taught to cater your reportage accordingly).

The most likely thinking behind this is to use the death to best effect in order to help tell the wider story, which may sound cynical, but is it any more so than a readership which only picks up when that sort of stuff is mentioned?

I guess you want this discussion because of what happened on aut-op-sy after (your?) initial comment to it?

I agree here, though with modifications. I would not say that caring for "one of their own" is in any way "natural" (reified) - "caring for one of your own" is a social construction of exclusion and inclusion. Feeling more for your in-group only feels natural because construction of "us" and "others" get internalized. This is close to what Bourdieu calls, doxic learning, a largely unconscious process (as opposed to conscious active), but will manifest itself in orthodox thought and behaviour. Hundreds of years of nationalist ideologies, baggage of racist thought etc. will still inform even aware people. The same argument can also be applied to gender and sex.

Getting rid of residual bigotry involves challenging orthodoxies in our minds through deconstruction, being open to criticism (no one likes orthodoxy to be challenged), living in "other" cultures etc. It is at this point that (hopefully) the death of "one of our own" will be radically defined away from race and nation, and that there will be natural responses to a multitiude of fates.

I think this is what the essay was in part trying to argue, but it just failed miserably. But as someone (Nate? or Chuck?) wrote on aut-op-sy the article itself is trapped inside the racism it is criticizing, and is thus diverting attention even further to the dead white guy than on the actually struggle and state oppression.

Which is why I said ‘I’m afraid’, and ‘basic response’ (which it is, as basic is in this context simply means it’s something done by pretty much everyone on some level without actually commenting on why this is, which is largely irrelevant to the point I was making), and at no point said the word ‘natural’, which is an entirely different word and indeed an entirely different debate. Read the post properly before you comment please, I don’t spend time on defining my meanings when I write so that you can read something entirely different into them regardless.

As it happens, I don’t entirely disagree with your analysis, though tbh it’s a little simplistic (eg. caring more about people you know than people you don’t is not ‘bigotry’ in any reasonable sense – familiarity breeds a greater sense of attachment and a more virulent emotional response, it’s not just about regarding ‘your lot’ as better than anyone else).

Jason, I'm really not informed at all about stuff in Oaxaca or the response to Brad Will's killing. I've not followed either, so I can't say more. I'm also not real up on the white skin privilege analysis that the author of that short piece is using. My initial response to this was pretty polemical. I'm trying now to be openminded about the position behind the article, since I know so little about it. That's why I'd like to hear from others here, and if folk have recommendations on stuff to read I'm keen to hear them. I'm going to read the post the deadGuy posted here soon.

And yeah, Atlemk, what sparked this is the exchange on autopsy about this. If anyone cares, it's in the November '06 archive for that list here https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/aut-op-sy/

In that argument I suggested that people might be interested to read and discuss this article

http://libcom.org/library/marxism-white-skin-privilege-chris-wright

(which is more substantive than the piece linked to above attacking US leftists). I've not had a chance to look at it yet, I read it ages ago but I don't remember it.

Sorry for that. I apologize. I see now that my post attributes "natural" to you; it is just a case of me being rushed in writing the post and my mind racing a bit too fast. What I should have said is that "basic response patterns" can easily transform into being "natural", in a separate paragraph.

I do agree with you here.

However, I presume that not everyone in the alternative media in the states (and elsewhere) knew Brad directly or indirectly, and it is in this context that caring more for a white American than Mexicans can betray unconscious nationalism (maybe bigotry is too harsh a word).

Aye, though I suppose you could argue that it's their position that gives rise to white supremecy, that what we are seeing here is activists othering the Mexican Peasants.

You'd be talking a load of balls, but that's never stopped the kind of people who use the phrase "white supremecy" before.

A very interesting and heavy article. Something i didn't, but should have picked up on. What i want to know is, if brad didn't die or get injured, but the other mexican people did, would indymedia have reacted in the same way? And would there be demos at all on the issue? I think if I ever knew the answer to that then i could make a more certain conclusion. There is no doubt that what happened in oaxaca was absolutely terrible, but if the media only made us so aware of this issue because of brads death, then there is a problem of some sort of subconcious nationalism, i see it in news reports in general, the media tend to spend more time on the event if a british person was effected. I am rather unsure on the issue, an interesting point raised though.

Is it time to wheel out the mexican cleaner living in new york and reporting for indymedia yet, or will their view be too skewed by new yorkian activists, to get a real view?

Or will they be too busy, working for the man!

It really is that simple. FFS!

Yep, true.

Funny thing is, though, having been in Oaxaca a few months ago myself, I find it much easier to empathise with the Mexican workers (Oaxaca being a city, the people involved are mostly workers and students rather than peasants) than with some yanqui journo/activist. Their position's really not that different to most of ours.

I think his point is about revolutionary tourists/ activist journos and there particular world view. I'm sure i could relate to an yanqui prole a lot quicker than some activistoid indymedia journo.

are you being deliberately dim.

the point is that in there function as media activists they aren't proles, they are "outsiders" covering it. they might have jobs back home but most of them don't in the places they are "covering". It's not about speaking ill of the dead, it's about a wider issue of differences between an activist millieu that parachutes into report or organise and the proles who are actually struggling in their everyday life.

So it seems like folks in the UK don't take this stuff seriously as much as folks in the US do, at least on here. Am I right in concluding then that the whole Race Traitor/white skin privilege/white supremacy thing never caught on over there in the way it did in some circles over here? If so, that's interesting. I wonder why that is. I don't know much about this stuff in the US really, its history and such, so I don't know where it came from, why/when it caught on. Is there anything analogous in the UK, maybe related to stuff on Ireland? Sorry if that's a dumb question, I don't know a lot of this kind of stuff about the UK, my visits have all been as a tourist.

Sphinx, I appreciate hearing your take on this stuff. I definitely understand and agree with what I've encountered of ideas about the importance of racism in the US, and the problems of the white working class. What I don't have any sense of is what to do with that analysis. Cop watch and prison support are great, as are take back the night work against patriarchy. Insofar as any sector of the class feels the need to fight any battle, and feels a need for autonomy from other sectors of the class, awesome. In my view, though, it's the flows of surplus value that should be site of attack - waged workplaces, transportation, etc. I don't really know how to factor in the critique of white privilege into that. When I get a chance I'll read more of that stuff and see if it makes any sense.

The thing on autopsy, well, I've made my view on that pretty clear. I feel like it raises an important issue in a way which makes it harder to discuss, like the Spartacists or the RCP do with Marxism. Better not at all than in those forms, in my opinion.

What kind of nationalism would that be then?

And I didn't say he wasn't a worker, it was more by way of an attempt to highlight your and revol's dodgy references to 'mexican peasants'.

But I won't deny there was maybe a wee touch of knee-jerk anti-americanism as well.