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Originally posted by Makwa:
In any case. What perhaps people do not consider that it might be possible that my analysis as an FN person or simply as an educated sociologist might have a slightly different tact than others, and that it might have some value, even if it were a wee bit controversial.

Not to reiterate too much, because quite frankly, I tire of the the discussion, but my analysis of the concept known as 'racism' is not about 'attitude' nor 'behaviour' nor 'feelings' but is more focussed on historically wrought social structures, which have been built through historical power systems, and are maintained through systems of power and consequent ideologies.

In my analysis, the concept of 'race' as a socially defining event and power structure did not exist as a meaningful concept until the advent of the colonial exercise to dominate the world beyond the European shores starting at some point within the sixteenth century. Prior to that, opressed groups, including the diasporic Jewish population were managed under ideological systems which incorporated religious, social, cultural and other motifs as their conceptual rationalizations.

It wasn't until the European powers had developed the technologies to reach and to subjugate the peoples of the Africas and the Americas, and later various people of Asia that the concept of 'race' as a quasi-scientific rationale became meaningful within the construct of power.

This is the core of my analysis.

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I took the liberty of lifting some of Makwa's post in a thread about Debrief from "Should babble have a POC/FN only forum?" thread.

I thought it was interesting, and might be worthy of discussion. If that is innaproriate the thread can be closed, I guess.

[ 26 September 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

There's little doubt in my mind, however, that, even if the words were not the same, the idea of "race", and racism was probably born with civilization itself. I think it too handy a tool for keeping the people at the top in control for it not to be used at the first opportunity.

I think what has to be done is to understand why this works so well. I believe that cynical leadership utilizes human propensity-- perhaps a hardwired propensity-- for xenophobia.

For the life of me I can't remember a single passage in there where the enemy "other" is demeaned, or described as a lesser people, because they are Trojan. In fact, the kind of dehumanizing deligitimizing that accompanies most war stories of the modern period, is overtly absent from this text. All characters, wether Greek or Trojan are described in the most human terms, the emnity of the combatants, a result of vagaries of intentions of gods, not the inailiable superiority of one group over another.

What's left out is that there was a fundamental shift in the way Jew-hatred was practiced once these new tools to construct races were turned inwards and used to reframe antisemitism (and hatred of Indian-origin Gypsy nations) in terms of race once religion became less important in Europe, and as racial allegiances became paramount. This happened long, long before the Nazis.

Starting with colonialism, and especially with the Enlightenment, antisemitism changed fundamentally from a religious xenophobia into a racial construct. I mean there's an almost boundless amount of historical analysis on this. It's not even a stretch to say that the research on antisemitism is centrally focused on this shift and why it happened.

If people are interested, it is well summarized in the writing of Raul Hilberg. A Palestinian sympathizer, he actually used this analysis to disprove Alan Dershowitz's usurpation of antisemitic history. Hilberg says that there is no such thing as "the New Antisemitism" (the rhetoric that anti-Israel politics = antisemitism), precisely because it is not resonant with the colonial origins of antisemitism.
On the contrary, the modern state of Israel serves the same antisemitic purpose for the West as Jewish people always have, as a buffer zone and human shield to protect Western interests. It should be no surprise that the most antisemitic politicians are frequently "pro-Israel". This is same role that the Court Jews and Jewish financiers have served for Europe, as middle men for the ruling classes and as pressure valves for the White populace to release steam on. Antisemitism in its modern form is inextricably linked with colonialism and orientalism, and can't be separated. There are other reasons.

I guess what is bothersome to me is that I think that the analysis of antisemitism on this site has ignored the authors and theorists who live and breathe this stuff, and it has not been sensitive enough to progressive Jewish voices, with Jewish experiences. Most analysis here is invented from a very different place and even sometimes perpetuates antisemitic myths, although unwittingly. FN and POC threads have been ruined in exactly this way too, including by me, which I am ashamed of. I hate barn-storming into a thread which is supposed to be about POC, truly. But the moment someone speaks about antisemitic history with broad swipes I can't help it.
I don't want Jews to invade a POC-only space, nor an FN-only space, since I dont think we have a right to be in either of those places, but I also dont want our experience to be invaded by others, handled crudely by others, and I think that's a pretty universal feeling for everyone on this site.

[ 26 September 2008: Message edited by: just one of the concerned ]

The Illiad is an interesting point, because it's a story, but there's some good archeological evidence to help our understanding of it. I don't think we see evidence of racism in that particular story because Troy was, as far as we can tell, a Greek colony. It's more of a civil war. Skip ahead to something more familiar, and we see the same reverence paid to things like Picket's charge, and Robert E. Lee by the the victors in that war.

Interestingly, the last hypothesis (that I heard) concerning the actual war with Troy had it that the Greek colony was falling under the economic and political sway of people further east in what is today Turkey.

And, let us not forget that one of the enduring things the Greeks handed down to us was the word "barbarian", which was used just as pejoritively then as today. The Greeks had their racial hierachies firmly in place.

Homer put it that it was the "theft" of Helen that caused the war. And, it would seem xenophobia, if it is an instictive behavior, must have it's roots in control of the clan's genes, and physical resources. Chimps behave much the same way, and it is supposed that a common ancestor or ancestors probably found this advantageous at one time.

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You seem to be asserting that xenophobia/racism, is and always been, and one presumes will always be with us.

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What I am saying is that we don't know. It may be so, it may not. The late Stephen J. Gould cautioned that these hypothesis were "just so stories" because we cannot know-- and probably will never be able to know-- the conditions that existed when such behaviors came to be. And, if I were to critique this, I'd say it's one bit of speculation pilled on top of another.

However. It may be prudent to proceed with the posibility in mind.

Which doesn't by any means indicate that the battle is hopeless. I think any thoughtfull person could agree that whatever the origins, racism and xenophobia are certainly not advantageous behaviors for groups or individuals in any society today.

I have a theory that the origins of racism are actually a step up on the ethical ladder. In the Greek era the prevailing ethos was "might is right". By the start of the African slave trading era that ethos had been seriously attacked. Racism was invented as a justification for enslaving Africans.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
I think, Cueball, that where we differ on this is that I think racism is one of the many symptoms of xenophobia, where you have it the other way around.

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Yes. And I am supporting my statement by pointing out that in the United States racism is all over the place, yet black and white people have been living as part of the same society for many, many generations, so you really can't say that white people are racist towards black people because of xenophobia (fear of foreigners), since black people are not foreigners per se, but part of the same society. This indicates to me that the ideology of racism enforces the separation of communities, that allows for xenophobia to be present.

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originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
The Illiad is an interesting point, because it's a story, but there's some good archeological evidence to help our understanding of it. I don't think we see evidence of racism in that particular story because Troy was, as far as we can tell, a Greek colony. It's more of a civil war. Skip ahead to something more familiar, and we see the same reverence paid to things like Picket's charge, and Robert E. Lee by the the victors in that war.

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There are lots of possible interpretations of the what was being described in the Illiad.

The point I am making is that the evidence is usually interpretted in the context of modern ideological constructs. How you define racism, how you define xenophopbia, and how you define a "civil war". One could say for example that defining the Trojan War as a "civil war" is an interpretation of the events imposed retroactively, based in the modern ideological frame. One might ask, is there even a Greek state, or a civil society at all within which to have a "civil war"?

Are we engaged in a kind of semantic sleight of hand where we find the evidence that fits what we are predisposed to believe?

Notwithstanding the fact that our modern "civil wars" are frought with racially charged content, yet none appears in the Illiad. So, its hard to see how this definition of the Trojan War, as a "civil war", obviates the point about the lack of racializing content in the literature of the classical period.

You might retroatively describe the extermination of the Catheginians as an "ethnic cleansing" in the modern terms, but did it occur as an expression of a racist ideology? And if so, where is the evidence for that? Or did the Romans exterminate the Cartheginians simply because they were a competing local power, and neighboring tribe that consistently bothered them, without attaching an overiding ideological view that the Cartheginians were naturally inferior as the primary stated casus beli?

So, there is plenty of material out there, and though I have read substantially in this area, most of that was a long time ago, and I never read it with an eye to identifying racist constructs. I think it would be good if you could come up with some specific examples of the kind of racist ideological construct that appear in the modern era, in the Roman period.

I don't remember anything specific in the "Gailic Wars" about the "right" of the Romans to disposess the Gauls because they were an inferior people.

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Originally posted by just one of the concerned:
Well it is definetly correct that racist systems are completely different from religious xenophobia that was waged against Jews among others before the Modern conception of "race" was set down, and this new kind of system was inextricably part and parcel of Europe's colonial project.

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You seem to be agreeing but refusing to apply the definition as it functions today, and objecting when people do.

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Originally posted by Makwa:
Since people now seem to be discussion classical Greek literature, I suggest we move this thread to the "culture" forum.

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Why not?

[ 27 September 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]