Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 21:03:37 -0500 From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu> Subject: M-FEM: Racism, the Unemployed, and Labor Discipline I think Roediger is mistaken in trying to explain neoliberalism mainly by racism of white workers. As Rakesh has argued, the idea that capital puts economic limits on the nature and extent of whatever reforms is certainly missing in Roediger's analysis. So his criticism of Roediger as soc dem or Popperian seems right after all. But I still think it important to look at how working class racism would end up costing many white workers their ability to link the interests of the employed and the unemployed, because racism forces them to buy the myth that unemployment and welfare are black "underclass" problems (or "white trash" problems). The complex of feelings that revolves around the false dichotomy of "dependence" on public assistance versus "independence" through paid employment is racialized, fostering an ideology that makes it difficult for white workers to understand that putting people off welfare and into the labor market is against the interests of all workers, including themselves. One can even go so far as to say that working-class racism makes white workers more willing than otherwise to accept *harsher labor discipline*. So what I am saying here is that understanding working-class racism is important to the extent that it diminishes workers' ability to organize themselves on the basis of true solidarity. Yoshie
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