Gopal Dayaneni: You are absolutely correct: it is white people's responsibility to confront racism and white skin privilege where ever and whenever you see it. Having said that, there are a couple of things I would like to add.
1. Our responsibility as activists is two-fold: destroy the white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy (as bell hooks names it) AND to build (a) meaningful alternative(s) in its place. The efficacy of the first is predicated on the legitimacy of our alternatives. (Stalinism is no alternative to Capitalism, for example) In order to have meaningful alternatives, we need to first do the work of constructing a unified critical analysis of the system we live under. When I say "unified," I am not suggesting that we all need to have the same analysis (though that would make things easier). What I am saying is that your (or my) analysis must sufficiently explain how the system works, in whose interests, at whose expense and why. If the critique that brings you to being a race traitor does not bring you to an appliable critique of the global convergence on capital or the brutal war against women, then somewhere along the line you fucked up. My question to race-traitor: What are you going to replace white skinned privilege with? If you think that without racism our existing system would be benevolent; your're wrong. If you think that we need a "level playing field," your wrong. We need a whole new game. Any social order predicated on meritocracy will inherently lead to arbitrary consolidation of power. The arbitrary consolidation may be race, gender, appearance, sexual identity, language, nationhood, class or, most likely, all of the above. All hierarchies are inherently evil. (The cat is out of the bag, I have strong anarcho-sydicalist tendencies!)
2. I want to complicate the race traitor equation a bit by pointing out the danger of "not acting white." You have to act. So, how are you going to act? I agree that whites must abandon and condemn in words and actions their power and privillege, but as an Indian, I am accutely aware of the disposition "liberal" white's have for cultural expropriation. I can't stand the Hari Krishna's. In an attempt to deny their own western culture and to avoid taking responsibility for the damage the imperialist west had exacted on the rest of us, they extracts bits and pieces of Hinduism, strip them of their holistic-authentic meaning and reflect them back at us as a truth. Now I have to live with the complete distorition of my culture. The power to "share cultures," as they might describe it, is not mutual. People of color do not get to chose which bits and pieces of the dominant culture we experience. We are force-fed western bullshit. The same analysis can be made for all those suburban teenagers without color who are expropriating the Urban African American experience as a form of rebellion against their reactionary parents. This isn't race traitor behavior. This serves the interests of the capitalist class. It is called a cross-over market.
Instead of cultural expropriation, we should be hell bent on examination and confrontation of our own cultures. Race and culture are, of course, not the same thing; but in a class and race stratified society, we can not afford to pretend that People of Color and People without can exchange identities. I am not an advocate for identity politics, but I am an advocate for cultural integrity.
Hope these thoughts are helpful. Keep up the shit-kicking work!
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