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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: defining racism -- Laura on compassion
Message-ID: <380@l5.uucp>
Date: Mon, 30-Dec-85 15:05:19 EST
Article-I.D.: l5.380
Posted: Mon Dec 30 15:05:19 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Jan-86 19:51:29 EST
References: <336@l5.UUCP> <28200398@inmet.UUCP> <391@ubvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 64

>By "state" I don't just mean official national institutions; I also
>mean what a citizenry thinks a nation or important groups in a nation
>are.  In "Western" states, what the citizenry believes takes on more
>importance and less importance than in "Eastern" states.

Okay, but if we are going to continue discussing this, then you are going
to have to clearly demark when you mean ``important citizens'' or ``important
groups of citizens'' rather than official national institutions. I read
``state'' as ``official national institution'' all the time, and we will
have lots of misunderstanding if we don't watch for this.

>
>Anti-semitism is a specific case of racism.  I think most racism
>follows the lines of just what I've described above for historical
>anti-semitism: because of the organization of popular opinion and
>national institutions, bad news about the victimized would spread
>and add to popular information, while good news about the victimized
>would get bottled up by intent or because people didn't think it
>significant or interesting.

>I don't think anti-semitism has much to do with people's psychology;
>as I've written in a past article, I think it has more to do with
>the definitions of nation historically developed by states which
>did not include Jews as a protected group

>The only "psychology" involved, I'd suggest, is that people follow
>what they believe and commonly know to be the case.

More disagreement begins here.  The question is, why do people commit acts
of violence out of racism.  The world is full of people who think that
Blacks are inferior, Jews are grasping monsters, and that Gay people are
unspeakably evil -- but still they do not go out and beat up Blacks, Jews
and Gays.  What is it in the makeup of some people that make them into
fag-bashers?  Wherever it is, I believe that it is psychological.

>*** END OF DIVERSION ***
>
>There are more "psychological" theories than mine.  Laura's (broadened
>by Jan), sounds too Freudian for me to swallow.  A social opportunism
>of the id does not cover most serious examples of racism:

Actually, it is a lot more Jungian than Freudian, but I will let that pass...

>
>>[Laura Creighton  sun!l5!laura  (that is ell-five, not fifteen)]
>>>...  what I believe happens is that people have a great well
>>>of frustration and hatred inside them.  They look for socially acceptable
>>>ways to dump this and find out that thhe bottom line is ``is is bad to
>>>hate people, except for Gays/Blacks/Orientals/Vietnamese/What-have-you''.
>>>So they go out and hate people in group X, not because they have any
>>>real dislike of group X but because they finally have found a role in
>>>which they can hate.
>
>The problem with this is that most modern racism has little to do with
>frustration at all.

Here you are going to have to do a little more than make this claim.  What
motivates people to do racist violence then if not frustration and hatred?

This is getting long -- I will continue later.
-- 
Laura Creighton		
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa