ALB
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I see. Having escaped from academia the term “white privilege” has become toxic and applied to all “white” people. If applied in the sense developed in academia it would only apply to those “whites” who felt they were entitled to be treated better than “non-whites” and in fact acted this out. But they already was a perfectly clear term for this — racism. That’s what we are opposed to.
If I have understood you right, LBN, you are pointing out that the researchers who innovated with the meaning of the word “privilege” meant it to be used only with regard to people who felt they were entitled to behave as they did.
Hence your conclusion that, as most “white” people do not think that they are entitled to be treated better than “non-white” people, the term “white privilege” would be being misused if applied to all “whites people”.
But that is precisely how it is being used by those who bandy it about. So we need to oppose them and insist that the term be thrown out as a slur — I was going to say racial slur but then “whites” are not a race.
Yes. He talks a lot of sense;
Dr Ali said: “The problem with focusing on ethnicity as a risk factor is that it misses the very large number of non-ethnic minority groups, so whites basically, who also live in deprived areas and overcrowded housing and with high risk occupations.
He added the whole population should have a “personalised risk assessment” rather than just targeting ethnic groups.
“It doesn’t make sense to put all ethnic minorities in the same basket as it doesn’t make sense to put all whites in the same basket,” he said.
Three very valid points. In fact the whole concept of BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) is not a biological classification but an absurd political one.
Next somebody is going to talk of “employment privilege” to describe those with a job compared to those without one Or to “public sector privilege” to describe those working there compared with those working in the private sector (the Dailies Mail, Express and Telegraph already do). And many more “privileged” workers will be identified until we sink into the stinking bog of “intersectionality”.
Meanwhile the really privileged in society — those who own and control the means of production — sit back and watch us squabbling over who is the most oppressed (and so needs the most money spent on reforms to benefit them). This is not a question of “identity politics” gone mad but of it being mad from the start.
Yes. The additional point about the Singapore project is that the electrical energy goes to an international grid, as outlined by Pieter Lawrence in the article “Energy supply: a world issue” that appeared in the Winter 1986 issue of the World Socialist (unfortunately none of the seven issues are yet available online).
He quoted from a 1983 book Energy, a guidebook by Janet Ramage:
”How about a world-wide electric grid? It could use underground and ocean floor super conducting cables, and the power would come from solar farms in the world’s major deserts.”
Which is what the Australia to Singapore project is planning.
More non doom and gloom news. The sort of thing that can happen in socialism. I remember an article in the old “World Socialist” magazine we used to produce suggesting this sort of thing (array of solar panels connected to a worldwide electricity grid) using the Sahara desert. Now we have confirmation that it’s not just technologically feasible but practicable too.
https://www.energydigital.com/renewable-energy/australia-power-singapore-worlds-biggest-solar-farm
I can see the point he is trying to make. He is arguing for the absence of any impediment on grounds of skin colour. Obviously we go along with that,in fact proclaim that this one of the things we want ( see clause 4 if our declaration of principles).
But to express this in terms of wanting to get rid of “white privilege” is wholly counterproductive. He says that it is not meant as an insult to “white” people or to make them feel guilty. I think it probably is in many cases and certainly this is how it is, understandably, perceived by all “white” people (except those who do feel guilty).
“Privilege” is considered to be something bad. Thus Clause 6 of our declaration of principles calls for “the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic”. To say that somebody is privileged is to say that they have something they should not have and which should therefore be taken away from them. This is without doubt not at all the intention of that nice man but it’s the language of race conflict. In fact it’s inflammatory.
As socialists we can have nothing to do with the term but must actively combat it and make it a dirty word that should not be used.
The politicians are always saying that we are engaged in a war on Covid-19. In a sense this is true. Certainly there are COVID-war profiteers just as there are ordinary war ones, as George Monbiot exposes in today’s Guardian:
I see from that link that there are also votes on specific propositions, a reminder that some states of the US are more rather than less democratic than in some other countries— in this case allowing as in Switzerland the right of citizens to propose a referendum. California, with a population of some 40 million, is larger than most European states and seems to be up to west European standards when it comes to formal democracy.
That is just another example of how huge is the “democratic deficit” in the USA which means that its government is in no position to lecture other countries for their lack of formal democracy. No wonder they won’t allow foreign observers in to see if elections there are fair,
Marcos has drawn attention to this failure of a trotskyist party — the so-called “Socialist Equality Party” — to get on the ballot paper in California. Apparently, to do that there, you have to collect 200,000 signatures, which the SEP was unable to due to the pandemic.
We know the SEP over here of course. It’s one of the fragments of Gerry Healy’s WRP. When they contest elections they get even less votes than us. Still, they should have the right to stand.
What a nasty opportunistic piece of shit that mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham is. While some Tories want to put profits before health he wants to put votes before health, in fact before some people’s life. No doubt he considers this a price worth paying to win back the red wall constituencies to the Labour Party.
As far as I know only Islamic schools funded by Saudi Arabia do that, though I think there have been some attempts by American creationist christians to infiltrate the UK education system but without success. Both the Roman Catholic and the English Churches have long since accepted that the Earth is spherical and Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. They just think that their god started it off and, at some point, introduced a soul into the species homo sapiens but they teach that in RI not biology classes.
Irrespective of which institution — the state or the churches— should look after the poor, the Times of London headlines its report of the same document that started off this thread: “Churches want state aid to keep them going”.
Incidentally, the main church concerned — the Church of England— is actually a part of the UK state as the established church in England (but not in Wales or Northern Ireland). In Scotland the State church is that of a different Protestant sect — the Presbyterian Church of Scotland also known as the Kirk,
When the Queen as head of the UK state crosses the border into Scotland she undergoes a religious conversion from being an Anglican (Episcopalian) to being a Presbyterian. Not many people know that rather trivial piece of information.
“I do NOT have any trouble combining the struggle for socialism with the struggle for survival.”
Nor do I. After all, it’s the Party case. Except that the socialist party itself as such only advocates socialism while recognising that all workers as workers, whether socialist or not but including socialists as individuals, have no alternative but to struggle to survive and can do this better collectively.
You could be right that millions of people in the world have to concentrate on just getting their next meal. This could be one reason why the movement for socialism is more likely to take off in those parts of the world where this is not the case for most people.
This reminds me of something our late comrade Richard Montague used to say — we want socialism, they need it. Not quite sure what the implications of this are.
