Marxist Racism

Nicholas Provenzo has a good post on his Rule of Reason blog.

According to the Seattle Public Schools, if you’re an individualist, you’re a racist (HT: Volokh Conspiracy). On a web page that lists various forms and definitions of racism, the school system defines “Cultural Racism” as:

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers. [Emphasis added].

This definition is racist itself; it ascribes racist thinking to white people only—if one “overtly and covertly attribute[s] value and normality” to black or Asian races, one falls outside its definition of racism. More fundamentally [however], this definition attacks the very notion of treating individuals as individuals. In her 1963 essay Racism, Ayn Rand observed that

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

So why then are the Seattle Public Schools smearing the antidote to collectivism as racist? At root is the Marxist theory that history is nothing more than group struggle, and according to such a theory, we are always defined by the group.

You can see the Marxist interpretation of racism in the Seattle Public Schools “definition” of racism:

The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society.

Contrast this again with Ayn Rand’s definition of racism:

The notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.

Or the World Book Dictionary (c. 1987) definition:

The belief that a particular race, especially one’s own race, is superior to other races. (Where race is defined as “any one of the major divisions of mankind, each having distinctive physical characteristics and a common ancestry.”)

Rand and the World Book give valid definitions of racism, defining it, logically enough, in terms of race. It is the belief that an individual has significance in virtue of his race – whether or not the race has any “social power."

But the SPS defines racism in terms of “social power” and “systematic subordination.”

That’s the Marxism in their thinking. As Mr. Provenzo pointed out, according to Marx, history was a clash of classes: the rich vs the poor, the bourgeois vs the proletariat, the “haves” vs the “have nots.” It was a clash over economic power. The SPS variant of that idea is to look at things as a clash over “social power” – but it’s still a power struggle between the “haves” and “have nots.” The group with the most “social power” is the one who is “racist.” (Well, only if you are a White living in the US.)

So the SPS says you are a racist in virtue of the fact that you are white -- not in terms of any decision you might make or any point of view you might hold. And because of the SPS’s inherent Marxist thinking, they fail to see the gross, blatant contradiction in saying that only white people are racist.

A black or Asian supremacist is not – according to the SPS -- racist. (I challenge the SPS to show a black or Asian supremacist, by their definistions, IS racist -- because they can't do it. They would have to change their definitions to reflect reality.) A person “of color” who disparages whites as pigs and filth, who makes jokes about them, even who kills or robs whites, the SPS would not call racist. Would such a person be called a “freedom fighter” by the SPS? They would be fighting the supposed “White Power Structure,” after all.

There were plenty of “fighters” like that in Marxist societies, too. No wonder, since Marx had claimed that the power struggle between “have” and “have not” was a metaphysical fact and an item of faith; that the only hope of salvation for the “have nots” was to wipe the earth clean of the “haves,” in order to achieve a “worker’s paradise” on earth.

That’s why millions of innocent people died in Russia, millions of innocent people died in China, and millions of innocents died in Cambodia.

Marxism let the murders loose, just as what the SPS is seeking would let the murderers out amongst us. How else could we have a “racial group paradise” on earth? As night follows day, Marxism in practice always has and always will result in widespread death amongst the “haves” (and “have nots”) – it won’t be any different if the SPS has their way.

In grouping society into “Whites” and “other,” and assigning a collective guilt upon “Whites,” the SPS has declared their support for and advocacy of racial conflict.

Their only out could have been to advocate the only antidote to racism: individualism, judging people by the content of their character, not by their race or sex or nationality or other deterministic character of genetics or birth.

Looking on the contact page for the Seattle Public Schools, there are some people you can write to about this issue. The addresses are all in the public record.

The person who, by her position, seems most responsible:
Equity & Race Relations Caprice Hollins cdhollins1@seattleschools.org

And others who might be of some influence in this matter (?):
Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorn cjsantorno@seattleschools.org
Elementary Ed Director Pat Sander psander@seattleschools.org
Elementary Ed Director Pauline Hill phill@seattlschools.org
Elementary Ed Director Walter Trotter wtrotter@seattleschools.org
High School Director Ammon McWashington mcwashington@seattleschools.org
Superintendent Raj Manhas rsmanhas@seattleschools.org

Education Posted by Cyrano at May 21, 2006 11:00 PM