• freagle@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    6 months ago

    This is a pretty bad take, and I say that as a committed Marxist. The reality of race is in the structures of our society. Fighting directly against it requires naming it. If you did income-based admissions, you'd just get poor white supremacy and structural racism would go uncontested.

    • taiphlosion@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      6 months ago

      If you did income-based admissions, you'd just get poor white supremacy and structural racism would go uncontested.

      This, basically

    • Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      5 months ago

      First of all, racism isn’t mandatory for us to make a living. Thus, there is no material basis for racism. And because there is no material basis for racism, we can much more easily organize collective bargaining power, to use direct democracy, to remove the structural barriers causing segregation.

      Secondly, naming it had devolved into a mental shortcut that’s been exploited and perverted to advance practices that lead to more racism, or to practices that’s intensified racial discrimination.

      Lastly, universities still admit based on academics. What we’re doing is changing the groups that you’re selecting the top performers from, from race to income. So for example, if you have to admit a certain number of students from each district, proportional to the population of that district, then that will vastly increase the equality of university admissions, because it normalizes for education conditions. Failing at that, you will decrease the amount of segregation in society as a whole, as more affluent families move to poorer school districts for a leg up. So, it’s win-win really.

      • DoiDoi [comrade/them, he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        First of all, racism isn’t mandatory for us to make a living. Thus, there is no material basis for racism.

        Buddy no

        Like......what???

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        First of all, racism isn’t mandatory for us to make a living. Thus, there is no material basis for racism

        This is genuinely moronic, sub-lib level analysis. False-consciousness requires some material basis, even if it's myopic and counter-productive. Just because there isn't a Racism Factory that everyone needs to clock into doesn't mean it doesn't represent part of a semi-coherent survival strategy, i.e. social dominance as a means of self-preservation. It follows basically the same logic as imperialism, that by diverting the capitalist desire for severe exploitation towards a social minority, the capitalist will allow you to get by being comparatively less exploited [though, among many other shortcomings, the racist typically does not realize this allowance by capitalists is only ever "for now" and their need for endless growth means everyone meets the boot-heel in time].

        Racism is a tool of class warfare beyond simple rhetoric, it is a way to channel the energy of the white proletariat into the immiseration of the nonwhite proletariat, something which is itself directly beneficial to the bourgeoisie as a means of profit extraction, as well as instrumentally beneficial in how it prevents whites from putting that energy into social revolution. Intersectionality is real and represents real, material oppression that has real, material bases. The sum total of those intersections is class oppression, but choosing to speak of the whole and never the parts will not somehow make the parts go away.

        "Hah, you are being attacked by a tiger and choose to defend from its teeth and claws? Simply defend from the tiger as a whole and you will have a better chance!"

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        5 months ago

        First of all, racism isn’t mandatory for us to make a living

        Yes, actually, it is. It's built into our everyday superstructures and it permeates every aspect of life from food to housing to clothing to music to literature to education. You are swimming in racism from the day you're born in the empire.

        Thus, there is no material basis for racism.

        Complete non-sequitur. There is no material basis for RACE because race is a social invention of race pseudoscience. However, RACISM, a superstructural hyperobject, absolutely permeates the material base and we see that by looking at the distribution of land, money, power, health outcomes, trauma, etc. Racism is absolutely embedded in our material base despite being born of a superstructural aspect. Lest you forget, superstructure is not epiphenomenal, but rather exists in a dialectical relationship with the material base.

        And because there is no material basis for racism, we can much more easily organize collective bargaining power, to use direct democracy, to remove the structural barriers causing segregation.

        Another non-sequitur. There is no evidence for your claim, you merely assert. The only successful slave rebellion happened in Haiti and required the complete subjugation of the white population. The most successful socialist revolutions were not launched and won by the proletariat but by the peasantry - in Russia, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Korea. All of these revolutions actually had to seize political power first before they could being a deliberate process of proletarianization by industrializing their economies. All of these movements understood the White Patriarchal European Settler Colonial Empire was the biggest threat to their revolutions, and history has shown us that in contexts with a white population, the minority of white settlers sided with the revolution and the majority sided with the empire.

        Secondly, naming it had devolved into a mental shortcut that’s been exploited and perverted to advance practices that lead to more racism, or to practices that’s intensified racial discrimination.

        This is also ridiculous. The only think you could mean by saying "leads to more racism" is that there is now reverse racism in addition to "classical" racism. This is a white supremacist position and has no merit and no basis in reality. Fighting against racism using the structures of racism is not more racism, it is explicitly anti-racism. The legal race categories that were invented by the white empire were used to bind the actions of people through law. Reversing this power is a legitimate form of resistance, so by establishing that people assigned to the Black race category must be protected by law, it constrains, in modest ways, the actions of the white empire to create more room for the oppressed to operate it. The end goal is, of course, liberation, but reversing the power of racial categories is a demonstrably effective form of resistance, harm reduction, and mechanism for organizing.

        Lastly, universities still admit based on academics.

        Yup. Which is why its racist that they didn't admit people with equal academic performance based on their racial category.

        What we’re doing is changing the groups that you’re selecting the top performers from, from race to income

        Which means that they'll go back to oppressing people on the basis of race.

        So for example, if you have to admit a certain number of students from each district, proportional to the population of that district, then that will vastly increase the equality of university admissions, because it normalizes for education conditions

        No, it won't. Because a) no one actually requires admissions to be bound by geography and b) because the history of racialized oppression in the education system is far more complex and effective than the laws we can create to combat it. It doesn't normalize for education conditions, it's simply gives more freedom for people in power to oppress racialized groups.

        Failing at that, you will decrease the amount of segregation in society as a whole, as more affluent families move to poorer school districts for a leg up. So, it’s win-win really.

        This will literally never happen because the affluent families go to private schools, not public schools and the idea that there would be geographical quotas would be impossible to ram through in law. You're burying the lede here, and arguing disingenuously. You are not really talking about income-based admissions but rather geography-based admissions, and that will never work, ever. So you're arguing for income-based but predicating it on geography-based, and we all know geography-based literally can't work and therefore you'll end up with only income-based as a half-measure "compromise" with the white supremacists and then we'll slide back 100 years into even worse segregation.