Critical race theory
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 5 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Woke as Maoism with American Characteristics. Whiteness as Property In 1993, James Lindsay explains, Cheryl Harris wrote a long article for the Harvard Law Review called ‘Whiteness as Property,’[1] in which she proposed that whiteness or white privilege constitutes a kind of cultural private property. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx said that communism could be summarized in a single sentence: ‘the abolition of private property.’ This is why critical race theory thinks whiteness must be abolished in order to have racial justice. Lindsay: ‘People who have access to this property are whites, or white adjacent, or they act white. … People without that are people of colour and they are oppressed by systemic racism. Systemic racism is enforced by an ideology of white supremacy. Instead of capitalism, if you think of whiteness as a form of cultural capital, white supremacy, as they define it, is identical to capitalism. ‘It’s not believing that white people are superior, it’s believing that white people have access to the control of society and should maintain that. Even if you don’t actually believe that, if you merely support that, you have adopted the ideology of white supremacy into your mind. And so, you have the exact same system. And the goal is to awaken a racial consciousness in people so that they will band together as a class and seize the means of cultural production, so that white cultural production is no longer the dominant mode. ‘I know in the UK, throughout Europe, I hear this question again and again, why on Earth is this very American phenomenon about slavery and so on, that doesn’t apply to our country, why is it popular here. It’s because it’s not about history at all, it’s not about slavery at all, those are excuses that they use. It’s about creating a class consciousness that’s against this form of property called whiteness, that’s against the dominant culture. That may just be a matter of fact, say if you’re in Europe, that’s why because it becomes a site by which people can come together, and they can channel resentment and try to claim power.’[2] Recapping James’ points, Jake says: that ‘Marxism transcends economics, and even transcends social theory, the theory of Marxism bears a religious-like structure that can be extrapolated across all domains of life. And he used the example of private property, which if taken literally means a physical asset but that idea can be extrapolated to the idea of whiteness as...
Woke as Maoism with American characteristics
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Ideas without a Ground. James Lindsay European Parliament talk James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories and Race Marxism– recently gave a talk at the European Parliament on Woke Ideology, which Jake from Rattlesnake TV comments on in his YouTube video James Lindsay SHATTERS Woke Ideology: EU Parliament Speech.[1] Lindsay’s thesis is as follows: He says Woke is supposed to advance equity in Europe, and he presents the definition of equity written by a man named George Frederickson: ‘an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal’[2] and asks if it sounds like a definition of anything else we’ve ever heard of, like socialism. ‘They’re going to administer an economy to make shares equal.’[3] ‘The only difference between equity and socialism is the type of property that they redistribute, the type of shares they’re going to redistribute, social and cultural capital in addition to economic and material capital and so this is my thesis: when we say what is woke, woke is Maoism with American characteristics. If I might borrow from Mao himself, who said to his philosophy was Marxism Leninism with Chinese characteristics, which means woke is Marxism and it’s a very provocative statement. It’s something you will certainly hear. It is not that it is different, and the professors and the philosophers will spend a large amount of time explaining to you why no, no, it’s about economics when it’s Marxism.’[4] Lindsay claims that Woke is no different from Marxism: he says that when we study animals we classify them at different levels: the cat is at the level of genus, but within that genus are all the different species of cat: lions, tigers, leopards and so on, suggesting that: ‘If we think of Marxism as a genus of ideological thought, the classical economic Marxism is a species, radical feminism is a species in this same genus, critical race theory is a genus, or sorry, a species in this genus. Queer theory is a species in this genus, postcolonial theory that’s plaguing Europe is a species in this genus, and they have something that binds them together called intersectionality, that makes them treat it as if they are all one thing, but the logic is Marxist.’[5] Jake provides context: ‘Karl Marx was a 19th century philosopher who wrote The Communist Manifesto and Das Capital and his work obviously inspired the revolutions led by Vladimir Lenin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot and more. …’ ‘… the idea of...
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