I’ve never heard someone say the N word in person until today I think. One minority (aboriginal) telling me how something about blacks but using the N word instead of blacks/African-american.
There are a lot of other smaller instances I’ve seen in my personal life too.
I’ve never seen Indian versus Pakistan racism, but I would at least get why that might happen, since history.
In public policy, the majority (caucasians) are prob the most racist here, but in casual conversation I might hear more minority vs minority racism. I think this partially might be because caucasians have it drilled into them (my city) that they have to not be racist in convo?
I’ve never understood why some minority groups didn’t come out to support black lives matter (here), but it seems to look like bc they don’t care to help out blm bc its not explicitly minority-name-here lives matter
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To add to the other posts, it is complicated. Not every minority’s interests line up with another.
This becomes abundantly clear when looking at the “post”-colonial global south. There are those privileged minorities, the national bourgeosie, the petit bourgeois, the urban proletariat that live far different lives than the ‘majority’ (well, in the past, if I remember correctly, more than 50% of people now live in urban areas in 2010) or even other minorities that live in rural areas.
This makes, for example, the agricultural labourers of my country, consisting mainly of south Indian immigrants, to have different class interests than lets say the Malay-muslim and Orang Asli rural communities, or the Chinese minority. Even though they are all ‘exploited’ by capitalism, and face injustices and face some forms of further neglect compared to others.
To echo concerns some others already had within this thread, there is too much focus on the ‘minority vs majority’ and of racial hierarchies. And why I say that is because when talking about hierarchies it becomes tempting to rank certain races one on top of another, but that does not really tell you why. Why do certain races hold certain status over others? Because of material conditions. Because of history and geography. It is tempting to say, ‘because of colonialists’ divide and conquer strategy’ but it does not explain why it is still here and how to overcome it. And it simplifies history too. Tribal rivalries, ethnic chauvinism existed before capitalism and colonialism. How each ethnic group is situated in the larger relations of production needs to be factored.
Also, sometimes it really is just 2 people fighting for scraps, completely oblivious of something larger (as others mentioned).
Think about how you thought about the world before encountering Marxism or similar. Did you view yourself as part of some race or class? Did you think you are part of class society and your duty is to dissolve capitalism? Probably not.
And that’s another issue we must contend. How to educate the masses in such a way for them to be conscious about their own position in class society as well as their own humanity.
What do you have in mind about that? I’ve read a bit about it, the general consensus seems to be and get people focus on class struggle instead of racial struggle.
Straight up, racial struggle is more obvious(ex you can tell what skin color someone has from far away). And most people are focused on the more obvious stuff, like trying not to be homeless under capitalism.
I just saw your comment now, sorry about that.
Honestly I am not too sure either. I need to read more, but I do feel like education is a large part of it. And what I mean by that is education through all channels: school and a revolutionary party curriculum.
I personally would not really put it in terms of ‘class’ or ‘race’ struggle because I think it tries to delineate an issue that isn’t clearly seperated into neat little pieces. Race and class are intertwined, which I tried to convey in the first comment. It is pretty much useless to seperate them.
But like you said, we can easily focus on the ‘obvious’ stuff and pivot towards the real issues. Racial solidarity I think occurs when the two parties realise that they have more in common (ie. victims of capitalism) than focusing on liberal identity politics.
no worries, we got irl lives to live!
This might be an angle we could play