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The class-based approach to race is significantly more complicated than Omi and Winant [Racial Formation in the United States] or Roediger [The Wages of Whiteness] present it, specifically the Marxist approach. While race is by far the most impacting social division in American society, this by no means invalidates the Marxist approach.
The absence of a broad-based labor movement in the biggest capitalist power house of the world is quite conspicuous. It points to a fractionalized working class and a marginalized solidarity base for labor. The obvious cause of this splintering is racial tensions in the working class. Workers developed an identity in antebellum America of white, free republicans as opposed to slavish and ignorant blacks. This identity crisis continues even today. These differences became the identities of "whiteness" and "blackness" (R 3-6). The opposition of these identities were often used as pleas for white workers rights. The ironic wall between "whiteness" and "blackness" was most apparent during arguments of wage slavery or white slavery wherein whites decried industrial slavery while definitively separating themselves from the chattel slavery of blacks (R 71-77).
This paves the way for American politics to center around racial identity and not class antagonisms. The divisiveness of such a political concentration almost assures the stagnancy of political advancement. In other words, setting blacks against whites against Latinos can only assure that political and economic equality of the races, as well as between rich and poor, will face adamantine barriers to realization (OW 46-47). The ultimate results of this divisiveness are an agitated and emphasized concept of racial interests, both black and white, and a lack of cohesiveness in the labor movement. The emphasis on race identity obviously cripples the labor movement (and thus class identity) as an exclusively realistic mode for change.
Two of the most often cited examples of Marxist essentialism are "false consciousness" and the capitalists' "divide and conquer" technique. Unfortunately, the meaning of these terms is never considered in opponents criticisms of them. We should also note that in their discussion of Marxism, O&W claim to throw out "mechanistic and dogmatic" theories (OW 30).
In the first place, the concepts of "whiteness" and "blackness" so often used as evidence that a class analysis is wrong is race hegemony. If the workers consider themselves "white" or "black," it cannot be solely attributed to them. The unstable equilibrium of racial hegemony is maintained by the racial state (OW 84). Thus, even though racial identity can be more or less emphasized by workers, the entire drive for potential emphasis come from the existing racial hegemony, in the care of the state. This does not divorce workers from all responsibility, but it does show that "whiteness," regardless of origins, is a racial project long established and supported by the "racial state" which pervades the working class and gains an unthinking, common-sense acceptance -- hegemony (OW 66-67).
The essence of "false consciousness" is this hegemony of white race domination. Marxism states that this wrong idea is propagated by the "racial state" not merely out of some sadistic hatred of minorities, nor by the twisted ideas of a few individuals, but because the "racial state" has a vested interest in being a racial state. By contemplating the role of the state in a capitalist society, the divide and conquer technique can be easily discerned. The basis behind the faulty accusations of essentialism is Marxism's insistence that only a class perspective, breaking through the racial hegemony and uniting all the disadvantaged and exploited in one revolutionary force, is capable of successfully challenging not only the very existence of racial hegemony, but the very basis of exploitative capitalist society itself.
It should be noted that Marxism does not assume that the workers are enlightened or that workers will naturally recognize their common exploitation and ignore race differences to fight in solidarity. This interpretation of Marxism is called "vulgar" Marxism, and for good reason; the very concept of spontaneous cooperation is both unrealistic and irrational. In fact, Marxism, especially after Lenin requires a conscious political "project" to further the aims of the workers. In America this would mean a definitive "racial project" to depropagandize workers and challenge the racial hegemony. Solidarity and unity of the working class is essential to Marxism. Many self proclaimed Marxist organizations have essentialized race, and typically in a dogmatic and "vulgar" critique. Once again, however, one should aim one's attention at O&M's remark on page 30 where they throw out all "dogmatic" theories. Race is a primary concern for any progress in America, but class is the penultimate tool for a real challenge to capitalism and its abusive system.
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