Blood on our Hands

How many of us have blood on our hands? Do we acknowledge it, atone for it?

I almost titled this post: what racism did for me. I benefitted concretely and materially from Jim Crow laws. I may have said this before, but I think it is important for me to bear it in mind, to remember it, to mark it. Because of Jim Crow laws, my white grandfather--who grew up 'so poor the poor folks called us poor,' as he used to say---with barely a high school education, a 16 year old share-cropper wife, and a new, sick baby, was able to flourish as a small businessman in southern Mississippi.

After the Depression and the end of prohibition--during which he ran a bar for his bootlegging brother--my grandfather opened the only furniture store in Pascagoula, Mississippi that sold to blacks. (Not the term he used.)  Or maybe just the only white owned store--I don't know for sure, and all those who would know have long passed. It was called Home Furniture Store. His black customers called him Mr. Home instead of Jake, J.C., or Mr. Runnels. Was he one of the few white progressives? Not really. He was a businessman who could identify an untapped market. Had the market been tapped, he may not have done so well.

His wife bled on and off for a couple of years after giving birth to my mother in a shack near Macedonia, Mississippi. So, they only had one child. She benefitted from her father's business sense. And from segregation insofar as she could become valedictorian of her high school and get a scholarship. Maybe she would have even had the schools been integrated. Thing is, we won't know.

Even if it is exaggerated to say that there is blood on my hands with respect to these matters, and I think it important to consider the other matters perhaps more relevant to this topic, it is not exaggerated to call oneself to account for the way in which one benefits from the suffering of others. It may be that in understanding how we have benefitted from the suffering of others, in recognizing how our privilege has nothing to do with our own acts, our 'merit' as some liberals would like us to think, we can hear the call to do our best to eliminate such suffering.

Comments

[pebird]

I've been thinking a lot about privilege recently - wondering if there is a good set of ideas out there about how it works and what it does to us. Privilege seems to be an underpinning - I would almost say objective condition - that supports a great portion of ideology.

I've been thinking about this in terms of the recent immigration debate. Casual research (that would be Google) indicates that the immigration rate per 100,000 persons in the US is historically low (this is counting undocumented immigrants). I think that privilege explains a lot of the recent reaction - the economic impact just isn't that significant.

Your post resonated at a personal level with what I've been chewing on for a while. At least your grandfather looked at the situation from a business perspective - the "progressive" aspect of capitalism?

[Jodi]

Thanks, PE Bird. Rather than seeing capitalism as 'progressive' I think we might say that it can rearrange, eat up, process, incorporate all sorts of different ways of life. Capitalism is, in a way, neutral toward forms of hierarchy or oppression that are not ultimately those of class.

And, like you, I have been thinking about this with respect to the immigration discussions: I am mightily uncomfortable with the way that my support for immigrant workers aligns with capital's interest in immigrant workers.

[peBird]

Jodi - I believe there is a progressive aspect to Capital - it tends to be the unconscious part, e.g., it couldn't expand if the South insisted on slavery (a feudal remainder) extending to the new states, as well as the part that says business is more important than worring about the color of one's skin.

In other words, some of Capital's interests can be aligned with progressive interests in the short-term or in particular contingent situations.

With regard to immigration - I am coming to the conclusion that the traditional labor response ("they're gonna git our jobs") is reactionary and anti-progressive. The fact that the U.S. constantly requires a fresh, young, under educated labor force to expand is not necessarily anti-labor or anti-progressive, it's more of a historical artifact. It's a challenge to progressive forces, but these people are natural progressive allies. I think it is happening because Capital requires it, not because Capital wants it.

In fact, I think that legal immigration has been deliberately slowed by reactionary forces over the last 15-20 years to keep certain forces (workers radicalized by the Central American conflicts, among others) out of the country. Since the economy requires the labor, the workers come anyway.

[Gregg]

Many of my ancestors settled in Virginia a long time ago. Slaves? Yes, probably. And I may have played jazz with some of the descendents of my ancestors' slaves.

[Night of the Flying Monkeys]

When do marxists admit the blood on their hands, or on the hands of the communists.

[Bucket of Water]

"When do marxists admit the blood on their hands, or on the hands of the communists."

If you are going to troll, you should at least use an interesting url...

[s0metim3s]

"I am mightily uncomfortable with the way that my support for immigrant workers aligns with capital's interest in immigrant workers."

Does it align? How so?

[Jodi]

There are businesses that are arguing for immigrant amnesty as well as greater ease of movement: they want inexpensive labor. In the peach orchards and remaining textile mills in South Carolina, for example, there is a heavy reliance on immigrant labor and the owners want that labor supply to continue.

[Jodi]

PE Bird--in my view, to consider capitalism progressive is to focus on very short term and misleading elements; that is, it requires that one avert one's gaze from the conditions of workers and owners, of finance, appropriation, and distribution.

[peBird]

Jodi - It is not necessary to avert one's gaze to see the progressive as well as reactionary sides to capital. Perhaps crossing one's eyes to create a parallax view helps.

In any event - note that the term "immigrant labor" is a reification - it's a category we are using to manipulate ideas and language - the reality are real people / workers who are only "immigrants" in a globalized world due to contingent political relationships.

The point is that it is perfectly OK to support "immigrants" as a progressive force while understanding that capital needs "immigrants" for other needs.

In this sense capital is progressive - it creates the conditions for it's disruption.

I don't understand why it's uncomfortable.

[s0metim3s]

Jodi, I'm familiar with the preference of capital for cheap labour - I was asking how your position on migration aligns with that.

Is 'amnesty and greater ease of movement' the extent of your position?

The WallSt Journal line, being the most 'progressive' capitalist expression of such a position, is nevertheless premised on excluding migrants from welfare and similar, such that the principles of freedom of movement and amnesty are in fact principles by which a legal distinction between citizen and migrant labour continues to be upheld and, as a consequence, continue to create pools of cheap labour.

If one don't support the legal distinction (ie., the border), then the position of 'progressive' capital and oneself ceases to 'align'. It really is that clear cut.

But, I suppose that 'easing movement' doesn't mean 'no borders' - and therein lies the problem, the possibility of an intersection between 'progressive' capital and the left.

http://vacarme.eu.org/article484.html

[Jodi]

Sometimes: part of the issue for me is that the theoretical critique of borders operates at a different level from the current political discussion of immigration--a point clearly visible in the fact that the laws under dispute are US laws. To be against territorial boundaries at the same time that one supports a position to be inscribed in US law creates a difficulty, at least for me. So, in the US, the debate is not at present constituted in terms of rights of movement/mobility or transferable benefits. It is framed within a territorial discourse of citizenship. Also, I don't think matters are quite as clear cut as you do: mobile capital also often ignores territorial borders (financial flows, for example). I favor state action to direct these flows.

PE Bird, I don't think capital creates the conditions for its disruption unless we include the political moments of class struggle.

[s0metim3s]

I think the political debates over immigration in the US have recourse to their own theories of how the border operates. They mightn't be informed by the same sets of concepts as those that have developed either here or in the EU. But, then I'm thinking, what about Gloria Anzaldúa and others, such as deletetheborder? They might not be prevalent, but that's neither here nor there really.

That said, it's in part because amnesty and the pursuit of gentler border controls are inscribed in national law that the contradiction will always resolve back into a 'pragmatic' defense of the border. 'No borders', of course, can't be so reinscribed (neither politically nor affectively), even if there is an intermittent support for more 'moderate' measures - and this is the point.

And, I'm not sure how you understand the mobility of capital problem.

Seems to me that the pertinent factor is not capital's mobility as such, but capital's mobility across differential and segmented labour markets, whose differentiation is precisely and mundanely organised and managed by border controls. Besides which, don't you worry about how anti-'finance capital' politics recapitulates a fetishism of money, on those occasions when it doesn't just collapse into an historical anti-semitism? (Doesn't Zizek talk about this somewhere?)