Why are some Races under-represented in Protests.

[luke wilson]

This topic has the potential to go south as it invokes the notion of Race. It's a question that has been on my mind for years.

Recently in the forum, some topics have cropped up touching on the subject of Race that got me re-thinking about this old question.

Have you noticed the following

Occupy Movement

The Occupy Movement was mostly made up of white people. This is something at the time that stood out for me. In my mind I was thinking, why is it that in a protest about social and economic inequality, minorities are not making up a huge percentage of the protesters?

Why was that?

Police Brutality

In the recent cases of Police brutality in America which resulted in big protests e.g. in Baltimore and Ferguson, why was it mainly african americans protesting? Watching the images on TV at the time, I noticed that they were mainly black riots against police brutality. However, thinking of the bigger picture, police brutality in america is becoming more of an issue that transcends race...

Compare the above to the 2011 London Riots following the shooting of Mark Duggan. Despite Mark Duggan being a minority, the ensuing riot wasn't really race-centric in terms of the participants... The rioters were mainly disenfranchised youths and Londoners across racial lines who felt shut out from the main economy. Why was this different to Ferguson and Baltimore?

G8 and Bilderberg protests

I usually notice that riots pertaining to the G8 group or Bilderberg meetings mainly involve white people. Again, I wonder why minorities don't turn up in huge numbers? It's not like they are not receiving the brunt of the oppression emanating from such groups....

Conclusion

In short, I've noticed that protests are mainly race-centric.... Even against wars in the middle east e.g. in London... if you look at the pictures... you wonder... where are all the arabs in the protest? The percentage that turn up are hardly representative of the percentage in the population... it's like a civil rights movement in the 1960's that is hardly made up of african american people (it just doesn't make sense!)... so it's like, the occupy movement... are those only issues affecting white people?... or police brutality... is the developing Gestapo situation in the US only an issue affecting African Americans?.... or the NWO... is that only an issue affecting white people?... If I'm blind to Race... then I look at these and notice that people are doing something about it, at least in terms of protesting... but if I'm not blind to Race... I look at this and notice the demographics are slightly off... there is something happening there...

When I see these stuff live on TV as they are happening, I just notice this but it could be that the pictures being broadcasted are not representative of the demographics on the ground!

A recent one... Donald Trump protests... you'd expect to see a huge number of mexicans or latinos.... where are they?

Am I imagining this or is there something to it? For me it's not really a matter of Race. It's more a matter of the demographics in the protests not really representing the true ratios of those affected either in the National or Global population.

 

[seek10]

Probably each race has their own set of priorities that trigger their e-motion.

> A recent one... Donald Drumpf protests... you'd expect to see a huge number of mexicans or latinos.... where are they?

Most of Mexicans and Latino's are part of low income group that needs to work to feed their children on a day to day basis. Probably intelligentsia of these groups should be there at least. I think it is common for the colored down-the-ladder immigrants tend to be more subdued, particularly if they lack committed representatives(either business people or politicians).

 

[angelburst29]

This topic has the potential to go south as it invokes the notion of Race. It's a question that has been on my mind for years.

[...]

Compare the above to the 2011 London Riots following the shooting of Mark Duggan. Despite Mark Duggan being a minority, the ensuing riot wasn't really race-centric in terms of the participants... The rioters were mainly disenfranchised youths and Londoners across racial lines who felt shut out from the main economy. Why was this different to Ferguson and Baltimore?

[...]

A recent one... Donald Trump protests... you'd expect to see a huge number of mexicans or latinos.... where are they?

Am I imagining this or is there something to it? For me it's not really a matter of Race. It's more a matter of the demographics in the protests not really representing the true ratios of those affected either in the National or Global population.

Something you might want to take into consideration - when comparing Ferguson and Baltimore verses the London riots - if there was "coordinated paid protesters" sent in by an organization?

Billionaire George Soros funds $15M effort to stop Trump, mobilize Latinos
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2016/03/10/billionaire-smackdown-george-soros-funds-effort-to-stop-trump-mobilize-latinos/

Donald Trump often notes that he has plenty of millions to battle his way to the Oval Office.

But now another billionaire New Yorker is putting up his own millions to prevent Trump from winning the presidency and is calling on Latinos to be part of that effort.

Financier George Soros is launching, along with other donors, a $15 million campaign to achieve the largest Latino and immigrant participation at the polls, the New York Times reported.

Through a new super PAC named Immigrant Voters Win, the campaign is funding organizations in states such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado, which have large or growing Latino and Asian communities, in the hope of influencing turnout in November, the Times reported.

Trump shot to the front of the Republican presidential field last year by proposing a hard-line immigration policy. The Hungarian-born Soros is contributing $5 million of his own money to the campaign.

People involved in the effort told the Times that it is the largest Democratic-voter turnout effort campaign to target Latinos and immigrants. The goal is to have a minimum of 400,000 new voters by the general election in November.


Are Agent Provocateurs Disrupting Trump Rallies?
http://memoryholeblog.com/2016/03/13/are-agent-provocateurs-disrupting-trump-rallies/

Steven D. Kelley and Stephen Lendman Comment on Potential Coordinated Efforts to “#SHUTITDOWN”

See also Jon Rappoport’s recent post, “Vampire Technocrats Fly to Jekyll Island to Stop Trump“.-

Press TV - ‘Soros seeks to destroy Trump’s challenge to New World Order’

An American political analyst says Jewish billionaire George Soros is attempting to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump, because he is not part of the Zionist controlled Satanic New World Order.

Steven D Kelley, a former CIA/NSA contractor, made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Saturday when asked to comment on the recent protests against Republican front-runner Trump.

On Friday night, a large number of protesters — many of them African Americans and Latinos angered by Trump’s anti-immigrant stance — clashed with Trump’s supporters in Chicago, Illinois, forcing the billionaire to cancel a rally there.

The cancellation, which came amid large demonstrations both inside and outside the event at the University of Illinois at Chicago, follows heightened concerns about violence in general at Trump’s rallies across the United States.

Trump, who has never held elected office, is leading the race, and has already won contests in 15 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Vermont.

“The ability of international power brokers to control and influence marginalized or simple minds continues to be used to defeat democratic processes and human rights,” Kelley said.

“We saw the destruction of the Ukraine when the money of demons like George Soros was used to fund fascist mobs. We see the same tactics being used in the American presidential election with George Soros once again funding violent opposition mobs to disrupt the legal free speech of a candidate who is not part of the Zionist controlled Satanic New World Order (NWO),” he added.

George Soros Engineers Violent Donald Trump Protest
http://investmentwatchblog.com/george-soros-engineers-violent-donald-trump-protest/

 

[Turgon]

Occupy Movement

The Occupy Movement was mostly made up of white people. This is something at the time that stood out for me. In my mind I was thinking, why is it that in a protest about social and economic inequality, minorities are not making up a huge percentage of the protesters?

Why was that?

Probably each race has their own set of priorities that trigger their e-motion.

> A recent one... Donald Drumpf protests... you'd expect to see a huge number of mexicans or latinos.... where are they?

Most of Mexicans and Latino's are part of low income group that needs to work to feed their children on a day to day basis. Probably intelligentsia of these groups should be there at least. I think it is common for the colored down-the-ladder immigrants tend to be more subdued, particularly if they lack committed representatives(either business people or politicians).

A lot of the organizers and "leaders" of the movement in Toronto were white. Most seemed like the offspring of middle-income families, but within the movement itself there were minorities, but this was scattered and the only real representation was that of the Native community, and that's probably because the rate of unemployment in Reserves is insane. So I think it was a mixture of those who could afford to be there and take the time off whatever it was they were doing before, and a large amount of people who were either students as well as those that were jobless and/or homeless. I think because of the fact that the organizers were white, there was an inclination to attract more white people to the movement and that most other minorities, other than random individuals here and there, wouldn't have been inclined to join based solely on that.

 

[Neil]

It's not surprising at all considering the structure of American society. Blacks are ex-slaves (never really gained their freedom) and Latinos are basically migrant slave labor. When I went to college, which was a private science and engineering school, the most notable minority where Chinese of various derivations; about 10% of the student body. There was a somewhat smaller, but still rather noticeable contingent of Arabs, primarily from Saudi Arabia, but also surrounding oil sheikdoms. There was a noticeable number of Europeans, who had come to Florida for the beach atmosphere, and almost no black people. In fact, I can't remember meeting a single black person who was American, they were all Caribbean or African, and rich. Same with Latinos, they were almost exclusively foreign.

In order to get into a decent high school you have to live in a neighborhood with fairly high property values that generates enough tax revenue for funding schools in that zone. In order to live in that neighborhood you have to have a job at a reputable employer that is stable so you can pay the bills. In order to get that job you have to have a certain professionalism and appearance.

Blacks have always been in the bottom caste in American society. Generally, you can't afford to buy a house in a good neighborhood because you don't have the "professionalism" to get the job that supports it because you couldn't get into a good school because you couldn't afford to buy the house... well, you get the picture. So you end up in ghetto schools which are "failing" even by American education's abysmal standard where crime is astronomical and a lot of people are selling drugs to make ends meet because it sure pays a lot better than working the graveyard shift at Wal-Mart 20 hours a week or cleaning some white person's office who can barely deign to look at you. So most often your choices are, live hand to mouth in the legitimate economy that could kick you to the curb at any moment, live a little bit better by joining some criminal enterprise where you'll always have to look over your shoulder and evade the police, or try and burn up the basketball court and hope you can make it in sports. Such is not environment conducive to intellectual development or contemplating the structure of society and philosophizing about fairer social paradigms from the comfort of one's personal library.

Generally, only white people have time for that stuff, and only families with significant political capital and wealth (upper middle class and higher) can provide that environment for their children. And these children are usually scooped up by gatekeepers for America's pseudo-left, inculcating them with all kinds of ideas of "social justice" and "democratic reform" in a system which is semi-feudal and such things don't really exist. Some of the lower middle class might come along for the fun, but more doors will be closed to them and they are really irrelevant. Chomsky describes this dynamic quite a bit in Manufacturing Consent. Since American politics is just about aligning enough agendas of the oligarch/financier class behind your agenda, only people with money have a voice. If you have no money you are irrelevant. In the economic model described above, blacks are rarely able to break the cycle and get money, therefore they are irrelevant and no one cares, period.

So Occupy, while it had good intentions, and said a lot of things that needed to be said, was actually one of these yuppie social justice movements that wasn't going to go anywhere to begin with. It gave the more comfortable college educated youth a space to vent their frustrations, and some of the lower classes were able to glom on to it because it offered something for everyone, it spoke truth to the injustices of the economic system. But, after awhile, those white people ran out of vacation time, or their money started to get a little tight, and they went back to their jobs or homes which aren't really that bad and life returned to normal as if nothing ever happened. The core group that was committed to the idea was too small and too soft to lead a real social movement and were easily dealt with by the police, and all was forgotten.

Baltimore and Ferguson were really about white people, even though black people were the focus of the events. These were stage managed riots to provoke the black people to get all riled up, so they would destroy a lot of stuff and make the white people nervous enough to beg the government to lock up them up or kill them. If the white people are preoccupied with holding on to their social position, it makes it easier for the elite to pass laws to hold on to theirs.

I doubt most people even know what Bilderberg is, but this is similar to Occupy. Only people who have attained a certain degree of education and leisure time have the time to question the system and look into obscure things like the Bilderberg Conference. Due to the structure of American system, they will be overwhelmingly white. The system keeps us distracted by forcing us to stay busy, and the poorer you are, the less flexibility you have in ever being able to break out of the round robin of your daily life as foisted on you by the economic system.

Donald Trump has a slightly different audience, he seems to be targeting the lower middle class and lower class who have lost their jobs due to financialization, automation, and offshoring. He seems to be a Baltimore/Ferguson with white people, to channel their anger in a direction the elite can control. Once the whites start fighting the blacks, its only a matter of time before the poor whites start fighting the rich whites, and in the midst of the chaos the elite hope they can come out more or less unscathed. The reason his supporters are mostly white, I think has to do with the fact that it was primarily they who enjoyed these stable honest jobs before the decline. The blacks, being more or less a permanent underclass, never saw much of it, hence it is more white people talking about white people stuff.

It is interesting that there isn't more input from the intelligentsia of these groups, but I think it once again comes back to money. Blacks and Latinos don't really have many oligarch backers that can grease palms to buy them airtime on the puppet mainstream media, hence they only really appear when the white people want them to. Most have been excluded for so long that they are probably rather apathetic about anything that occurs in the social institutions.

 

[shellycheval]

luke wilson

I usually notice that riots pertaining to the G8 group or Bilderberg meetings mainly involve white people. Again, I wonder why minorities don't turn up in huge numbers? It's not like they are not receiving the brunt of the oppression emanating from such groups....

"Race", a social/cultural construct created to cause division between humans, is almost always not the only motivational factor in any group of people. Look up the term "intersectionality" and one can see how socio-economic class status, which reflects a person's access to power, is often a root cause of a people's dissatisfaction with conditions and their willingness to protest.

 

[luke wilson]

Neil,

Reading your post made me think of another thing I've observed along racial lines. I have been thinking that in the UK, we are pretty multi cultural and that really these issues don't play much of a role socially. However, recently I went to London and I was walking around residential areas. In this one neighbourhood, you had some streets which were well off and fit your mental image of the idyllic big city life. Walking down those streets I sort of felt calm, as calm as you can be in a concrete jungle the size of London. I took a turn and next thing I know, adjacent to these fancy idyllic streets were council estates that sort of appeared out of nowhere (I wasn't expecting them to be there). Now, the calmness of my emotions shifted to anxiety. I noticed a bunch of youths, mostly black, playing by some courts and basically just socializing amongst themselves on a sunny Saturday afternoon... I couldn't help but notice how in this place, they mostly seemed to conform to the urban sort of almost aggressive image e.g. think the sort of image you see in rap videos in the US or like Grime music in the UK. I thought to myself though, why am I feeling uneasy? If I was in an idyllic middle-class neighbourhood and I was walking past youth who lived in that neighbourhood, I wouldn't feel apprehensive! In this case, it wasn't really a matter of Race in isolation, more socio-economic standing plus the images being conformed to! For sure if I was in a relatively right wing chav filled neighbourhood, I'd also be feeling quite apprehensive!

Moving on, I've now started to notice that even in this day and age, poor neighbourhoods tend to have a disproportionate high percentage of racial minorities compared to rich ones. In the city I live in, this holds true... The poor part of town is full of racial minorities, no problem spotting them, the richest parts of town, well, you need binoculars as they are there, but in such small numbers! I figured, this is I guess ok because the majority of the wealth of the country would naturally be held by the native population.

However, in Africa, at least in the countries I've been to, if you find the racial minorities (in this case white people) and see where they live, it becomes apparent that they live in the high socio-economic brackets in big percentages despite not really being natives. Ok, maybe it's because of colonialism. Fine, I can accept that. Then I read about Brazil and apparently in brazil, they have so many various shades of people that racial lines are not really the same as in the west. This btw supports the argument that it's a social/cultural construct... But then you look deeper into this Brazilian society and you notice a pattern. The darker your skin, the more likely you are to be in the underclass and the lighter it is, the more likely you are to be better off. Then you look at the picture of the ruling elites in Brazil and you notice that America has way more minorities at the top than Brazil! I was hmm, maybe its just Brazil, but then I met a Colombian guy and he said the same thing that you see in Brazil holds true in his country to.

Please explain, what kind of systems are in operation to come up with what truly looks like solid patterns in terms of distribution of people across society when you literally just look at them based on skin color. It's not like there is a conscious conspiracy at play yet the whole thing seems so well coordinated.

 

[theos]

Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes to mind in this situation As Neil said, Blacks have always been at the bottom caste of American society. If your primary focus is on physiological and safety needs, things like personal growth and making the world a better place for others are not even on your radar in a lot of cases. Something like this can account for the lack of participation in social causes. And due to the circumstances of being on the bottom caste, are Blacks more subject to apathy? Is the lack of social proof (having no, or very few, examples of activism among your peers) also playing a part in this? If no one in the social group finds such things worthwhile the chances that an individual would participate in activist activities is rather low.

 

[mkrnhr]

The other thing to take into account is the myth of social mobility. More often, rich people are more likely to be rich for generations, and poor people are more likely to remain poor for generations because one inherits not only wealth (or lack of) from his/her parents, but also the social connections (within a given class) and access to different facilities. If we add to that the reluctance of groups to accept new people from what they perceive "the others", it makes it really difficult to have people from different backgrounds to have the same interests and worries. It's not their fault, it's the system that traps them in this situation.

 

[luke wilson]

luke wilson

I usually notice that riots pertaining to the G8 group or Bilderberg meetings mainly involve white people. Again, I wonder why minorities don't turn up in huge numbers? It's not like they are not receiving the brunt of the oppression emanating from such groups....

"Race", a social/cultural construct created to cause division between humans, is almost always not the only motivational factor in any group of people. Look up the term "intersectionality" and one can see how socio-economic class status, which reflects a person's access to power, is often a root cause of a people's dissatisfaction with conditions and their willingness to protest.

Interesting Shellycheval

_http://isreview.org/issue/91/black-feminism-and-intersectionality

Black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in her insightful 1989 essay, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.”3 The concept of intersectionality is not an abstract notion but a description of the way multiple oppressions are experienced. [...]

Crenshaw argues that Black women are discriminated against in ways that often do not fit neatly within the legal categories of either “racism” or “sexism”—but as a combination of both racism and sexism. Yet the legal system has generally defined sexism as based upon an unspoken reference to the injustices confronted by all (including white) women, while defining racism to refer to those faced by all (including male) Blacks and other people of color. This framework frequently renders Black women legally “invisible” and without legal recourse. [...]

Like most other Black feminists, Crenshaw emphasizes the importance of Sojourner Truth’s famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech delivered to the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I could have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Truth’s words vividly contrast the character of oppression faced by white and Black women. While white middle-class women have traditionally been treated as delicate and overly emotional—destined to subordinate themselves to white men—Black women have been denigrated and subject to the racist abuse that is a foundational element of US society. Yet, as Crenshaw notes, “When Sojourner Truth rose to speak, many white women urged that she be silenced, fearing that she would divert attention from women’s suffrage to emancipation,” invoking a clear illustration of the degree of racism within the suffrage movement.10

Crenshaw draws a parallel between Truth’s experience with the white suffrage movement and Black women’s experience with modern feminism, arguing, “When feminist theory and politics that claim to reflect women’s experiences and women’s aspirations do not include or speak to Black women, Black women must ask, “Ain’t we women?”

Intersectionality as a synthesis of oppressions

Thus, Crenshaw’s political aims reach further than addressing flaws in the legal system. She argues that Black women are frequently absent from analyses of either gender oppression or racism, since the former focuses primarily on the experiences of white women and the latter on Black men. She seeks to challenge both feminist and antiracist theory and practice that neglect to “accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender,” arguing that “because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.”11

Crenshaw argues that a key aspect of intersectionality lies in its recognition that multiple oppressions are not each suffered separately but rather as a single, synthesized experience. This has enormous significance at the very practical level of movement building.

Fighting sexism in a profoundly racist society

Because of the historic role of slavery and racial segregation in the United States, the development of a unified women’s movement requires recognizing the manifold implications of this continuing racial divide. While all women are oppressed as women, no movement can claim to speak for all women unless it speaks for women who also face the consequences of racism—which place women of color disproportionately in the ranks of the working class and the poor. Race and class therefore must be central to the project of women’s liberation if it is to be meaningful to those women who are most oppressed by the system.

Indeed, one of the key weaknesses of the predominantly white US feminist movement has been its lack of attention to racism, with enormous repercussions. Failure to confront racism ends up reproducing the racist status quo.

The widely accepted narrative of the modern feminist movement is that it initially involved white women beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, who were later joined by women of color following in their footsteps. But this narrative is factually incorrect.

Decades before the rise of the modern women’s liberation movement, Black women were organizing against their systematic rape at the hands of white racist men. Women civil rights activists, including Rosa Parks, were part of a vocal grassroots movement to defend Black women subject to racist sexual assaults—in an intersection of oppression unique to Black women historically in the United States. [....]

This approach to fighting oppression does not merely complement but also strengthens Marxist theory and practice—which seeks to unite not only all those who are exploited but also all those who are oppressed by capitalism into a single movement that fights for the liberation of all humanity. The Black feminist approach described above enhances Lenin’s famous phrase from What is to be Done?: “Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected—unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic point of view and no other.”53

The Combahee River Collective, which was perhaps the most self-consciously left-wing organization of Black feminists in the 1970s, acknowledged its adherence to socialism and anti-imperialism, while rightfully also arguing for greater attention to oppression:

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation…. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.54

At the same time, intersectionality cannot replace Marxism—and Black feminists have never attempted to do so. Intersectionality is a concept for understanding oppression, not exploitation. Even the commonly used term “classism” describes an aspect of class oppression—snobbery and elitism—not exploitation. Most Black feminists acknowledge the systemic roots of racism and sexism but place far less emphasis than Marxists on the connection between the system of exploitation and oppression.

Marxism is necessary because it provides a framework for understanding the relationship between oppression and exploitation (i.e., oppression as a byproduct of the system of class exploitation), and also identifies the strategy for creating the material and social conditions that will make it possible to end both oppression and exploitation. Marxism’s critics have disparaged this framework as an aspect of Marx’s “economic reductionism.”

But, as Marxist-feminist Martha Gimenez responds, “To argue, then, that class is fundamental is not to ‘reduce’ gender or racial oppression to class, but to acknowledge that the underlying basic and ‘nameless’ power at the root of what happens in social interactions grounded in ‘intersectionality’ is class power.”55 The working class holds the potential to lead a struggle in the interests of all those who suffer injustice and oppression. This is because both exploitation and oppression are rooted in capitalism. Exploitation is the method by which the ruling class robs workers of surplus value; the various forms of oppression play a primary role in maintaining the rule of a tiny minority over the vast majority. In each case, the enemy is one and the same.

The class struggle helps to educate workers—sometimes very rapidly—challenging reactionary ideas and prejudices that keep workers divided. When workers go on strike, confronting capital and its agents of repression (the police), the class nature of society becomes suddenly clarified. Racist, sexist, or homophobic ideas cultivated over a lifetime can disappear within a matter of days in a mass strike wave. The sight of hundreds of police lined up to protect the boss’s property or to usher in a bunch of scabs speaks volumes about the class nature of the state within capitalism.

The process of struggle also exposes another truth hidden beneath layers of ruling-class ideology: as the producers of the goods and services that keep capitalism running, workers have the ability to shut down the system through a mass strike. And workers not only have the power to shut down the system, but also to replace it with a socialist society, based upon collective ownership of the means of production. Although other groups in society suffer oppression, only the working class possesses this objective power.

These are the basic reasons why Marx argues that capitalism created its own gravediggers in the working class. But when Marx defines the working class as the agent for revolutionary change, he is describing its historical potential, rather than a foregone conclusion. This is the key to understanding Lenin’s words, cited above. The whole Leninist conception of the vanguard party rests on understanding that a battle of ideas must be fought inside the working class movement. A section of workers won to a socialist alternative and organized into a revolutionary party, can win other workers away from ruling-class ideologies and provide an alternative worldview. For Lenin, the notion of political consciousness entails workers’ willingness to champion the interests of all the oppressed in society, as an integral part of the struggle for socialism.

As an additive to Marxist theory, intersectionality leads the way toward a much higher level of understanding of the character of oppression than that developed by classical Marxists, enabling the further development of the ways in which solidarity can be built between all those who suffer oppression and exploitation under capitalism to forge a unified movement.

I'll be reading up on this more.... interesting views... so basically, what I'm getting from this is that the whole structure of oppression (all the various 'isms') is inter-linked and inter-connected. Also into this comes economic serfdom and exploitation... the whole thing works together!

So why are some Races under-represented in protests... well the answer could be in the article... see the drama within feminism where one group was essentially marginalised and oppressed by another which wanted to define the movement in terms that fits its reality but not the reality of the other...

Truth’s words vividly contrast the character of oppression faced by white and Black women. While white middle-class women have traditionally been treated as delicate and overly emotional—destined to subordinate themselves to white men—Black women have been denigrated and subject to the racist abuse that is a foundational element of US society. Yet, as Crenshaw notes, “When Sojourner Truth rose to speak, many white women urged that she be silenced, fearing that she would divert attention from women’s suffrage to emancipation,” invoking a clear illustration of the degree of racism within the suffrage movement.10

Crenshaw draws a parallel between Truth’s experience with the white suffrage movement and Black women’s experience with modern feminism, arguing, “When feminist theory and politics that claim to reflect women’s experiences and women’s aspirations do not include or speak to Black women, Black women must ask, “Ain’t we women?”

And now modern feminism has fallen flat on its face and turned into some distortion of its original aims... basically, humans unite across dividing lines against the oppressors or perish... seems simple enough but nightmarish hard to put into practice.

The other thing to take into account is the myth of social mobility. More often, rich people are more likely to be rich for generations, and poor people are more likely to remain poor for generations because one inherits not only wealth (or lack of) from his/her parents, but also the social connections (within a given class) and access to different facilities. If we add to that the reluctance of groups to accept new people from what they perceive "the others", it makes it really difficult to have people from different backgrounds to have the same interests and worries. It's not their fault, it's the system that traps them in this situation.

I've always thought a lot of the people who are doing well now that mostly constitute the upper and middle class brackets of society, are in the positions they are because they either directly or indirectly benefit from the fruits of exploitation and oppression i.e. the design of the system which results in the bulk of wealth being syphoned upwards (to the those in high socio-economic brackets, to those in rich countries etc) but the majority of the labour force are at the bottom. An equitable wealth distribution would require some people to have less (those benefiting from exploitation inherent in the system) for others to have more (those who are oppressed and essentially massively service the oppressors).... either that or we all live as exuberantly as the US metaphorically speaking as that is how the upper echelon people live...

 

[Neil]

Please explain, what kind of systems are in operation to come up with what truly looks like solid patterns in terms of distribution of people across society when you literally just look at them based on skin color. It's not like there is a conscious conspiracy at play yet the whole thing seems so well coordinated.

I've thought about that too, and I actually think the answer is fairly simple. As usual, it involves 4D STS. According to the Cassiopaeans, they instructed Hitler to create the Aryan master race because white people seem to have a genetic substratum that supports the right combination of intellectualism, ruthlessness, and socialization to be a dominator/managerial group when exposed to the proper conditions.

On the other hand, darker skinned people are far better adapted to living in most of Earth's environments because their skin doesn't burn as easily as the fragile white people, plus they seem to have better endurance overall and capacity to toil in unfavorable conditions. Since manual labor tends to make your skin darker, it is often associated with low social status. According to the Cassiopaeans, the genetics for these other groups were tweaked when they were placed in the various environments around the world to make sure they were most adapted to be successful and reproduce.

It struck me as amazing that these seemed to be two sides of a coin, like it was planned that way. When the dominator race gets its wings and starts trying to control the world, it uses its combination of traits to exploit general racial characteristics into an advantage it can use to subjugate them and turn them into beasts of burden to do their bidding. The core of the ruthless dominators seems to be a certain European/British elite, which seem to have a propensity to spawn clever psychopaths. It is likely they were selected by 4D STS to fulfill a certain function as leaders of the white race and ultimately the world.

This agenda was partly successful, therefore one's skin color is often the first factor in determining one's rank in the overall global society, all things being equal. Even in societies where the elite aren't really white at all, the belief that darker skin color means lower class because it is associated with working in the fields persists. And white people are still kind an object of fascination because their skin is sooo light and they tend to have the greatest access to money and they are seen to have the most political prestige and freedom because they come from rich countries. This attitude is somewhat prevalent in Asia.

I've always thought a lot of the people who are doing well now that mostly constitute the upper and middle class brackets of society, are in the positions they are because they either directly or indirectly benefit from the fruits of exploitation and oppression i.e. the design of the system which results in the bulk of wealth being syphoned upwards (to the those in high socio-economic brackets, to those in rich countries etc) but the majority of the labour force are at the bottom. An equitable wealth distribution would require some people to have less (those benefiting from exploitation inherent in the system) for others to have more (those who are oppressed and essentially massively service the oppressors).... either that or we all live as exuberantly as the US metaphorically speaking as that is how the upper echelon people live...

Well, per capita gross world product is about $10,000. So all things being equal, unless you are being really industrious and creative, anyone making much over $10K a year is a beneficiary of exploitation and oppression. The world seems to be a rather poor place. I've often wondered how much an egalitarian system in alignment with creative principles would boost GDP. The only way I can picture living on 10K a year with any degree of comfort is in a communal living situation with 10-15 people. Perhaps as has been hinted here before, that's how humans are actually supposed to live without all of the waste and "affluenza" that causes the western lifestyle to require so much resources.

 

[luke wilson]

I read this article today and thought of this thread as the same dynamics are in play i.e. where what is missing tells a story in itself! Nice to see it in print and someone actually capturing the story!

http://www.sott.net/article/314990-A-coup-in-progress-The-fight-for-control-of-Brazil-and-the-subversion-of-democracy

Contrary to Chuck Todd's and Ian Bremmer's romanticized, misinformed (at best) depiction of these protests as being carried out by "The People," they are, in fact, incited by the country's intensely concentrated, homogenized, and powerful corporate media outlets, and are composed (not exclusively but overwhelmingly) of the nation's wealthier, white citizens who have long harbored animosity toward PT and anything that smacks of anti-poverty programs.

So someone looked at the protesters... noticed a whole chunk of the society is severely under-represented.... proceeded to ask why.... then reached closer to an objective conclusion of the situation on the ground.

Also if you are interested in delving deeper into Brazil, the article has some good links some which shows the pattern Neil mentioned... e.g.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazils-colour-bind/article25779474/