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>>>>> "chris" == Chris Castro <CCastro-kUnrLEE8I/r4gGXQfQL4u1aTQe2KTcn/@public.gmane.org> writes:

  chris> I would like to learn a little more about you so that I can
  chris> get a better perspective on what you are trying to
  chris> accomplish.

Chris,

I'm not sure you need to know more about *me*, as opposed to my views,
but since you asked...

  chris> Several themes seem to be played over and over in your
  chris> narratives.

Like?

  chris> I interpret your writings to say that being white is some
  chris> sort of sin, and that we should apologize just for being born
  chris> white.

No, that's completely wrong. First, I *never* employ the private
religious notion of *sin*. Ever. My political writings are fully
public, and private Christian notions like sin simply do not occur or
apply.

But there's another problem with this misreading of my work; let's
substitute "wrong" or "evil" for sin, since those are public
notions. I *never* claim that it's wrong per se to "be white", and I
never say or imply someone should apologize for being born.

What I do say, very clearly in fact, is that being White in the US (as
in many other places) means possessing undeserved and unjust *social
privilege*, which is called white privilege. I further say, not that
Whites should apologize for being White, but that White people should
*resist and refuse*, insofar as possible, the social privilege that
attaches to their racial status.

That's the view I've discussed in various ways and in various
articles.

  chris> Corporate America is inherently evil.  "Big" corporations
  chris> should freely give away medications to Africa just because
  chris> they are in Africa and are suffering from an HIV crisis.

Hmm, no, I don't think American corporations are inherently evil. I do
think, however, that capitalism is an unjust social system. I further
think that corporations actually do a great deal of real social
*harm*, much of which is in fact evil. But I'm not sure I think they
are *inherently* so, though I also find it rather a dull question.

As for Africa and the AIDS crisis there, yes, I think, given the
absurdly high profits that US drug companies have been making for many
years, some degree of aid to Africa in the form of AIDS drugs is
warranted, though I've never said the drugs should be given *free*; at
the very *least*, they should be sold at cost. And the US should fund
the WHO and UN to purchase the drugs at cost. I think that's the bare
moral and political minimum.

You didn't read my stuff very carefully.

  chris> One of your articles involves traveling across the south -
  chris> and in the course of doing so, you overhear racist
  chris> conversations about a football game, and you pick up racist
  chris> music on a radio station.  

Well, the examples were more suggestive and extensive than that.

         Come on - do you actually think
  chris> that people of color don't make the same remarks about you?

I don't know, and frankly I don't really care. Why? Several reasons:

1. The point of that piece was to talk about the way Whites act when
   they dominate or perceive themselves to dominate a social setting,
   such as one that is Whites-only. I've been White my whole life, and
   I've been privy to what we say and how we think and act when it's
   "just us" -- and these patterns are a prime source of
   reinforcement, celebration, and strengthening of unjust social
   privilege.

2. What people of color do in response to a systematically unjust
   society is both morally and politically (and perhaps epistemically)
   of a different order than what White people do to *create,
   maintain, and extend* that system. In other words, the comparison
   is apples to oranges.

3. It's not the remarks per se that are harmful (though this isn't
   true in *every* context), it's what the remarks reveal about the
   people who made them, their social setting, what society is like at
   large.

  chris> Have you ever listened to lyrics from gangsta' rap?  

Hmm, I wonder if you're collapsing all hip hop into this "gangsta'
rap" category? I do listen to a lot of very politically sophisticated
hip hop, some of which does contain, alas, sexist attitudes I find
problematic, but some of which does not.

         Now, on
  chris> the basis of listening to one of those songs, would you make
  chris> the same broad sweeping generalization that you made in the
  chris> other direction?

This is a *terrible* analogy. 

First, I made some general claims about White Company based on 1)
being part of it for 33 years and 2) on a range of socially-variant
experiences, which I describe in the piece; and 3) a few years of
reading and thinking about issues of racism, social justice, and so
on. 

That's hardly a thin reed upon which to reach general conclusions.

  chris> With regard to corporate America - is making a profit evil?

It depends. Very frequently, yes, it is, because it can only be made
by doing a great deal of easily avoidable social harm. Is selling
goods and services for more than their cost evil per se? No, I don't
think so. I do not know of anyone who's ever claimed that it is.

  chris> Do corporations all across America employ people of all
  chris> races, colors, and creeds?  Certainly they do.

Yes and no. The boardrooms and upper executive strata of the Fortune
1000 are among the Whitest and most masculinist social settings on
earth. So it's a very, very mixed bag. Further, some corporate
employment is indistinguishable from exploitation, so it's not
something that's clearly a social good.

  chris> The HIV epidemic in Africa is terrible - all would agree.

No, that's simply not true. 

Many, many people, including conservative Christians, think AIDS is
some kind of just retribution for immorality. Further, many White
Americans think *any* blight or harm that befalls Africa is a good
thing.

  chris> However, does that then require that American corporations
  chris> give away drugs for free.

Well, it *might*, sure. 

Imagine that a new virus attacked the US, one which could easily be
killed by aspirin, but which, if let untreated, would kill the human
host within a week. Under that circumstance, would corporations that
produce aspirin have *any* obligation to giveway aspirin to the poor?
Perhaps. Of course, corporations, despite the silly US Supreme Court,
are *not* persons, but I think that moral obligations can inhere in
institutions composed of persons, but this is all quite tricky stuff
to sort out.

The point is that the idea that US corporations might subsidize AIDS
drugs to Africa is not as *obviously* wrong as you seem to think.

         I haven't heard a cry for European
  chris> companies to give away drugs for free.  

Then you haven't been listening in the right places.

         Glaxco is one of the
  chris> biggest, and I believe that they are foreign owned.  I didn't
  chris> see in your article where you ask them to give away their
  chris> inventory.

Right, I didn't mention *any* specific company, since I was really
criticizing the Bush administration for running interference -- which
was brutally racist, in fact -- for *all* US drug corps.

However, I probably wouldn't have criticized any European drug corp
since I pay taxes and vote in the *US*, and this is the sphere of my
primary moral and political concern and responsibility. That doesn't
preclude me from paying attention to other places, but my concern in
that part of the article you allude to was the collusion between
Washington and corporations.

  chris> How can you argue that one moral cause is more worthy than
  chris> another?  

Pretty easily, actually.

         People in the former Soviet republics are dying due
  chris> to starvation, lack of shelter, etc.  

I know, it's terrible, isn't it. In large measure they are dying
*because* the US and Europe imposed a market economy.

         What makes their plight
  chris> any less than those suffering in Africa?

Nothing at all! That you infer from my silence that I have ranked
these two morally says vastly more about you and your values than it
says about mine.

I haven't written about almost *every* large-scale, ongoing event of
human suffering. And from that fact, which distinguishes me from
almost no one else, you can draw no interesting conclusion, unless you
think it's interesting to point out that I have finite resources. 

  chris> Successful companies should make corporate donations.  

Yes. They might also be obligated to do more, as well. It just
depends.

         That
  chris> is what moral people do.  However, for the ones who do not -
  chris> how are you justified in labeling them?  

I'm justified in making moral judgments about their actions,
attitudes, and beliefs in the same way anyone is justified in making
any moral judgments whatever. This is really *not* a very interesting
question.

         The corporate
  chris> executives are children of god - just as you are.

Which is irrelevant.

  chris> Lastly, I haven't seen any of your articles about racism in
  chris> Zimbabwe - where white landowners are being killed just for
  chris> being white.  

I don't think that *is* racist. It is morally blameworthy, however,
but there are factors of mitigation, including the 100 year,
monstrously evil history of European colonialism (for which read
"widescale, systematic rape").

In my understanding, the Whites have been killed not "just for being
white" but for refusing to turn over land that was originally
expropriated from indigenous peoples. That's a significant difference,
even though, as far as I can tell, the killings are unjustified and
should be stopped.

        Their farms are being taken by the state and
  chris> given to black farmers.  

I have *no* problem with the State taking away property held by
colonial inheritance. That it is doing so after calling for social
vigilantism is very problematic. I seem to remember Mugabe inciting
the killings, but I don't know for sure.

I don't know a lot about the situation; I'm not sure why Mugabe
doesn't simply nationalize the land and then reparcel it, which can be
done perfectly legally and w/out killing the current occupants.

          According to the show Sixty Minutes
  chris> - several of these "repatriated" farms then go bankrupt as
  chris> the new owners know nothing about farming.

Eh, that's completely irrelevant.

  chris> I've not seen any of your articles about Louis Farrakhan.  

I haven't written any.

         Do
  chris> you feel that this man is racist?  

I don't think he is racist. He does seem rather to be an anti-Jewish
*bigot*, but racism is not merely bigotry or prejudice.

         Is his organization
  chris> racist?

I doubt it. It does have a weird and nutty, from my point of view,
black nationalist theology, cosmology, founding myth, and so on; and
it engages -- though these seem much rarer than they were formerly --
in some unfortunate patterns of biogted and prejudicial political
speech, primarily against Jewish people.

If you're asking whether I would prefer the NOI to drop the
anti-Jewish stuff, I certainly would. But I'm not sure it's sufficient
to make the institution itself racist. I tend to think not.

  chris> Thanks for your time.
  chris> I sincerely look forward to your response.
  chris> Cordially,
  chris> Chris Castro 
  chris> Methodist 
  chirs> True Believer

I taught ethics, philosophy, and theology in a United Methodist
seminary for some time; you should realize that my ideas about racism
are not *that* divergent -- the main difference, I think, is that I
develop them w/out recourse to private theolgical language -- from
what is taught in UMC seminaries and schools of theology every day.

You might be interested in some of the following:

UMC Adopts Constitutional Antiracist Amendment 
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:brj7cZDHp90C:www.gc2000.org/+united+methodist+church+racism&hl=en&client=googlet

UMC - Overcoming Racism and Sexism
http://www.umc.org/faithinaction/racism/

Intrafaith initiative including strong antiracist commitment
http://www.eden.edu/cuic/racism/appeal.htm
http://www.eden.edu/cuic/racism/cuicandracism.htm

Further, the 1996 UMC Book of Discipline says,

  Racism is the combination of the power to dominate by one race over
  other races and a value system that assumes that the dominant race
  is innately superior to others. -- 1996 Book of Discipline of The
  United Methodist Church (Para. 66A)

Which is a pretty good definition.

As well as,

The United Methodist Church Resolutions on Racism (1996 Book of
Resolutions)

"Racial Harassment" (pp. 372-373) 
"Racism" (pp. 373-374) 
"Racism: The Church's Unfinished Agenda" (pp. 374) 
"Racism in Rural Americas Task Force Report" (p. 375) 
"Racism in Rural America and the Church's Response" (pp. 375-382 
"Racism Today" (pp. 382-384) 
"Human Rights" (pp. 539-542) 

And,

Anti-racism Study/Action Guides published jointly by the General Board
of Church and Society and the General Commission on Religion and
Race. Three guides are available: Confronting the Sin, by Elaine
Jenkins (CS-RR-1), The Gift of Diversity, by Eric H.F. Law (CS-RR-2),
and Overcoming Racism's Economic Legacies, by J. Philip Wogaman
(CS-RR-3). Call 1-800-967-0880 to order.

If you are UMC, you might want to educate yourself further about what
your church says about racism.

Kendall Clark