"Rossianin"

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

Dear Robert Orr,
These are good questions.  When I spoke of the nonexistence of "race" I was
referring to the biological concept.  "Race" is a psycho-social construct,
not a biological reality (I think this was clear, because the context in
that previous message was "blood"; there are no Russians [either rossiiane
or russkie] "by blood").  A racist usually defines "race" "by blood," i.e.,
asserts there is a genetic basis for "race."  There is not.  The Nazis
regarded Jews as a biologically different entity from "Aryans," and
persecuted them on that basis.  Some in Russia today, e.g., the Neo-Pagans,
tend to regard non-russkie as biologically different.

As a psycho-social construct, however, race is all too real, as your
examples indicate, and as the web-site you point to illustrates.  Race in
this sense is determined by social pressures and by
self-identification.  Two biologically identically individuals - twins from
a racially mixed marriage, say - could grow up to self-identify with
different races, depending on the family circumstances or other
factors.  When the census people come along, they could conceivably check
different racial identities in the questionnaire.

Affirmative action is a social policy designed to correct past and possibly
still current discrimination against people who self-identify with certain
races - e.g., Blacks, Hispanics, etc.  In some cases the discrimination may
have occurred despite the self-identification of individuals, e.g.,
employers may have refused to hire people they thought were trying to
"pass" as Whites.  Or to give a hypothetical Russian example: an
assimilated Russian from an ethnically mixed marriage, following the
Russian proverb "Papa turok, Mamma grek, a ia russkii chelovek" - might be
turned down for a job despite the self-identification as Russian.

People can be proud of their racial identity, and can try to advance the
interests of their race (in the psycho-social sense).  A Hispanic
politician in California who tries to advance the interests of his or her
Hispanic constituency is not necessarily being a racist.  A White
politician who tried to do the same thing is more likely to be a racist,
given the history of discrimination by Whites against Hispanics.  That is,
all other things being equal, the White is more likely to be acting on the
basis of paranoia than the Hispanic.

All other things are not always equal, however, and it is possible for
members of ANY race to be racist, that is, to experience members of other
races as persecutory when they are not (this paranoia in addition to the
possibility of regarding the members of other races as biologically different).

I have only scratched the surface of the many issues involved, but I hope
this helps.

Regards,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere



At 11:31 AM 9/8/2002 -0400, you wrote:


>why do all American universities obsess about race, i.e., affirmative
>action, etc., etc.,?
>
>(and what's your opinion of what's coming out of Harvard these days, in the
>shape of
>http://www.vdare.com/roberts/harvard_genocide.htm?
>
>why is an organisation calling itself    "La Raza" not hooted out of polite
>society?
>
>and why does a nephew of President  Bush not also get  hooted out of polite
>society for saying that his mother told him that "we had to fight for our
>race"?
>

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
Professor of Russian

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