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Lynae Vanee says "There are so many different ways in which Black women were violated that makes their experience as enslaved people different, and makes the scholarship surrounding their struggles different."
Here we come to the nub: how so? The labor and/or sexuality of Black female slaves were exploited, in what other ways were these women violated? And precisely how did it differ from the exploitation of non-Black female slaves? Presumably, she's referring specifically to New World slaves, but even in this limited case, what evidence does she have for this bizarre claim? If we broaden our scope and look at slavery throughout its history, her assertion becomes even harder to justify. Did they have their melanin harvested for transplant for the benefit of White beach-goers? Used in over-the-counter sun block lotions? What is she talking about?
Female slaves everywhere have been used for sex and labor, if there is some especial form of exploitation that Black female slaves have had to endure then she should at least identify it. That she doesn't feel the need is indicative.
There is a long history of Africans, including Black Africans, raiding coastal European nations for slaves. Attractive White women, particularly blondes and red-heads, were targeted as they would fetch a good price, their being in high demand as concubines. African elites, including Black African elites, would strip them naked to be gawked at by onlookers, and the more generous slave owners would pass them around for others to use as their whores. How did the sexual exploitation of Black women in the Americas differ in nature from that experienced by these White sex slaves in Africa? Do tell, Lynae Vanee, do tell.
Slave women of all races, everywhere and always, had their labor exploited, how did the Black slave woman in the Americas differ from any of the others? And why would the scholarship surrounding the Black slave woman need be different from that which attends non-Black female slaves?
As I've noted several times, the point of race theory--be it critical or fascist, and of the racial narrative, Jim Crow or Jim Snow, is to divert attention from economic exploitation, and to provide an alternative theory of history to class-conflict theory. There are only two political orientations no matter how many gradients appear to lie between: race and class, fascism and socialism. The race theorists as a group argue that racial exploitation is a thing apart from and independent of class--not epiphenomena. Some argue that class exploitation, capitalism in particular, was a consequence of racism, that capitalism grew out of and could not exist without racism. Racial antagonism begat class differentiation.
As a group, materialists assert the opposite.
Vanee's unsubstantiated claim goes to the heart of the matter. Her declaration of endemic racial difference, of endemic racial uniqueness, falls neatly into the race/fascist camp. To contend that Black female slaves experience a degradation under slavery different in character, in essence, from non-Blacks, unique to them!, even under such extreme economic exploitation as exists in slavery, is to affirm the old fascist trope of the hegemony of race in human affairs. The fascists--the original racebots, in contrast to materialists, argued that race struggle--the competition among races for the best land, control of waterways etc.--is the motive force of history. Hitler argued that there was a racial solution to the injustices which he perceived his racial grouping, Germans, were being subjected to. Further, he insisted that classes are like different organs within the body, each needing the others for its own survival. Which is the antithesis of socialist, class-conflict thought.
This clash between the philosophy of race and the philosophy of class has been at the heart of world politics for over a century, and it's not going away. What Vanee and the like are doing, whether they understand it as such, is providing fodder for the global capitalist expropriation regime. They are reinforcing the ideology which is immiserating most of the people on the planet, and keeping the world's great criminals in power. They are underwriting the racial substrate which sustained the planter class.
This might seem farfetched given their contempt for it, nevertheless, they validate race theory when they make such claims as does Vanee. And you cannot defeat racism by adopting its central tenets. No, Vanee is not a fascist, but if she is correct, then the fascists are correct. If the materialists are correct, then she is wrong.
The conundrum is this, as I wrote elsewhere:
"At the core of CRT is an aporia: if there are no racial categories there can be no race theory. Likewise, if the groups so assigned are indistinguishable there again can be no theory. CRT must classify and characterize human populations, must iterate difference, in order to conceptualize race. It cannot be done otherwise. If you want to talk about race, you have to say something. Once you do, you have taken your first steps to racism. Any attributive talk about race, aside perhaps from the strictly somatic, inescapably facilitates racism. And all talk about race is, and can only be, attributive, otherwise nothing can be said! And the effort is rendered meaningless. The subject cannot be broached without the endorsement, intentional or not, of the core principle of racism and fascism. As bourgeois propaganda, it's perfect.
"As I wrote:
"[If science led us in to racism]...IT MUST BE ACKNOWLEDGED THAT SCIENCE HAS LED US OUT...WHICH IDENTITY POLITICS COULD NEVER DO AS IT TRAFFICS IN THE SAME RACIAL LOGIC AS ITS SIBLING--FASCISM. IT IS NOT RACIST PER SE TO ASSERT THE SUPREMACY OF RACE IN HUMAN AFFAIRS, BUT ONE DOES NOT DISCREDIT THE NOTION EITHER. WHAT CHARGE CAN A CRITICAL RACE THEORIST LAY WITH A STRAIGHT FACE AGAINST THEIR FELLOW RACEBOTS, THE FASCISTS, WHEN THEY AGREE UPON SO MUCH?...IT'S ONLY IN THE DETAILS--AND THOSE DO MATTER!--WHERE DIVERGENCE OCCURS. 'YES,' WHISPERS THE CRITICAL RACE THEORIST TO THE FASCISTS ACROSS THE AISLE IN THE TEMPLE OF RACE, 'YOU ARE RIGHT TO ACCLAIM RACE AS OUR LORD AND MASTER, BUT YOU HAVE MISINTERPRETED THE SCRIPTURES.' WOULD YOU CALL THAT ANTI-CLERICALISM? NO, NOR IS IT ANTI-RACISM. IF YOU WISH TO BE AN ANTI-RACIST, YOU NEED TO LEAVE THE CULT, FORSWEAR THE RACE GOD, DROWN JIM JONES IN THE KOOL AID, CLEAR THE TEMPLE, AND THEN PUT IT TO THE TORCH.
"THAT IS ANTI-RACISM. AND HOW OUR BOURGEOIS OVERLORDS WOULD PISS THEIR LOUIS VUITTONS TO SEE THEIR GREATEST COUNTERINSURGENCY WEAPON, THEIR BEST DISCURSIVE AMMUNITION, ABLAZE.
"'YOU LIE WITH DOGS, YOU RISE WITH FLEAS.' YOU CANNOT DEFEAT RACISM BY VALIDATING IT PREMISES."
Critical race theory, whatever the motives of its proponents, brings us to the threshold of fascism, readies it to be summoned if, as was the case a century ago, the hegemony of capital is endangered. The destruction of the temple is precisely what is not happening, and CRT, Intersectionality, post-modernism and the like, and documentaries like Stamped, are to blame. They are the new curators of the House of Race, and the new enemies of the global working class.
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