Nice to find a response here S. McKenzie, but unfortunately I do not think it goes far enough, even if there is a progress in an admitted paranoia. I think you, me, and others, can do better.

For example, when you write: <<How can you suggest that whites don’t control the systems that I think they do? Ninety percent of all elected leaders in the United States are white. Ninety percent! And that’s just in the political sector. >>

It is easy to give both a historical and structural response to your surprise: the real problem of racism and segregation is not primarily a question of control and power.

For instance, the 1917 Bolshevik Worker’s revolution thought something similar: that the Other, the Bourgeoisie, in this case, had all the power, and that all they had to do is do away with them and the problem of their alienation would be resolved. Of course, we all know the result of this paranoiac reasoning: once the communist party got into power they began committing the very same atrocities that they had accused their oppressors of. Lest it be thought that this paradox of the overthrow of power is peculiar to Europeans and 'whiteness', all you need do is refer to a similar problem of genocide and violence in the 1994 Rwandan civil war between the Hutus and the Tootsie.

To be clear structurally, in each case, there is one group who is oppressed and who imagines that to be un-alienated means overthrowing the masters and gaining power. And in each case, what each dismally discovers is a moment of Terror: that not only are they repeating what they were fighting against, but the responsibility of freedom is way worse than the mere overthrow of those in power.

Of course, this short note can not pretend to resolve such problems here, but it suffices to simply point them out both historically and structurally to learn a few lessons.

Personally, if I were to suggest sources here, I would first study Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic as a way to get beyond the paranoiac responses to power and the inevitable moment of Terror. Second, I would then ask how the whole blackness vs. whiteness identity trip, with a second look and a tighter exegetic grip, can be shown to hide a more fundamental paradox of power that escapes the paranoiac socio-historical stereotypes.

To respond at this level to problems of race and racism, would mean to write in a non-paranoiac and non-ideological way that could only progress what is being offered in the Walmart of ideas on race these days.

Until then, cheers,

$cully