When Race Burns Class: Settlers Revisited

by J. Sakai, Kuwasi Balagoon

An interview with J Sakai, author of Settlers: The Mythology Of the White Proletariat.

https://kersplebedeb.com/posts/raceburn/

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Race

Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 2000

About the author

J. Sakai is a revolutionary intellectual with decades of experience as an activist in the U.S.

Reviews

[ben.wmv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shame on me, I’m reading a bunch around Settlers without actually finishing Settlers. Sakai’s contextualization of the book is pretty interesting, though I wish he talked more about the “Asian movement” since he does in the original introduction to Settlers (published on Fight4LOOP btw). Still have to work through Lee Boggs and Kochiyama sometime I guess. (Btw i write these reviews for myself. So they might be bad idk. Also Sakai himself is so cogent and lucid that I’m scared that I might be mystifying). Sakai’s clarifying and adding a few things here:

- Settlerism and racism are distinct things, though settler colonialism has usually taken racial form. Settlers basically operated as garrison and occupation forces for Western capitalism when it began to expand beyond Europe. Race in Europe before capitalism was more so what we call “nation,” more “undefined difference” than a disguise for class. Capitalism’s maturation entailed the re-structuring of these social forms, and re-fashioned them in its own image. (Note that Sakai also offhandedly calls China a Han-settler empire. I haven’t seen him expand on this anywhere else sadly, and the discussions in academia of “continental colonialism” in conjunction with settler colonialism leave me wanting. Benedict Anderson and Stalin both made it clear that nations are precisely a feature of capitalist modernity, any analysis would have to start here, methinks).

- Race is precisely about class. In America, talking about either in isolation is just abstraction. Truly amazing how many people can’t grasp this (I’m embellishing, it’s not that surprising at all actually). Should be obvious for most of Amerikan history (segregation, Jim Crow, Brown v Board…) that this was plainly true, absolutely undeniable during chattel slavery. Of course things look a little different now in the era of neo-colonial comprador classes, but the essence is still the same. As for any sort of supposed defeatism, Sakai explicitly addresses this:

If radicalism can build small counter-currents of liberation in the overwhelmingly corrupt middle classes, why should similar work be questioned in the white working class communities? What i am fighting is the slick "Marxist" or "anarchist" opportunism, which sees aligning with the white settler majority and reform politics as the absolute necessity.

- In Amerika, “Settlerism filled the space that fascism normally occupies.” To oversimplify a little bit, while fascism emerged as a result of the deadlock in class struggles in war-torn Europe, settler neocolonialism and bourgeois democracy filled the void in Amerika: imperial spoils for the whites and slow genocide for Black and Indigenous resistance (and of course, Amerikan liberal democracy has and continues to bed fascisms all over the globe).

- What’s more interesting is Sakai’s follow-up to this point, which is that settler and non-settler late capitalist metropolitan societies are gradually becoming homogenous. Europeans might sneer about McDonalds and hamburgers and whatnot, but they’ll gladly embrace “Americanization” when it comes to immigrants looking for refuge and migrant laborers (one recent thing that comes to my mind was the media panic over Belarus allowing Iraqi, Afghan, and Syrian asylum seekers to cross the border to Poland). On the other end, imperialism is gradually abandoning settlers to make room for a new liberal “multi-culturalism.” After January 6th, pretty sure Amerikans should be familiar with the whole hubbub. Sakai expands on this in The Shock of Recognition.

Fun stuff, check this out after you’ve read Settlers, probably be more meaningful. I’ve just been a lazy butt lately.

[Kersplebedeb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is available from the Kersplebedeb Literature Rack. You can

[Adam Marsan · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://kersplebedeb.com/posts/raceburn/

[mongoloid · Rating 5 out of 5]

should lay to rest the inaccurate attacks against the original book by people who didn't really read it.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sakai is brilliant as always

[Will L · Rating 4 out of 5]

didn't get some of the stuff towards the end, but pretty good.