Hexbear’s latest struggle session is in: should Latin America be considered western or not? I decided to write up some thoughts about it.
The discussion on comrade’s @autismdragon 's post centered around a comrade from Palestine living in Honduras (or born in Honduras with Palestinian ascent) and others from neighboring countries claiming that Honduras (and other neighboring countries) is a western country, as it is populated by christian protestants, speaks a romance language, and has been subject to continuous economical, cultural, and imperialist influence by the United States. Others have pointed out that western should be understood in its most exclusive sense as pertaining only to western europe & the USA, and that racist white people in such countries would never consider a latin american person to be western and therefore it must be true they are not western.
I think this argument fails to capture the way the concept of “western” has been utilized in Latin American countries to further the position of certain groups. So while I do agree that there are fundamental differences between Latin America and Europe or the US (the basis on which I believe they should be understood to be described below), adopting the most radical exclusionary concept of westerness does not allow us to understand the totality of social relations in Latin America, which are very much infused with notions of westerness and white supremacy.
To make an analogy with phenomena within “western in the strict sense” places, it is known that US WASPs did not consider italians or poles or sometimes even germans to be white. Or we can imagine an italian who moves to Sweden and is not reeeealy considered white, over there. Does that mean only the most exclusionary concept of whiteness is true?
Or, rather, should one look into it as a fundamentally relational concept with changing significates? That same italian from the example above can move into Africa or South America and be very much considered white: Brazil for example welcomed several italian migrants during the 19th/20th century as part of a state policy of whitening society. A polish descendant in the US, some generations removed, might very well be considered a white westerner. And our european comrades such as @egon would not BELIEVE what passes for white on, say, northeastern Brazil.
The fact is that such concepts of western institutions and thought, and whiteness, are woven into societies born out of colonization and used even by the mestizo descendants of the colonizers of yesterday. I’m perfectly aware that several argentinian people who consider themselves very white would not be considered white by a racist northern european (or even a mildly progressive one). That does not change the fact that their white and european heritage has a material effect on their social relations within argentinian society.
The fact is also that whiteness and westerness exist insofar as certain parts of latin american society hold the power of defining non-whiteness within their own societies (by e.g. murdering a black or indigenous person). This might be the alchemy of racism in Latin America: nobody is white yet it is clear and defined who is black.
I think disregarding such mechanisms as delusions of a comprador elite, as has been proposed by one of our comrades in the thread, does not allow us to capture the issue in its totality. It also leaves out that although latin american countries generally do not have a nationalistic bourgeoisie as combative as, say, Osama Bin Laden or some russian capitalists, it is also not completely devoid of a certain degree of autonomy and interests that clash with those of imperial/external capital. An internal bourgeoisie, if we go by Poulantzian concepts.
I also think that telling our latin american comrades to shed the concept of westerness because a northern european would not consider a latin american western, while having interesting rethorical effect and shock value, is not as necessary as some comrades in the thread made it out to be. Rather, an european who reminds our latin american comrades that they are very much not western and “to be honest we don’t even consider the czechians western” is merely exercising once again the power to define who is or isn’t [ingroup] that is characteristic of whiteness and westerness. Again, possible rethorical effect but to me it does not seem to further our comprehension of material reality, merely recreating its mechanisms with inverted signifiers.
What would then be a more interesting way of looking into it?
I’m by no means an expert but I also wanted to end this effort post with a more propositional tone. So here is what I think to be more useful to us in a marxist forum.
It is true that Latin America has several cultural ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. romance languages, christianism); that it has institutional ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. a lot of state building in Brazil happened when the Portuguese king was in exile following defeat to Napoleon, to the point where some liberal scholars will consider ours a Portuguese-state-in-exile); and that it might as well share some customs (e.g. santa claus dresses in heavy red clothes while christmas is in summer goddamnit) or ideologies (with a seemingly unending propensity to import the latest fads in european economic science). On the other hand, a proper marxist understanding should stress that material conditions are central to the social phenomena observed. A shared cultural heritage (which exists and accounts for comrade’s @CatrachoPalestino considering Honduras western) does not supersede the class relations of indigenous displacement and genocide, black slavery, superexploitation, and having part of our surplus value directed to the central capitalist countries. It is those relations that should be seen as the defining features of our material reality rather that a cultural heritage - which does not exclude looking into how such cultural heritage might be utilized to very material effects.
Final notes: musical notes
I will not translate two song’s lyrics as of right now but I feel two songs are thematically relevant to our discussion which I will leave linked below because I like them. Mapping them out within western or non western musical traditions will be left as an exercise to the reader.
this isn’t really true, and it’s something leftists love to say for some reason. Italians, Irish, Jews, etc. are white, have always been considered white, to say otherwise is pretty silly.
being ‘white’ doesn’t mean you never face discrimination. white people can face discrimination too, like those examples you pointed out.
Gonna go ahead and disagree with you there. Whiteness is a social construct “oppresor club” and in America italians and irish were once not included in the definition. Theres an abundance of scolarship about this, such as “how the Irish became white”.
it’s just not true. historian Eric Foner says the same here. that entire scholarship is based on viewing ‘white’ as meaning ‘never facing discrimination’, which is silly.
Irish, Italian, Jews, whatever other group people say aren’t white had rights specifically because they were white. they could vote when black people couldn’t, miscegenation laws never applied to them and it did to black people. to say these groups weren’t white is really ridiculous and frankly just insulting to groups that faced discrimination specifically because they weren’t white.
They were disciminated against because they werent seen as entirly white by the people discriminating, regardless of laws being different for them
Whiteness is an opressor club. If youre being opressed by the people in the club, you arent entirly in the club, even if there are people lower on the totem pole than you.
The British even made racist conspiracy theories about the Irish being a “lost tribe” of Africa to justify their double racism
I think you’re basically getting into astrology at this point. “oh Italians weren’t ‘fully’ white, they were only 70% white whereas WASPs were 100% white and black people were 0% white, and the line to have rights is 50%”
it’s silly. again, these groups had certain rights specifically because they were white. if they weren’t seen as white, they wouldn’t have those rights.
racism is astrology, it’s not based on any objective, measurable metrics and has constantly changed throughout history. people point this out by talking about anti-irish racism, because it was a real thing but farcical under the current construction of race. Eric Foner brings up interesting points for American-specific situations where people make mistakes in their narratives—but that isn’t a rebuttal to the existence of anti-(people-who-were/are-considered-white-in-the-US) racism in Europe. the white/nonwhite dichotomy itself is US-ian, not the only way to construct a racialized social hierarchy
Whiteness is a social construct its not at all “astrology” to say you can be partially in the club and partially not in the club come on.
…But that’s exactly how most racists saw it (and many still do). It is silly, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was indeed a common worldview that did shape laws that in turn reinforced it. Are you saying that racists didn’t believe in a racial hierarchy?
White is a class of people shorn from all social relations and existing in a state of pure liberalism. If a sufficiently British enough person were to be alive today they would not be recognized as white. I don’t know enough about that backwater island to know if there are still like little fishing villages where people are making eel jelly and nettle soup with their cousins. Those people would be the antagonists in a horror film. They wouldn’t be recognized as being part of the white world.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is a man from the 18th century, and no one has any trouble seeing him as white
I don’t think they have always been considered “white” exactly, but they are now for sure. Jewish people that’s like 80-90% true
Which is a example of how relational and historically contingent such concepts are