Noisy bigots drown out silent bias

Waleed Aly observes that Noisy bigots drown out silent bias.

Aly writes that:

No, our real problem is the subterranean racism that goes largely unremarked upon and that we seem unable even to detect. Like the racism revealed by an Australian National University study, which found you are significantly less likely to get a job interview if you have a non-European name. The researchers sent fake CVs in response to job advertisements, changing only the name of the applicant. It turns out that if your surname is Chinese, you have to apply for 68 per cent more jobs to get the same number of interviews as an Anglo-Australian. If you are Middle Eastern, it's 64 per cent. If you are indigenous, 35 per cent.

This is the polite racism of the educated middle class. It's not as shocking as the viral racist tirades we've seen lately. No doubt the human resources managers behind these statistics would be genuinely appalled by such acts of brazen, overt racism. Indeed, they probably enforce racial discrimination rules in their workplace and are proud to do so. Nonetheless, theirs is surely a more devastating, enduring racism. There is no event to film, just the daily, invisible operation of a silent, pervasive prejudice. It does not get called out. It's just the way things are; a structure of society.

Emphasis Mine

Malcolm X is reported to have once said that he would rather talk to a red-neck racist than to a liberal because the former is racist to your face, while the latter is racist behind your back. He is reported to have said that you cannot have Capitalism without racism.

The Capitalist needs racism to divide the international working class, and to justify the daily atrocities that it commits through stravation, war, poverty, prisons, and lack of medical care.

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Supply Chain Problems Hitting Hospitals Near You

Yves Smith reports that Supply Chain Problems Hitting Hospitals Near You.

Smith argues that cost-cutting by drug companies have put public-health at risk by reducing inventory costs and keeping demand high:

The reason that it might seem OK to squeeze hospitals is precisely that it’s hard to point a finger at the drug companies. But notice the comment that these shortages can affect people in ICUs. It’s not hard to imagine a hospital having to ration limited supplies, say if some sort of disaster (big explosion, natural disaster) led hospitals in an area to have a flood of emergency room patients.

This looks like a case where the invisible hand of the market leads to a decrease in the well-being of the community.

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Russia: An oligarch’s mistake, an oligarch’s fate

Boris Kagarlitsky writes an obituary for Boris Abramovich Berezovsky who died in London on March 23, 2013 in Russia: An oligarch’s mistake, an oligarch’s fate.

Berevovsky's tragedy was a failure to accept the constraints of capitalist rule in a dependent country:

Most of the oligarchs of the 1990s understood and accepted the new rules, at times helping to draw them up. Berezovsky, however, could not adapt his personal nature to the new regime, and it was this, far more than his political disagreements with President Putin, that sealed his downfall. Worst of all, once the Russian oligarch had arrived in that very same West which he had sincerely viewed as a model and ideal, he turned out to be incapable of fitting in with life there – neither with political life, nor even with business. Unlike his pupil and rival Roman Abramovich, who assimilated perfectly the first rule of successful business – don’t stick your neck out unless you have to – Berezovsky was constantly coming out with one initiative or another, getting involved in political conflicts, declaring his ideas.

Despite a Marxist education, he failed to appreciate the class interests of the Capitalists is about stability for exploitation.

The capitalists live in fear of the masses, and thereby employ a superstructure to keep the masses in their place through docility, bribes, fear, and division. Stirring up the masses is a very dangerous activity.

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The problem of relative privilege in the working class

Chris Slee ponders The problem of relative privilege in the working class.

Slee dislikes the term, “labour aristocracy”, and prefers to use “relative privilege” instead. It is this relative privilege that is the source of division among workers:

Material inequalities between different groups of workers can contribute to conflict between them. Often one group of workers will try to defend their position of relative privilege against other workers who are perceived as threatening it.

Slee argues that, given the global nature of the production process, the government should nationalise any factory is threaten by being moved off-shore:

How should Australian unions react when companies threaten to close a factory in Australia and move production to another country (whether a Third World or another imperialist country)?

We should argue that it is the responsibility of the Australian government to ensure that there are jobs with good pay and conditions for all workers in Australia. This means the government should take over factories threatened with closure and run them as public enterprises, or else provide the sacked workers with alternative work. Public housing, public transport and renewable energy are some of the areas that governments should invest in and create jobs.

Slee proposes that workers should aim for the leveling up of wages for all workers around the world:

One of our long-term goals should be to reduce inequality between workers in different countries, by raising the living standards of those in poorer countries. Pay rates should be leveled up, not leveled down as the capitalists would like.

Slee concludes that:

The struggle between solidarity and the defence of relative privilege is part of the struggle for a socialist world.

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'Is the Demand for Skill Falling?'

Mark thoma notes a reference to 'Is the Demand for Skill Falling?'

The referenced paper suggests that:

…in response to this demand reversal, high-skilled workers have moved down the occupational ladder and have begun to perform jobs traditionally performed by lower-skilled workers. This de-skilling process, in turn, results in high-skilled workers pushing low-skilled workers even further down the occupational ladder and, to some degree, out of the labor force all together.

This would also run contrary to the narrative that people are not being hired because they are over-qualified.

If this conclusion is true, then we have:

• A stratum of disgruntled workers who are over-qualified for their current jobs and have a large student debt to pay off; and
• A stratum of disgruntled unemployed workers who are experiencing the harshness of being unemployed.

These conditions could lead to a revolt of some sort. It will probably be a fascist one if the first startum revolts first as more educated workers tend to lean towards the conservative end of the political spectrum.

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More on Devolution and the Walmartization of Our Economy

Yves Smith opines More on Devolution and the Walmartization of Our Economy.

Smith notes that Walmart has cut costs so much that they are losing customers because:

• Lines are too long at the checkout; and
• Products are not being stocked on the shelves.

These are all because there are too few employees per store.

The first problem can be overcome with automation through the use of self-checkout counters. But then there is the problem of customer fraud as they scan only some of their goods, or choose cheaper items from the look-up menus.

The second problem is more serious as stock has to be on the shelves in order for it to be sold. Even in Australia, it is not uncommon to see gaps on the shelves where popular products have sold out. Either you can switch brands, defer your purchase, or go elsewhere.

Once a company chooses a path of cost-cutting to achieve results, it is very hard for it to change its direction. Inertia in large organisations is just too great at times.

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Dear Rightwing Catholic Islamophobes: Pope Francis just washed the feet of a Poor Muslim

Juan Cole writes Dear Rightwing Catholic Islamophobes: Pope Francis just washed the feet of a Poor Muslim.

Pope Francis on Maundy Thursday declined to address enormous crowds. Instead he went to a prison to emulate Jesus’s act of humility before his crucifixion in washing the feet of his 12 disciples. The pope washed and kissed the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women and two of them Muslim (one of the women was Muslim). It is reported that some of the prisoners broke down in tears.

This pope is going to be different. But how different?

The pope is going to cause trouble for the conservatives:

These purveyors of hate speech against Muslims claim to be Catholics, and some of them are annoyingly Ultramontane, insisting on papal infallibility and trying to impose their values on all Americans.

Yet the person they hold to be the vicar of Christ has just given humankind a different charge, of humility and of service to the least in society, many of whom are Muslims.

It will be interesting to see how this pope advances the Catholic social teaching.

However, the main problem for the pope to overcome is to reconcile his actions during the dictatorship in Argentina. As Carlo Sands wrote recently:

Pope Francis is also heavily implicated in the crimes of Argentina's fascist junta — but as Jesus teaches, none of us are without sin. And, really, who among us can honestly say we have not kidnapped and tortured the odd priest?

The mainstream media coverage of world figures has sure been interesting of late. Apparently Pope Francis, who backed a dictatorship that slaughtered thousands, loves the poor. And Hugo Chavez, who redistributed wealth and lowered poverty, was a tyrant. The corporate press might not be much good at depicting reality, but at least its black-is-white message is consistent.

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