Response to Umer's Post on the Distribution of Advantages and Disadvantages -Shaira Busnawi

By

This is a comment responding to Umer’s post in specific (very interesting post Umer!) To your last point, you mention that the “global landscape has evolved far beyond what it was when the slave trade and colonialism,” and although I agree that yes, times look different now to the slave trade and colonialism, this would not weaken Taiwo’s argument that the way system distributes advantages and disadvantages has not changed. To prove this point, we have to break down Taiwo’s discussion on how our current world has come about, as well as the forces that are in place currently that sustain this global structure.


Taiwo discusses that our current world order, the global racial empire, is structured because of the "unfolding results of the decisions made generations ago" (25). In previous history courses, I was always taught, or at least remembered, being taught that Europeans always possessed economic and political control. This supports Taiwo's argument that Western education systems have a "tendency to read the past in light of present-day distributions of power..." (37). It is important to recognize that Europe did not just begin with the control or power that we know of today. Rather, the actions that European actors took that resulted in a global political system that is advantageous to Europe. Europe accumulated wealth and power due to key events including gaining a leading position in the silver market, defeating the Aztec empire, and entering the gold rush and arms race. In all of these examples, Europe “exploited political developments and directions from elsewhere” (39). However, Europe most significantly accumulated its power that we know today through colonialism. Theft of land was essential for two opportunities: plunder and the creation of markets. With access to new colonies, Europe was able to “reorganize social institutions and (therefore)t the patterns of individual lives so that nearly every action of the economy ultimately fed into the channels of wealth flowing back to the colonizers” (42). Europe’s colonies meant control over the terms of trade, and therefore where advantages and disadvantages of wealth flowed.


All of these events in which Europe accumulated wealth and power, they were also accumulating advantages. The flow of advantages and disadvantages still moves in the same direction as it did during the slave trade and colonialism. For example, the Global North continues to be the location of economic, political, and environmental advantage accumulations whereas the Global South is the location in which disadvantages tend to accumulate. This is proven in the case of “brain- drain,” where high-skilled professionals leave the Global South and put their expertise into the Global North.  Taiwo’s example of the US concentrating horrors and disadvantages abroad (in the case of Jakarta) while accumulating social and political advantages at home really showed me that this distribution of violence continues to disadvantage non-Western countries (61) This shows that although we may not live in the same world in which slavery and colonialism existed, we are still living the consequences of it through the distribution of advantages and disadvantages. 



To touch on Umer’s point on the blanket race-based solution: 

From where this book is going, I don’t think that Taiwo will be advocating for a blanket race-based solution. He begins the book by saying that the solution to the Global Racial Empire is to “remake the world” and that this would require looking at all aspects of our world (social, economic, political, military, and ideological). This is to say that I don’t think Taiwo will only be focusing on race-based solutions, rather his constructivist view will focus on building a just society by responding to today’s injustices that are a result of history’s distributive justice while also advocating for policies to prevent future distributive injustices including climate crises. This would require multi-faceted solutions rather than one single race-based solution.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Cowen and Anderson are both wrong-George

By
In their dialogue, both Cowen and Anderson fail to address important elements of each other's arguments. Cowen's failure is primarily empirical. He dismisses the significance of labor market monopsony out of hand (109). Although economists disagree about the relevance of employer labor market power, Cowen does not sufficiently address the credible evidence of its role in suppressing compensation. This evidence has only grown in the years since Private Government  was published. One consideration as to the relevance of monopsony is the pay-productivity gap. Although libertarian economists chafe immensely at any implication that workers do not benefit from higher productivity, and the popular understanding of the pay-productivity gap is indeed exaggerated, even the most pro-market economists are forced to admit to a degree of "delinkage" between the growth of labor productivity and the compensation of nonsupervisory employees. Interestingly, there is less evidence of de...
Read more

Responding to Jemma and Aara: Another consideration that Rawls does not discuss--- Luis

By
  Hey Jemma and Aara,   Thank you for the thought-provoking blogs! I definitely felt that Okin made her argument less favorable by structuring her last part of Chapter 6 with a sense of constructing a ladder of what social standing has a greater impact on "one's thinking of justice." I agree with you and Aara in that Okin's critique of the unequal gender-based structure is strong and needed to achieve Rawls's basic structure of a well-ordered society. I also believe that stating that gender is the most prevalent identity that will form an individual's concept of "justice" undermines intersectionality. I wanted to add another layer that is not accounted for by Rawls, which Okin hints on.  After reading both blogs, I initially thought about our seminar where Kat and I argued for what Aara was discussing, a knowledge of the global racial empire, or in other terms, the history of racism and colonialism in the original position. I was sold on that argumen...
Read more

Evaluating Harris Whiteness as Property--- Luis Mendoza

By
      In "Whiteness as Property," Cheryl I. Harris builds her work on the image of her grandmother and her ability to use "passing" in her labor and daily life (1710). The main advantage of passing, as stated by Harris, is that it "[increases] the [possibilities] of controlling critical aspects of one's life rather than being the object of other's domination" (1713). At this moment, I want to focus on her functions of whiteness which comes after her discussion that whiteness is property through its theoretical descriptions. More specifically, I will digest one attribute of whiteness as property: "the rights to transfer or alienability" (1731).              One of Harris's points is that because theories surrounding property state that it must have the aspect of alienability, it makes whiteness as property more difficult to process. The issue is that "whiteness," as Harris states, "is incapable of being trans...
Read more