"Oppression, Racist and Otherwise"
LEKACHMAN, ROBERT
WRITERS and WRITING Oppression, Racist and Otherwise Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World. Professor of economics, Barnard College Reviewed by Robert Lekachman By E. Franklin...
...The very Indians who are most sensitive and most caustic about American race attitudes discriminate in caste relations with a finesse and thoroughness alien to the American experience...
...Frazier intimates, which is at work to our disadvantage in countries like India where the past is very present...
...The distinguished sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, author of half a dozen volumes about Negroes in the United States, has in this book addressed himself to the enormous problem of the relationships between whites and men of other colors in Asia, the various colonial dependencies, and such multiracial societies as the United States, Brazil and the Union of South Africa...
...Too much history is condensed, and the result often reads like a series of flat truisms, differing little from the received commonplaces of elementary-textbooks...
...Excessive brevity also mars the sociological and political analysis...
...And where all else has failed, the subtler poison of race prejudice has injured the very souls of the white man's presumed inferiors...
...The first concerns the form of the book...
...Whatever his technique, the white man has sought from his victims economic, political and social gain...
...His account spans the centuries, touches upon sociology, politics, economics and ecology, and brings us to the present all in little more than 300 pages...
...Professor of economics, Barnard College Reviewed by Robert Lekachman By E. Franklin Frazier...
...Frazier tells in the blandest of voices, with only the mildest emphasis on individual instances of oppression...
...Oversimplification leads to questionable political conclusions...
...A corollary of this criticism is my second complaint...
...Frazier's account is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons...
...The more advanced peoples were permitted to retain their culture, although an elite among them was trained as political leaders...
...Nor are men of other colors free of white vices...
...Frazier, for example, accepts far too uncritically the virtues of Soviet policy toward minorities...
...One concluding observation is inevitable...
...However, if one were to seek an answer to the question of whether the Russian policy has solved the problem of nationalism, one can only say that in World War II the various nations and peoples were loyal to the Soviet Union and fought enthusiastically in its defense...
...Slavery, private bullying, legalized discrimination, commercial exploitation, indentured servitude, indirect rule through native chieftains, and armed warfare—these far from exhaust the list...
...t present, we do not have the materials to know to what extent the individuals of the various nationalities are beginning to think of themselves as Russians rather than Tartars, etc., and to what extent they experience a conflict of loyalties...
...The last sentence of the quotation in particular, although stated as a fact, ignores much contrary evidence...
...And the whole subject of imperialism receives only cursors-treatment...
...Because it is so short and because its subject is so vast, events tend to become blurred and the differences in experience in different countries tend to disappear...
...It is this poison, Dr...
...338 pp...
...6.00...
...The easy generalization of this passage is unfortunately typical of the book's tone...
...The proof does not lie very far back in contemporary history...
...Yet, in the end, Dr...
...Knopf...
...The book would be the stronger for the recognition that injustice is universal and that the oppression of black by white is typical rather than unique...
...The cumulative impact of the book leads to the conclusion that the relation of oppression between whites and men of other colors is unique...
...With the industrialization ol Russia and the increasing mobility of the various peoples of Russia, it is inevitable that assimilation should occur...
...But there is nothing white men have done to black men that the latter have failed to do to each other...
...Certainly the easy identification of the victim is a unique feature...
...The story told is an unpleasant one, to put it mildly...
...All this and much more Dr...
...It is not a story to arouse anyone's pride...
...It is worth quoting him at some length here, since this is a critical question in the sharp competition between ourselves and the Russians for the uncommitted nations of the world: "The Soviet minority policy has varied according to the stage of social development of the people...
...a mixed record to say the least...
...His techniques have varied...
...Wherever he has gone and wherever his strength has sufficed, the white man has oppressed the black man, the brown man and the yellow man...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 27
