Responses to Eidelson's latest entry in the War of the Blogs

Josh says

I don't find the use of the term "minority" to refer to groups that are, empirically, smaller in this country than the majority along whichever axis we're referring to a particularly problematic terminology.

Fine, Josh, but the fact is that the 'majority' of people in the world are NOT white. If we use the admittedly deeply problematic and 'raced' field of vision, they do not 'look like' what the 'majority' of 'Americans' 'look like.' But this sentence is itself problematic because (among other objections) it uses a grammar of the nation, of nationalism, which links a racializing and racist discourse of national formation to this notion of the majority and its minorities. The 'axis', to use Josh's words, along which minority and majority are defined needs to be international, transnational, global, without erasing local histories and experiences. I think the story's far depper than one of simple numerics.

Finally, resoundingly, I would affectionately but bitingly make a comment to the effect that sometimes we have to choose between laundering clothes and organizing a movement and then sing Pete Seeger's rendition of "Which side are you on?"

Some of us are able to launder our clothes, bathe frequently, AND organize a movement!

(disclaimer: I am not alleging that Joshua Ruben Eidelson does not bathe frequently. I'll leave that up to Abbey Hudson.)  ¶ 10:13 PM