Page 235 - Contribution To Phenomenology

228 STANFORD M LYMAN & LESTER EMBREE

can neither get ahead, despite their efforts, nor can they afford the
luxury of being lazy and promiscuous. This is how Parsons accounts for
anti-Semitism and race prejudice having become features of Western
civilization and its discontents. His approach entails a sociological
Freudianism: It is rooted in the idea that Occidental meritocratic
civilization is inherently frustrating and that its frustration will lead to
racist and anti-semitic aggression.
/ don't have to ask you about the qualitative-interpretive perspective
because your whole approach, indicated here, illustrates it But, I know you
have of late been reading in the works of the Post-Modernists, trying to
figure that perspective out, trying to respond to it, trying to extract what good
you can find in it. Is Postmodernism a force in Ethnic Studies today?
Postmodernism has taken on an American form. It has suited itself to
the problems we have been discussing, more specifically, the dilemma of
how, on the one hand, there could arise a justified ethno-cultural
renaissance, and how, on the other hand, the several renascent eth-
no-racial minorities will fit themselves into American society, with all the
rights and privileges accorded thereunto. What the ethnoracially oriented
post-modernists—and, I should add, there are not many of them but the
few make up in brilliance what they lack in numbers—do is borrow the
theme of dis-privileging texts from Jacques Derrida, the father of
Deconstructionism. But, they have not taken up the universal dis-privileg-
ing that is inherent in Derrida's fundamental position. Instead, they will
borrow the deconstructive approach as a critique in order to dis-privilege
the hegemonic texts of the WASP cultures and in order to make a place
for the neo-privileged texts of their own ethnic canon-to-be. In parallel
with raising their own ethnic group to be on the same level as other ethnic
groups. Exactly.
This fits in with my thought that the modem nation state is typically an
ethnic "empire," They are in effect fighting the ethnic hegemony of one
ethnic group and acquiring a new lexicon in order to be able to say that
the United States of America is a multi-ethnic society. It is an ethnic
empire, but instead of being ruled by an ethnic monarchy, its power base
is rooted in an elite ethnic oligarchy that holds sway within an ostensibly
democratic republic. Right, An ethnic oligarchy of groups, I often say that
'White'' is the most racist word in the American language because there is