fundgruber reblogged
The indigenous worker sees the migrant in an ’inferior’ position, and what he sees and hears emphasizes how the migrant is different. Different to the point of being unknowable. Imperceptibly - there is no moment of decision - the two characteristics fuse.
From being unknowable the migrant comes to be seen as being beneath understanding: as being intrinsically unpredictable, disorganized, feckless, devious. And then the inverted commas
around inferior disappear: what has become the migrant’s intrinsic inferiority is now expressed in his inferior status. What he is paid to do reflects what he is. The fusion has occurred. [...]
The principle of equality is the revolutionary principle, not only because it challenges hierarchies, but because it asserts that all men are equally whole. And the converse is just as true: to accept inequality as natural is to become fragmented, is to see oneself as no more than the sum of a set of capacities and needs.
The above argument may show why the working class, if it accepts the natural inferiority of the migrants, is likely to reduce its own demands to economic ones, to fragment itself and to lose
its own political identify.
John Berger, The Seventh Man (1975), p. 253ff. https://web.archive.org/web/20160805000323/http://abahlali.org/files/John%20Berger,%20Extract%20from%20A%20Seventh%20Man,%20Race%20&%20Class,%201975.pdf
"In 1972, John Berger won the Booker Prize, donating half to the British Black Panthers and using the rest to create A Seventh Man with Jean Mohr. This genre-defying book tells migrant workers’ stories through independent words and images. Nearly 50 years on, it remains a vital call for solidarity." Chunkingbooks
