Mary: Hmmm. Here are some ideas for what I'd like to talk about.

Race as particular to capitalism: the way in which the “dissolving” tendency of capitalism is contradicted by a political/cultural reification of the partially-digested body of a conquered people.

The same process works out differently in different contexts: Portuguese assimilation, English assimilation/distance, apartheid, etc. And of course castes.

In this sense race is a contradiction: a political necessity at the transcendent level to maintain a split working class, but always undermined by the economic tendency of capitalism to dissolve old differences.

But this is even true of class itself! Education and meritocracy (combined in the spectacle) to create the actual and potential for each person in their lifetime to defect from working class to become manager, etc. In similar way to black folk defecting. In fact, in various contexts it's exactly the same thing. (S. Africa?)

Gender and reproduction – how/when/why are class and race inherited (via sexual selection and child-rearing), and when are they mere guises that can be adopted? The way that oppression-narratives often talk about the struggle as being simply to allow everyone to leave birth behind, to become “who they want to be”. Perhaps to de-center those traits and dynamics explicitly tagged as “white” or “male” or “successful ?rich”, but not to undo the political-economic heart of what makes us a socially coherent empire.

What is it that defines our social body?

Ultimately, the goal of decolonization is not simply to have kente cloth formalwear and Kwanzaa in December, but a profoundly different culture – what it is that reproduces us. Political economy, and more. So, many of these, against, but also beyond the horizon of the white man's world.