I’m really, really disturbed by your claim that racism is arbitrary. It’s not. It is traceable to specific material needs and its evolution clearly follows the creation and evolution of slavery. It’s many components follow the social death associated with slavery (See Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death). The racism we see today follows those same patterns. So it makes your problematic case that there is no biology based cause for patriarchy even weaker when you compare it to racism’s arbitrary quality. Because neither of them is. Take slavery (and colonialism) out of the picture and racism as we know it doesn’t exist. In that vein, take the need to control reproduction out of the picture and patriarchy ceases to exist.

    Narcissa Smith-Harris

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