Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › four views on identity-politics and class
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zn.
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March 3, 2017 at 8:51 pm #65804March 4, 2017 at 7:22 am #65816
wvParticipantanother view:http://nova.wpunj.edu/newpolitics/issue22/kelley22.htm
“… Besides assuming that the “universal” is truly “self-evident,” the neo-Enlightenment Left cannot conceive of movements led by African Americans, women, Latinos, gays and lesbians, speaking for the whole or even embracing radical humanism. The implications are frightening: the only people who can speak the language of universalism are white men (since they have no investment in identity politics beyond renewed ethnic movements arising here and there) and women and colored people who have transcended or rejected the politics of identity. Moreover, they either don’t understand or refuse to acknowledge that class is lived through race and gender. There is no universal class identity, just as there is no universal racial or gender or sexual identity. The idea that race, gender, and sexuality are particular whereas class is universal not only presumes that class struggle is some sort of race and gender-neutral terrain but takes for granted that movements focused on race, gender, or sexuality necessarily undermine class unity and, by definition, cannot be emancipatory for the whole.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving priority to “identity politics” over the struggle to dismantle capitalism and to build a world we’ve never seen before — a world free of market forces and all the terrible things that go with it. Rather, I have trouble with their characterization of race, gender, and sexuality as narrow identity politics while “class” is regarded as some transcendent, universal category that rises above these other identities. Indeed, Gitlin calls the first three, “birthrights,” and despite an obligatory nod to Anthony Appiah, he fails to treat these categories as social constructs that have enormous consequences for how class is lived. Along with these so-called “identities” come regimes of oppression. Are churches being burned because black people are alienating white folks? Is that why the Justice Department focuses much of its investigation on black congregations rather than white supremacist groups? Is pro-Prop 187 sentiment and callousness toward immigrants the result of Mexican and Central American immigrants’ refusal to be “inclusive?”
I FIND THE NEO-ENLIGHTENMENT POSITION INCREDIBLY PROBLEMATIC GIVEN WHAT WE K…” see link
March 4, 2017 at 9:10 am #65824wvParticipantI liked this one:http://www.leftvoice.org/A-Few-Words-on-Marxism-and-Identity-Politics
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…….I am a black man of working class background, I am also a Marxist. Frankly, if you tell me that struggles against racism need to take a backseat to whatever overgeneralized idea of working class struggle you’re advocating, I’m going to tell you to eat a bullet. Stop using Marxism as a cover for your personal discomfort at having to talk about race, gender, or sexuality. Marxism is scientific, so suggesting that specific struggles based on race/gender/sexual identity are of lesser importance in a society built on the subjugation of race/gender/sexual minorities isn’t just bad politics, it’s outright contrary to the idea of Marxism.We have to realize that the struggles we are facing are, in fact, intersectional (I know you hate that word, probably about as much as I hate whitewashed Marxism). What we should bring to light, however, is that it’s not just about the intersection between racial, gender, and sexual identity, but between all those AND class identity. We need to put forward a new, Marxist identity politics that recognizes the special oppression that comes with race and the consequent importance of fighting racism head-on, but also emphasizes that the interests of the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie of color are just as hostile to working class POC as the interests of the white bourgeoisie are and that the interests of bourgeois women are still hostile to the interests of working class women. Class and identity are not mutually exclusive: black and brown workers’ struggle is workers’ struggle; working women’s struggle is workers’ struggle; LGBTQIA workers’ struggle is workers’ struggle. The sooner some of y’all come to realize that, the sooner we can rise up together and overthrow this capitalism bullshit for good. Now, let’s do better….” see link
March 4, 2017 at 10:38 am #65831znModeratorI thought Walter Benn Michael initially had a point about analysis neglecting class. But to me since then it has become a far less effective “bashing point” among some. So I also agree very heavily with your last 2 posts. I personally think that the real historical situation in the USA means that those things are inseparable. I tend not to use the term “identity politics” because to me it’s an updated misuse of an older concept and I don’t like the way it’s now being used…and it’s now being used as a kind of slogany pejorative. If you look around no one is used the term “identity politics” in a positive sense. It’s always a basher term used by people who instead of saying class has been neglected, want to bash people for not making class the one central focus. So no one says “I am FOR identity politics.”
The REAL problem IMO is that those things–class, race, and gender–are often (if not always) pitted against one another in “divide and conquer” ways. So for example there’s white working class guys who think the problem is that people of color get benefits they don’t get and as a result they vote Trump (and IMO ignoring how race was a big part of Trump voting is just to abandon reality.)
That;s not easy stuff to sort out and is multi-complex, AND on top of it this problem is simply not new—it goes back to the aftermath of Bacon’s rebellion.
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