American Dream » Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:59 pm wrote:Nothing has fundamentally changed since 2012 when the
privilege politics article was written. For those who sincerely want to understand, I will offer up this:
The broad category of class politics is not really in opposition to organizing struggles that are also: racial, feminist, queer liberationist etc. When one seeks a higher level of synthesis it becomes clear that socialist feminism overlaps with struggles around racialized capitalism, queer militancy and etc. As one increases their radical awareness it becomes clear that struggles against Capital, the State, and Power generally are fundamentally integrated with the deeper level of "identity" struggles, whatever the silliness of the superficial liberalism which may pass for "identity politics" in the corporate media sphere.
Beware those who tell you that it's either one or the other and you must choose now, that they will lead you beyond Right and Left. That rarely ends well.
Bolding mine because I want to address that point.
Not “in opposition to” but a deft shift in the road that seems slight but is actually a wrong turn that leads you towards a completely different destination.
American neo-liberals, social planners and spook think tanks of late seem to specialize in suggesting or engineering such gentle nudges. They do learn from their mistakes, and very important lessons were learned in the US and Europe in the ‘60’s -70’s, not to mention in the countless countries where hard interventions such as coup d’etat’s were required.
The lesson—It’s much, much better to nip nascent movements in the bud than to try to stop them when the movement has grown legs and gained momentum.
Illustrations?
-Liberal Feminist reversals such as turning “prostitution and pornography are symptoms and attributes of oppression and sexual violence towards women” into “sex work is empowering and a great job opportunity.”
-“Queer Liberation” replaces the movement for homosexual dignity and rights. To quality as queer, it’s enough to wear blue nail polish and glittery eye make-up, any heterosexual can join, which effectively erases gays and lesbians from their own movement.
-For the Identity Politics course shifting of the Black liberation movement I’ll leave you with a few quotes from a (highly recommended) article by Cornel West about Ta-nehisi Coates, an author much feted and heavily promoted by the mainstream media and literary establishment:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ornel-west“...In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical and unremovable. What concerns me is his narrative of “defiance”. For Coates, defiance is narrowly aesthetic – a personal commitment to writing with no connection to collective action. It generates crocodile tears of neoliberals who have no intention of sharing power or giving up privilege.
When he honestly asks: “How do you defy a power that insists on claiming you?”, the answer should be clear: they claim you because you are silent on what is a threat to their order (especially Wall Street and war). You defy them when you threaten that order.”
“...Coates tries to justify his “defiance” by an appeal to “black atheism, to a disbelief in dreams and moral appeal”. He not only has “no expectations of white people at all”, but for him, if freedom means anything at all it is “this defiance”.
Note that his perception of white people is tribal and his conception of freedom is neoliberal. Racial groups are homogeneous and freedom is individualistic in his world. Classes don’t exist and empires are nonexistent.”
“...There is no doubt that the marketing of Coates – like the marketing of anyone – warrants suspicion. Does the profiteering of fatalism about white supremacy and pessimism of black freedom fit well in an age of Trump – an age of neo-fascism, US style?”
“...Unfortunately, Coates’ allegiance to Obama has produced an impoverished understanding of black history. He reveals this when he writes: “Ossie Davis famously eulogized Malcolm X as ‘our living, Black manhood’ and ‘our own Black shining prince.’ Only one man today could bear those twin honorifics: Barack Obama.”
This gross misunderstanding of who Malcolm X was – the greatest prophetic voice against the American Empire – and who Barack Obama is – the first black head of the American Empire – speaks volumes about Coates’ neoliberal view of the world.
Coates praises Obama as a “deeply moral human being” while remaining silent on the 563 drone strikes, the assassination of US citizens with no trial, the 26,171 bombs dropped on five Muslim-majority countries in 2016 and the 550 Palestinian children killed with US supported planes in 51 days, etc. He calls Obama “one of the greatest presidents in American history,” who for “eight years ... walked on ice and never fell.”
It is clear that his narrow racial tribalism and myopic political neoliberalism has no place for keeping track of Wall Street greed, US imperial crimes or black elite indifference to poverty. For example, there is no serious attention to the plight of the most vulnerable in our community, the LGBT people who are disproportionately affected by violence, poverty, neglect and disrespect.“
