So, to propose that we exploit this tendency of bigots to enjoy some social equity along with their racial and gender terrorism sounds like a mug’s game. We will have to do the work of feminism and racial politics alongside our economic socialism, and it’s a fantasy to assume we can break them up and do one first while ignoring the others. But the historic tendencies of the past influence us yet; the existing power structures of white supremacy and misogyny mean we still hear from predominately white Overton McEdgelords who put all their activism chips in one pile and constrain Teh Discourse by dint of their limited imaginations.
I’ve posted excerpts from this open letter here before in a similar thread. I’ve decided to post it again because I feel that it is a clear and succinct response to arguments suggesting that minorties and marginalized groups on the left to set aside their concerns in order to attract those “voting against their own interests” or to “peel away a slice of deplorables”.
Bolds and Italics are mine, as well as the choice and order of the excerpts.
That sexism and racism exist cannot seriously be in doubt for any progressive person in the year 2016. Everyone has an identity; every identity is political, whether because it is marginalized or because it benefits from the marginalization of others. It is not “enlightening” or fresh or radical to ignore identity-based oppressions, or minimize them, or demand marginalized people stop talking about them. Oppression is not a “debate” or a “discussion.” It’s a fact. You can “debate” gravity all day, but that won’t change what happens when you drop a bowling ball on your foot. You can “debate” sexism all day, too. The outcome of sexist behaviors remains the same.
Viewpoints which attack “identity politics” directly attack marginalized people. Viewpoints which do not take racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, whorephobia or transphobia into account are not “universal” or “pure” — they are biased in favor of white, male, straight, Christian or cisgender people.
Oppression consists, not only of brute force and resource inequality, but of the hierarchy of speech: The ability of those in power to decide whose voices are heard, whose experiences matter, whose concerns or goals are “serious” and “political” and whose are merely “personal” and should be ignored. To overturn this hierarchy, it is essential that marginalized people speak to their own concerns, define the agenda, lead movements, and continually complicate the white, male picture of the world with their own perspectives. You cannot “purify” us out of the Left by re-imposing the old hierarchies of speech. You cannot get a “better” or “truer” left by eliminating the truths we bring you. You cannot simplify us out of the Left, because when you do so, you stop being the Left : You become the status quo, upholding and celebrating the exact hierarchy you say you exist to oppose.
Which is to say: Attacks on “identity politics” are not progressive. They are identity politics — an openly conservative identity politics, aimed at delegitimizing marginalized people’s concerns, and centering white, straight men in perpetuity. And, because they explicitly reinforce the oppression of those most harmed by capitalism, they effectively undermine any chance the left has of reaching its goals.
Nor is this phenomenon confined to any one issue. Biphobia and sizeism are consistently written out of the list of identity-based oppressions.* There are cases where outright exclusion occurs. People with disabilities are constantly erased from identity politics — events are hosted in venues with no accessibility or appropriate resources, which literally exclude them from participating. Their experiences are erased when ableism is presented solely as a mental health issue (ignoring many who face different issues). But mostly, they are not considered in the realm of identity politics at all despite the overwhelming rate of physical, sexual, emotional and financial abuse, discrimination, incarceration and social marginalization.
We are the Left. We are long-standing and devoted activists and advocates, whose work concerns reproductive health care access, ending rape culture, queer and youth advocacy, the protest of the criminal justice system’s systemic racism, sex and sexuality work, the sustained critique of media bias relating to marginalized people, ending economic injustice and income inequality, and more. We have unionized our workplaces; we have protested; we have marched. We have Occupied. We speak to the Left because, for many of us, it is where we live, work, fall in love, find our friends, make community and find the support for our continued survival and well-being. Our investment is not, and cannot reasonably be, in doubt.
Moreover, we are the people the Left explicitly stands in solidarity with, as the entire reason for its being including the economic class issues so much of leftism is often centered in: 70% of the nation’s poor are women, or those women’s children. Transphobia, homophobia, disability and domestic violence are all directly connected to homelessness. Much of this nation’s working class is comprised of people of color; the victims of America’s prison-industrial complex are, disproportionately, people of color, or mentally ill, or both; immigration status is not only connected to class and race, but also one of the major issues the Right is currently exploiting to push a campaign built on white, male hatred. We stand in solidarity with these groups, not out of any abstract ideal, but because we, ourselves, are in the same danger; we belong to the classes being oppressed, have experienced the violence of discrimination, and have an innate and self-motivated interest in ending the varieties of capitalist oppression described.
We are not attacking our movements by speaking about these problems; we are not harming them; we are not dividing them. We are making our movements possible. And when you spend all your ammunition on taking us down, you will, eventually, realize the real problem: When it’s time for the revolution, you will have driven out so many of your fellow progressives that you find yourselves charging up that hill all alone.
Soft-pedaling identity politics isn’t a palatable suggestion. But the US isn’t a functioning democracy - predominately white and rural voters have too much sway, and I don’t see anybody here proposing any way of dealing with that reality.
I wouldn’t dream of excluding anyone who’s marginalised. But if poverty were to be abolished, that would include pretty much everyone who’s marginalised, virtually by definition.
I invoked MLK because the timing of his assassination was just in time from a plutocrat’s perspective… He was gearing up to take on wealth disparity big time. And, ever noticed how every time it looks like some people somewhere start to look like shrugging of the yoke of the elite, the fucking CIA is there engineering a coup? It even happened in Australia, FFS. Wealth disparity is the main game.
It isn’t an effective one, either. You don’t win a battle by fighting it on your opponent’s terms when you don’t have to. If conservatives don’t want Americans talking about identity politics then liberals and progressives should be encouraging it.
They’re proposed on this site constantly: ban gerrymandering, block all attempts at voter disenfranchisement, and reform the Electoral College. None of these require the elimination of poverty as a prerequisite, although obviously it would help.
The class system is a social one as well as an economic one; the former is heavily tied up with race in the U.S. Everyone in the U.S. could be making exactly the same income and have exactly the same amount of wealth and there would still be an African-American underclass.
There’s also a strong chance that leaving the other issues unresolved will lead to backsliding on economic equality. As Lyndon Johnson noted, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
