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No Politics But Class Politics

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In tension with the mood for generalisation, there is also a strong contemporary tendency to focus on the particularity of experience rather than seeking common ground and understanding oppression as structural. As Matt Bruenig and others have consistently pointed out, elite Ivy League institutions already implement de facto affirmative action for the rich. However, as Warren notes, “they point to a truth rarely narrated about the South, namely, that it has never been as solidly pro-slavery or even as anti-black as popular imagination has depicted it”; he goes on to cite as a crucial case in point the rise of the interracial Readjuster Party, which wrested electoral power from planter elites and governed Virginia from 1879 to 1883—nearly two decades after the antislavery western counties seceded to form West Virginia.

The identitarian approach instead focuses on how to make sure that these low-paying jobs are held by the proportionately correct number of white people.

Addressing an injustice connected to identity, like a mental illness, is fundamentally different from correcting the injustice of class inequality. But, to stick to the Black Lives Matter example and to the extent that supporters of Black Lives Matter mean what they say, there’s no reason to regard what the people in the streets wanted – an end to racialized police violence – as significantly different from what their corporate supporters say they want. I could not understand at the time how Glory’s critics seemed to miss or make light of such a powerful depiction of popular black political agency.

All this makes crystal clear why proponents of race-reductionist politics are so unmoved by criticism based on effectiveness for generating a popular politics or for winning egalitarian reforms at all. Critics of Reed and Michaels, of which there are no shortage, have dismissed their approach as “class reductionist,” or “class first,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates described Bernie Sanders’s rejection of reparations during the 2016 election. The way forward, both to avert the most dangerous possibilities and to begin working seriously to change the terms of political debate, is to push for and propagate a public good framework for government. For many pundits and politicians, discussing class entails, almost by definition, rejecting the legitimacy of struggles against racism, sexism or other forms of oppression. The essays skillfully explore how this neoliberal version of social justice has gained hegemony in our major institutions.A crucial characteristic of the current situation is that the antagonism between the pragmatic and the visionary that liberals have often used as a cudgel against left aspirations and programs—the ubiquitous “now is not the time” or “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”—is passé. Chris Nineham is a founder member of Stop the War and Counterfire, speaking regularly around the country on behalf of both. Those who deny the validity of Dolezal’s claim on the basis that there’s more to race than identity have waded into some dangerous territory.

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