Identity Politics v. Class Politics

[Hannah Bell]

...Although the occasional claim that the election of President Obama has ushered us into a post-racial society is obviously wrong, it’s fairly clear that the country that’s just elected a black president (and that produced so many votes for the presidential candidacy of a woman) is a lot less racist and sexist than it used to be.

But it would be a mistake to think that because the US is a less racist, sexist and homophobic society, it is a more equal society. In fact, in certain crucial ways it is more unequal than it was 40 years ago. No group dedicated to ending economic inequality would be thinking today about declaring victory and going home. In 1969, the top quintile of American wage-earners made 43 per cent of all the money earned in the US; the bottom quintile made 4.1 per cent. In 2007, the top quintile made 49.7 per cent; the bottom quintile 3.4. And while this inequality is both raced and gendered, it’s less so than you might think. White people, for example, make up about 70 per cent of the US population, and 62 per cent of those in the bottom quintile. Progress in fighting racism hasn’t done them any good; it hasn’t even been designed to do them any good. More generally, even if we succeeded completely in eliminating the effects of racism and sexism, we would not thereby have made any progress towards economic equality.

A society in which white people were proportionately represented in the bottom quintile (and black people proportionately represented in the top quintile) would not be more equal; it would be exactly as unequal. It would not be more just; it would be proportionately unjust.

An obvious question, then, is how we are to understand the fact that we’ve made so much progress in some areas while going backwards in others. And an almost equally obvious answer is that the areas in which we’ve made progress have been those which are in fundamental accord with the deepest values of neoliberalism, and the one where we haven’t isn’t. We can put the point more directly by observing that increasing tolerance of economic inequality and increasing intolerance of racism, sexism and homophobia – of discrimination as such – are fundamental characteristics of neoliberalism. Hence the extraordinary advances in the battle against discrimination, and hence also its limits as a contribution to any left-wing politics. The increased inequalities of neoliberalism were not caused by racism and sexism and won’t be cured by – they aren’t even addressed by – anti-racism or anti-sexism.

My point is not that anti-racism and anti-sexism are not good things. It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing....a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity and, as a response to the demand for equality, far from being left-wing politics, it is right-wing politics...

Race...has been a more successful technology of mystification. In the US, one of the great uses of racism was (and is) to induce poor white people to feel a crucial and entirely specious fellowship with rich white people; one of the great uses of anti-racism is to make poor black people feel a crucial and equally specious fellowship with rich black people....

The neoliberal ideal is a world where rich people of all races and sexes can happily enjoy their wealth, and where the injustices produced not by discrimination but by exploitation...are discreetly sent around to the back door. Thus the primacy of anti-discrimination...has, ‘for a long time’...also performed the intellectual function of focusing social analysis on... ‘questions of racial or sexual identity’ and on ‘cultural differences’ instead of on ‘the way in which capitalist economies create large numbers of low-wage, low-skill jobs with poor job security’...

...the logic of anti-racism requires only the correction of disparities within classes rather than between them. If about 1.5 per cent of your population is of Pakistani descent, then if 1.5 per cent of every income quintile is Pakistani, your job is done...

What left neoliberals want is to offer some ‘positive affirmation for the working classes’... Where right neoliberals want us to condemn the culture of the poor, left neoliberals want us to appreciate it... once you start redefining the problem of class difference as the problem of class prejudice – once you complete the transformation of race, gender and class into racism, sexism and classism – you no longer have to worry about the redistribution of wealth. You can just fight over whether poor people should be treated with contempt or respect...

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n16/walter-benn-michaels/what-matters

[Taitertots]

1. The gini coefficient is insane at over .4

And remains unchanged.

The didn't equalize society by pulling down the insane wealth of the elite. They just allowed some minorities into the upper class.

Now blacks are pacified with fantasy about becoming rich just like everyone else.

[Hannah Bell]

2. Seems folks are more worried someone might call a non-employed married woman

a "housewife". This is apparently still a major concern in some circles.

Thus kind of exemplifying the thesis of the article.

[Hannah Bell]

5. k

[blindpig]

3. k&r n/t

[meow2u3]

4. True liberals, in my opinion, should go back to emphasizing class politics

I think Democrats made the mistake of adopting the left-libertarianism of the '60's and '70's, de-emphasizing class politics and replacing it with identity politics. Identity politics is what caused many working-class whites to vote and acting against their own economic interests and follow rich Republicans who keep telling them what they want to hear: a public anti-abortion stance on which no conservative Republican in charge caused reduction in the abortion rate; racist code words which play on white supremacists' fear and hatred of minorities; etc. Neoliberals, either on the left or the right, have no intention of lifting any poor people, be they whites, blacks, Hispanics, you name them, out of their economic misery; they just want to hog all the wealth for themselves while they play one race, religion, or nationality against another, women against men, etc. They just want to hog all the wealth for themselves and prevent us from seeing what they're really up to.

I'm one of those old-school liberals (a.k.a. left-populist, radical centrist, communitarian) who would rather see more poor people of all colors, races, and nationalities, and both sexes, being lifted out of poverty and move to the middle class. I'd like to see less wealth in the hands of the elite and more in the hands of the masses, as well as class-based affirmative action and the outlawing of discrimination on the basis of economic class, i.e., poverty.

I think we should get rid of identity politics, which is nothing but a smokescreen to divide people and prevent them from uniting against corporate greed and the selfishness of the economic elite. We should revive the class war against the superrich, those behing the identity politics of this age, playing us like violins for the fools they think we are. Some solutions: outlaw the routine use of credit scores for purposes other than providing credit. The practice of using consumer credit scores as a prerequisite for getting a job, renting an apartment, or buying car insurance, discriminates against the poor, who almost invariably have trouble paying their bills on time because they don't have the money to do so unfairly penalizes the poor and doesn't give them a chance to work and earn themselves out of poverty. Besides, in this era of identity theft, criminals who impersonate innocent persons are effectively ruining their reputations and putting them in poverty!!