“Identity politics” is redundant

[supergee]

The Rude Pundit (using language) says what I think about the Alabama election: Black people saved the country. Making sure they are not disenfranchised is the most important thing the Democrats can do.

Comments

[arlie]

*sigh* It is important to make sure that no one is disenfranchised. and at a tactical level, that particularly applies for those likely to vote for one's own party. But the flip side - which is what he led with - is "It's time for Democrats to stop trying to appeal to a white demographic that constantly turns against it and to do everything possible to energize the non-white vote."

There's two ways to read that. But IMNSHO, part of how the Democrats got into their current mess - and helped the US get into its current mess - was by abandoning groups that leftish parties traditionally care about - that would be the poor and oppressed of all kinds. Not just those belonging to currently fashionable minorities. Don't get me wrong - the way the US treats non-whites is a crying shame, urgently needing to be fixed. Historical imbalances and current active racism requires specific remedies, not just remedies aimed at poor and disempowered people in general. But in a two party system, being the party of minorities and only of minorities is like entering a race carrying a 300 pound pack.

Worse, this whole "identity politics" thing is what I expect in failed democracies - the ones with a tendency to intermittent genocide, and frequent dictatorships. Those places with two or more powerful tribes that were carved up into a single country by clueless imperialists, and the tribes have no inherent national identity or loyalty.

US politics have always seemed a bit insane to me, with the delusional insistence that everyone who matters is middle class. As soon as you have no "working class" - at least in the national imagination - you cannot be a party of that same working class. And there goes the normal niche for leftish parties. In any society to date, there are a lot more peons than bourgeoise. In any modern society, there are also more middle class than truly rich. Even in times of crazy unemployment, there are substantially more "working poor" than outright charity cases. And no party in the US addresses these people's economic interests. Instead, they address their racial identities and prejudices, piecemeal. So you have the "white" party - specializing in racists - and the party of no-whitebread-allowed (it's OK to be white, as long as you have some other minority identity. And of course most of the leaders are nonetheless white - and male - and not from the working class. But poor whites are cast as supporters-of-everyone-else without needs of their own).

I can't even mention addressing needs of all poor and underemployed people without hearing an imaginary reaction of "Racist! How dare you not put MY/THEIR oppression first". And I'm sure that in this crazy country, programs based on income would somehow get more than their statistical share of white beneficiaries. Just as programs intended to benefit blacks have gotten more than their statistical share of participants already in the "middle class" and thus presumably less needy than other blacks still mired in deeper poverty.

The funny thing is, I remember being in that position. My mother would remember it more clearly is she were alive, as she was quite politically active in her youth. Back in the day, females were relegated to supporting everyone else. The extremely left wing movements assured women that their needs would be taken care of "after the revolution" because society would be fairer etc. in the absence of the capitalists. Meanwhile, could we please make some coffee, or maybe take notes while the men had their meeting. I presume the vaguely left of center parties did much the same thing - though probably with even less lip service. Our far-less-important needs would be addressed - by decision makers not sharing those needs - after we'd helped them serve the constituencies they did care about, and got them into power.

That lens completely explains a lot of otherwise incomprehensible political behaviour by working class whites in flyover country. Even the unionized workers - very much a traditional Democrat constituency - are feeling like women in a group of 1950s "radicals". Use us - especially for scutwork, and perhaps donations - but put everyone else's needs and desires ahead of ours, even while demonstrating you have no clue about our lives.

Well, perhaps one more observation needs to be made. Successful politicians are generally at least middle class - the real thing, professional variety. Assuming they aren't outright rich. I'm personally middle class (professional) from a working class background. I can see that neither Trump nor Clinton are "my kind of person", and it's pretty easy to notice that the real question in politics is which elite club will be in power. I can only imagine how this would feel if I were working on an assembly line, or struggling to make ends meet with several precarious and benefit-free pink colour service jobs. (It feels bad enough just with a working class background.)

No wonder they are saying horrible things about elites, in between looking for any convenient scapegoat. Even the refusal to believe bad things about their current heroes makes sense - the powerful have been consciously constructing beliefs out of whole cloth since at least world war I - and the technology for doing this is improving by leaps and bounds. (Just look at the advertising industry, if you don't want to look at politics.) News media ownership is far too concentrated for any healthy democracy. Even an ill-educated person with no time to really study the issues can notice this - and doubly so if some would-be opinion maker skilfully promotes this belief.

[arlie]

Ugh. I wrote the above after reading the first paragraph. The rest of the article totally confirmed what I'd hoped/expected was me running off on a tangent again, probably due to some knee jerk.

As a woman, I'm kind of stuck with the Democrats. They don't represent me to any extent, but at least they aren't actively opposed to my interests. and while I might conceivably have class interests in common with Republicans, a close look at the tax bill they are pushing suggests that even with my healthy middle class income, and immense (by US standards) savings, I'm not rich enough for them to help me, or even have no net effect - I'm just another cash cow to be milked to benefit billionaires. (Perhaps if I were married I'd be within their no-net-effect target, but I'm not and don't want to be.) [Abortion isn't a self interest issue for me. I'm long past menopause, and have in any case never been pregnant.]

But ye gods I don't like the Democrats very much. Whether or not I care about Democrats winning depends on policies, not on tribal identity. They are not "my team" in any way. If the Republicans wanted to go back to the middle-of-the-road, tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee politics of my young adulthood, I'd seriously consider voting for them.

This author not so much - while he talks about saving the country, what I hear is "how can We Win". Is he on their payroll? is he hoping for a career in politics? If not, why does he care? And on the flip side - what if anything would his Democrats do for black people, other than not be Republicans, and encourage black people to work hard supporting Democrats?

[minoanmiss]

This is an interesting reaction piece you've written to that essay. *contemplates*

[minoanmiss]

I tend to think that people complaining about 'identity politics' are complaining about the insistence of people like me on not being ashamed of and silent about how our demographics affect our lives, but the discussion here has given me food for thought.

[amaebi]

The people with the lolly and the powers of lolly-distribution get to identify themselves simply as The Best, obscuring any other identifiers they may lavishly and obviously embody. (And, after all, it's quite true that they don't want to enrich and empower all White men.)

[amaebi]

I particularly like paragraph 2.