Tag: economic justice
The Identity Politics Red Herring

The Identity Politics Red Herring

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

In the aftermath of the November 2016 elections, the term “identity politics” has been thrown around repeatedly with many progressives suggesting that the Electoral College defeat of Clinton by Trump was the result of some sort of Democratic Party obsession with that concept.

I am not known as a defender of the Democratic Party, but in the post-November summations the whining about identity politics has become both misplaced and obnoxious. Various pundits, in suggesting that the Democratic Party over emphasized so-called identity politics at the expense of some sort of pure class politics (meaning a politics focused exclusively on economic injustice) obscures the fact that there has been an on-going struggle within the Democratic Party—let alone the USA as a whole—to ensure it is broadly representative. Does anyone have to be reminded that the Democratic Party was the party of white supremacy? The party of the so-called Solid South? A party that had a very uneasy set of alliances that included those, like President Roosevelt and those like Senator Strom Thurmond?

The fight to make the Democratic Party a more representative institution was not a fight around advertising but was directly connected to the demands of historically excluded groups to be included, not as window dressing but as central players. This entire history is being denied in the name of upholding some sort of supposedly pure fight for economic justice.

“Identity politics,” as a term, is being used as a way of describing a set of politics that challenges specific forms of oppression that exist within capitalism; forms of oppression that go beyond the boundaries of the economic. The use of the term “identity” complicates matters because it is subjective, i.e., it assumes that certain struggles are driven by people or forces that have a specific distinctiveness that connects them with that issue. Among other things this fails to take into account that various so-called identity struggles inevitably bring in allies who are not from that specific constituency.

What passes for identity politics should actually be understood as social justice struggles that aim for consistent democracy and become, as a result, component parts of the larger class struggle. These are not battles around one’s identity. This is not self-indulgent activity by people who, for whatever reason, do not recognize the importance of economics.

This is what has made problematic several statements by Bernie Sanders both prior to and following the November 8 election.

Shortly after the election, in response to a woman who asked about becoming a Latina senator, Sanders offered a complex answer. He acknowledged the need for more women elected officials and elected officials of color. But he said he wanted to make sure that they were focused on the working class. He ended by suggesting the need to move away from identity politics.

One can agree with Senator Sanders that it is critical to move beyond any sorts of politics that is simply about “faces” in high places. And, when looking at the totality of the senator’s remarks, there is important value. But because of the lack of a consensus about the actual nature of so-called identity politics, Sanders’ proposal to move away from it is, at best, confusing. Identity politics, at least the way that it has been used as a term since the election, describes a politics that asserts the need for representation of historically marginalized and oppressed populations; and the representation of their issues. In that sense, what we are discussing is social justice and not something that should even be described as “identity politics.” It is more a politics of inclusion and for democracy rather than a politics of distinctiveness or uniqueness.

Capitalism is founded on classes and class struggle. Class struggle takes place over the basic question of the control of the means of production, distribution and exchange and, more generally, the control over the social surplus  But if someone stops there one misses actually existing capitalism. Capitalist states do not exist as some sort of economic abstraction but are rooted in specific histories. Those histories include multiple layers of oppression, some inherited from previous social formations (and modes of production), and others developed specifically within the context of emerging capitalism. In both cases, however, these forms of oppression, e.g., patriarchy; racism, have become central features of the manner in which actually existing capitalism operates.

This understanding is essential since it helps us break with a common notion within the left and progressive movements to see matters of racism and sexism/patriarchy/male supremacy, as the equivalent of add-ons to an otherwise stable capitalist system. Metaphorically, racism and patriarchy have become for many progressives add-ons to a preexisting structure that can actually operate in the absence of these forms of oppression.

Let’s start with racism. Racism was not an add-on to U.S. capitalism. From the English occupation of Ireland leading to the development of North American capitalism in the 13 original colonies, racism emerged as a form of both oppression and social control essential for the growth and preservation of capitalism.  To suggest that racism is unnecessary for the operations of U.S. capitalism—a notion that should have been dispelled on November 8, 2016 at the latest—is to suggest that a person can survive in the absence of lungs. The absence of an appendix, yes. The absence of a gall bladder, yes. The absence of lungs, forget it.

When the Movement for Black Lives emerged in the context of the struggle against police brutality, this was not about identity or identity politics. It was not as if African American youth awoke one morning and decided that because of their blackness they needed to undertake this struggle and that this struggle was, for the sake of argument, more important than a struggle for jobs or around income inequality. The Black Lives Matter movement undertook a struggle against white supremacist/racist oppression and in favor of the notion of consistent democracy. It challenges a basic foundation of the U.S. capitalist system; a foundation that ensures that through the preservation of a racist differential in treatment between so-called whites and so-called people of color, the elite can guarantee that they have a standing army of people—white people—who believe that the system operates in their interests. The Movement for Black Lives also energized other segments of the population that saw in the battles around police lynchings and abuse, a democratic struggle with which they must be in solidarity if they are at all serious about transforming the U.S.

When Puerto Ricans have risen up to challenge the austerity that is being imposed on their island nation that is not identity politics.  It represents a set of politics that is against national oppression and colonialism. It is a set of politics that challenges the relationship of Puerto Rico to the United States. This is not a subjective judgement by Puerto Ricans, but is a reflection of a reality that they face that is resulting in the massive depopulation of the island in the face of the current crisis.

The fight over the future of Planned Parenthood is not a struggle resting on the identity of women. It is a struggle over patriarchy/male supremacy and democracy. It is a struggle over the basic question of who control’s a woman’s body. The fight around Planned Parenthood is part of a larger struggle that certainly predates the emergence of capitalism, but it is a battle around an oppression that has been incorporated into the manner in which actually existing capitalism functions. This is a fight to expand the bounds of democracy and the ability of people to govern their own futures.

One can even return to the example of the Latina who asked Senator Sanders about becoming the first Latina senator. In a country that provoked a war with Mexico in order to seize the northern third to half of the country; that imposed Jim Crow-like conditions of racial segregation on the absorbed population of Mexicanos and Native Americans; a country that continues to present Latinos—unless they are from Cuba—as an omnipresent threat to the future of the U.S., the rise of a Latina senator has profound significance. Certainly someone with right-wing politics would not be helpful. But in the context of a gathering of Sanders supporters, while it is essential that the political content of any candidate is emphasized, we do not need Sanders offering a caveat about the dangers of so-called identity politics, particularly if he is not going to clarify precisely what he means in using that term.

There is an unfortunate belief among many progressives that class politics is about economics in a narrow sense. Thus, a demand against Wall Street and its elite is considered class politics. A Chicano demand in the Southwest for land redistribution or the protection of long-held Chicano land rights is frequently described as identity politics, or worse.  As a result you have some progressives who seek some sort of pure, race-neutral alleged class politics that supposedly will unite the dispossessed against the elite and will not confuse them with dirty matters such as race and gender. In the late 19th century this approach was in evidence in the Populist movement. In the early 20th century this was manifested in the Socialist Party. In more recent times it has been characteristic of the work of many of those who hail from the legacy of the iconic Saul Alinsky. And it was certainly in evidence during much of Sanders’ campaign for the presidency.

A progressive or radical class politics—that is, a politics rooted among workers—actually has more to do with who is on the side of the oppressed. The U.S. has a significant history where white workers have been more than willing to battle employers, but then would turn against workers of color. An infamous case in point was that of the International Seamen’s Union (late 1800s-mid1930s), led by Andrew Furuseth, that was rhetorically radical but vehemently anti-Asian. The fact that a politician, union or some other individual or institution raises the clarion call of economic justice does not, ipso facto, mean that they are embracing progressive class politics. They may just as easily be engaged with right-wing populist politics.

Class politics is about power and an opposition to all forms of oppression. In that sense genuine progressive class politics is the strongest advocate for democracy and against inequality, marginalization and oppression. It does not treat ostensibly non-economic forms of oppression as somehow secondary. Nor does it dissect those other forms of oppression in order to identify the pure economic essence in order to glorify that.

Progressive and radical class politics, then, is about building the sort of bloc that can undertake social transformation. To the extent that there is an “identity” it is an identity as the oppressed; the people; the dispossessed. The specific oppressions, be they racial, national, gender, religious, do not evaporate or become absorbed but rather contribute to the emergence of a broader identity for the bloc that seeks to change the world.

An analogy I have often used is that based on the work of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee leader from the early 19th century. Tecumseh concluded that there was a moment underway in which the western spread of white settlers could be stopped, or at least blunted. At the same time he realized that this could not be done by any individual tribe or, for that matter, by a loose alliance of tribes. What was necessary was the construction of, in effect, a Native American nation-state that could act in concert against the settlers. This did not mean that the Shawnee or the Cherokee, for instance, would disappear, nor would their cultures evaporate. But the construction of a bloc to defeat the settlers would necessitate a different and overarching way for the Native Americans to look at themselves and to look at the outside world.

In this sense, the challenge at the moment is not clarifying or reclaiming identity politics as a term. The challenge is actually two-fold. The first is to recognize that the struggles that much of the mainstream—and many progressives—condescendingly or innocently put under the banner of “identity politics” are struggles for social justice. They are interconnected with battles for economic justice but they are not somehow less important. In order to understand U.S. capitalism, one must appreciate the nature of these battles against multiple oppressions and the manner in which they intersect or are interlinked, even with the acknowledgement that the economy underlies any assessment of the capitalist system as a whole. To borrow from the late French Marxist Louis Althusser, the situation is overdetermined.

The second challenge is to realize that in the current moment, the attack on what is termed identity politics arises precisely from those who wish to diminish the centrality of struggles for social justice  It is those who believe that there is some sort of race-neutral progressive populism that can unite us all who fail to understand the profound lessons of U.S. history.  The struggle is not linear; it never has been  The struggles against economic injustice frequently overlap with various struggles for social justice. If we want to win, a strategy must be constructed that recognizes that the system is multidimensional and cannot be challenged on one front alone.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a talk show host, writer and activist.  Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.

IMAGE: People celebrate the passage of the minimum wage for fast-food workers by the New York State Fast Food Wage Board during a rally in New York July 22, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid  

Christie Draws Failing Grades From ACLU Many Subjects

Christie Draws Failing Grades From ACLU Many Subjects

By Monsy Alvarado, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)

HACKENSACK, N.J. — A report card released Monday by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union gave New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie poor marks for his first term’s record on civil liberties and rights.

The ACLU-NJ examined 12 civil rights areas and gave the governor a D-plus average. Christie received above-average grades in respecting freedom of religion (B) and voting rights (B-minus) but received failing marks in separation of church and state, separation of powers, and economic justice. Christie also got a failing grade in transparency, with the report saying the George Washington Bridge scandal exposed how the administration attempts to keep the public out of government business.

ACLU-NJ Executive Director Udi Ofer said Christie’s first term “will be remembered for its assaults on judicial independence and the separation of church and state, as well as for its disdain for transparency.”

Michael Drewniak, the governor’s spokesman, dismissed the report. “Does anyone really think the ACLU could fairly assess anything we do that doesn’t fit squarely into its agenda?” Drewniak asked.

John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, said he was surprised by Christie’s low scores on criminal justice and drug policy, considering the governor has been vocal about finding alternatives for prison as a means of drug treatment.

The report noted that while the governor opposed discrimination against LGBT families, he also opposed same-sex marriage, and that even though he supported allowing New Jerseyans in the country illegally to pay in-state tuition at public colleges, he removed a provision allowing them to apply for state financial aid.

Photo: Peter Stevens via Flickr

Minimum Truth: The Hollow Argument Against Higher Wages

Minimum Truth: The Hollow Argument Against Higher Wages

In the midst of a crucial political debate that plainly favored proponents of a higher minimum wage, the Congressional Budget Office dropped a bombshell headline this week.  Increasing the minimum to $10.10 an hour – as demanded by President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill – will “cost 500,000 jobs.” At a moment when employment still lags badly, that assertion was potentially devastating.

Almost lost in much of the predictable media coverage was the CBO’s estimate that a minimum-wage increase would lift at least 900,000 workers and their families out of poverty – and boost incomes for at least 15 million more.

But as top economists have repeatedly pointed out, such damning employment numbers are fuzzy and unreliable, while the CBO’s poverty numbers probably underestimated the positive impact of a higher minimum.

Moreover, those 500,000-jobs-lost headlines were highly misleading, with the strong implication that more than half a million actual people would be laid off — which is wrong. In fact, the CBO number is meant to estimate the number of jobs that employers might not fill when workers leave, or the number of jobs that employers might not create as quickly if they must pay a higher wage.  It doesn’t mean that people will lose their current jobs, but those people seeking low-wage jobs may have to look slightly longer to find them.

What about that nice round number of 500,000? Naturally it is rounded to the nearest hundred thousand, but more to the point is that the headlined number is simply the midpoint of an estimated range from “slight impact” or zero lost jobs on the low end to one million on the high end.

Such a million-job spread represents substantial uncertainty. Skeptics may consider the uncertainty even greater because the CBO report relied heavily on disputed assumptions by conservative economists – and diverged from the consensus of top US economists, who expect that moderate increases have a vanishingly small impact on employment.

But even if 500,000 fewer jobs are created in the short run, that somewhat notional cost must be weighed against the indisputable benefit to low-wage workers. As economist Dean Baker explains:

With 25 million people projected to be in the pool of beneficiaries from a higher minimum wage, this means that we can expect affected workers to put in on average about 2 percent fewer hours a year. However when they do work, those at the bottom will see a 39.3 percent increase in pay.

While overstating the negative effect of raising the minimum wage on jobs, the CBO study understated the positive effect on families living in poverty. Its estimate of 900,000 families lifted above the poverty line is based on computer simulations. But historical research into the effect of previous minimum-wage increases suggest a much more robust benefit to the working poor.

According to University of Massachusetts economist Arindrajit Dube, who has studied the effects of minimum-wage increases in recent decades, the impact on poverty is much more powerful than the CBO suggests. He quotes a study by the Hamilton Project, a centrist economic think-tank based at the Brookings Institution, which suggests that as many as 35 million families will benefit from an increase to $10.10 an hour due to “spillover effects” raising income among workers who already make slightly more than the minimum.

Dube’s studies of the historical effect of past minimum-wage increases indicate that raising the federal minimum to $10.10 would lift somewhere between 4.6 and 6 million households above the poverty line.

Raising the minimum wage will also reduce profiteering by large, highly profitable employers like Walmart and McDonalds, whose workers rely on government benefits – such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and food stamps – to supplement inadequate paychecks.  Survey after survey reflects the strong public appetite for higher wages at the low end. But popular approval is not the only way that companies can actually benefit from improving workers’ earnings and livelihoods.

The Gap clothing chain just announced that its workers will soon receive better pay to bring them above the current federal minimum. Announcing that his company will voluntarily raise its lowest-paid workers to $9 this year and $10 next year, Gap CEO Glenn Murphy said he regards the expense as a “strategic investment” that would pay for itself many times over in better productivity and morale (as well as lower job turnover and training costs).

When the clear social benefits of raising wages are contrasted with the dubious warnings of lost jobs, there is no real argument. If we intend to address poverty and reduce inequality, higher wages across the workforce are imperative – but especially at the bottom.

Photo: FuFuWolf via Flickr

Sarah Palin Plays ‘The Race Card’ On Martin Luther King Day

Sarah Palin Plays ‘The Race Card’ On Martin Luther King Day

Former Republican nominee for vice president Sarah Palin used the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to attack the first African-American president of the United States:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.

(Isn’t the “race card” what Republicans are demanding to stop black people from voting?)

The star of a new show on the Sportsman Channel is referencing an outrage that exists only in the right-wing blog world over the president pointing out — as he has several times — that some people do not like him because he is black.

“Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president,” he said, according to The New Yorker‘s David Remnick.

Of course, right wingers fail to point out the second part of the president’s point. You see, to them, race is a subject that should not be discussed, but only hinted at as a means of destroying the social safety net.

Salon’s Joan Walsh points out what’s going with Palin:

Celebrating Dr. King’s birthday has become a bipartisan affair since Republicans stopped opposing the creation of a holiday to celebrate the slain civil rights leader.

But take a look at this post by MSNBC’s Ned Resnikoff and you’ll see King’s economic beliefs would repulse most Republicans — even if they love using his “content of their character” quote to justify opposing affirmative action. He championed the labor movement, and called for a minimum guaranteed income and the right to a job. These beliefs bear a strong resemblance to the “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should be Fighting For” that Jesse A. Myerson recently published in Rolling Stone, and which earned him overwhelming ridicule from the same right-wing blog world that’s furious with the president for pointing out the obvious about race.

Mrs. Palin using this holiday to try to shame the president for discussing race is sadly predictable. What would have been shocking is if she had instead used her considerable platform to encourage Republicans to support an extremely moderate fix to the Voting Rights Act.

PS: This Daily Kos diary post from 2011 about what Dr. King “actually did” has gone viral, with both Republicans and Democrats touting its unique insight.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr