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Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

redsquirrel said:
Excellent example of how identity politics works in this piece about the gender pay gap.

Right, so the way to tackle the gender pay gap is to pay the already (very) wealthy even more. Lovely.
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Also in the article...

“When men and women work together, that’s the best dynamic because men become more caring, working as part of a team with women, and women also become less competitive and much more caring. So the idea of putting men and women together is actually a very positive dynamic.”
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Isnt this a bit.. you know.. sexist?
 
Yes, moronic drivel. Still it's nice to know that according to both the WEP and the editor of some business magazine (Channel 4 news last night) that it's not companies fault that any gender pay gap exists.
 
A guy in my class sent me a meme with that sentiment. How white Americans reject the concept of white privilege because it would mean accepting they'd wasted their head start. It was titled something like '70 percent of the USA just got BURNED' or something.

As he was a fellow sociology grad I was disappointed more in his lack of logic. You can't do a soc degree without studying class, surely. This guy was well into Tumblr and was a terrible student tbf.
 
Well, the introductory essay is an appalling confused mess - which doesn't bode well for the other offerings. For example, it starts by arguing there is no real/necessary opposition between identity politics and class politics (that is class politics as pro-working class politics), that any such presentation is politically motivated by enemies on the right. It then moves on to outline the perspective from which this intervention is claimed to coming from and then outlines the (for want of better term right now) the Adolph Reed position in accurate detail - one that argues that identity politics is class politics but the class politics of a black elite (in the US at least) contracted originally to defang and divert wider class based coalitions that could potentially challenge the many basis of capital. Then moves right onto blithely asking how identity politics can be properly understood as anti-capitalist politics.

Maybe that's because the short piece has four different authors for some reason, but that is a total mess. It doesn't get any better when they move onto brexit...

Oh yeah, second thing in two days i've read that relies heavily on A. Sivanandan's idea of xeno-racism - which seemed to have died a death but been revived recently.
 
Not sure this needs any more comment than the article.
“We can’t pretend that Ofsted judgments are not lower in certain areas – many of them with a high proportion of white working-class children. But that shouldn’t surprise us,” Spielman told an audience at Wellington College in Berkshire.

“Over the past few years, there has been a long overdue debate about white working-class communities in England, and why they have fallen behind.

“We are having to grapple with the unhappy fact that many local working-class communities have felt the full brunt of economic dislocation in recent years, and, perhaps as a result, can lack the aspiration and drive seen in many migrant communities.”
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interview with Ocasio-Cortez who recently won the democratic party New York district primary. Seems like a sensible position on identity politics:

 
her position on idpol is irrelevant if she still wants secure borders and documentation (aka: let's reform ICE.) and what's all that about cutting off water supplies?
 
butchersapron said:
...second thing in two days i've read that relies heavily on A. Sivanandan's idea of xeno-racism - which seemed to have died a death but been revived recently.
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Bit off-topic, but - anything worth reading by him? Noticed Edinburgh AF are doing his 'From Resistance To Rebellion' for their next reading group - they've previously done Dallas Costa/James, so I'm hoping his stuff is as vital.
 
This contradiction between identity and class is in my opinion a distraction. What makes sense to me is saying that US politics is incapable of dealing with class issues. Why that is I don’t know, it might be because of the ideological tension in the cold war blocking an authentic formation of socialist movements, or because of the massive power of multinational corporations and financial capital based in the US tilting the scales in such a way to make it impossible for Labor to organize in as a balancing opposition. It might be the insufficient regulations of the election system, which in the US version institutionalizes corruption, that tilted the scale sufficiently to make an European model of somewhat balanced scales between opposing interests in elections not a possibility in the US. It is probably a combination of these, and also the fact that the US is a country in denial of their own history, having poisoned the links between it’s citizens trough a toxic history of slavery, Jim Crow and genocide of the native population, and a justification of these practices. I’m Norwegian, and from my point of view there is no contradiction between feminism, anti-racism, the LGBT-movement and the Labour-movement. If that was the case, one should be able to see that in Scandinavia. We have the strongest protection of Labour in the world. If that was dependent on NOT doing identity politics, we should at the same time not have strong identity-politics movements. But in fact, the complete opposite is the case, we also have the strongest identity politics. The conclusion should be that it is not a contradiction, but in fact solidarity is built simultaneously, across all boundaries.
 
FabricLiveBaby! said:
Good video here:

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That was excellent.

I tried to get into the whole lefty youtube thing a while back. There are a few popular ones who can be quite entertaining and make high-quality videos. But always end up pissing me off because at heart they are middle classic liberals and it shows on key issues. I've subscribed to this channel for its solid content.
 
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That's an interesting video.

I have to say I don't realy understand it all.

My only real exposure to this discussion has largely come from horrible sources (you know the sort, they live on youtube and act in bad faith). I don't get to discuss this in real life because no one I know is interested in these issues.

Where can I go to get a better understanding of all this?

Sorry for the derail. Just being honest.
 
Toast Rider said:
That's an interesting video.

I have to say I don't realy understand it all.

My only real exposure to this discussion has largely come from horrible sources (you know the sort, they live on youtube and act in bad faith). I don't get to discuss this in real life because no one I know is interested in these issues.

Where can I go to get a better understanding of all this?

Sorry for the derail. Just being honest.
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Lots of places, but these writers are worth checking out:

Asad Haider, Author at Viewpoint Magazine Asad Haider

Adolph Reed, Jr. Adolph Reed

Multiculturalism | Pandaemonium Kenan Malik

How Race Is Conjured The Fields sisters.

Plenty of links through the thread too.
 
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