Democratic (Party) Direction

boycott: name all the things you had to stop buying that are made in israel - oh, you don't say?
divestment: oi, all those israel bonds your bubbe bought you every year since you were born! such a shame.
sanctions: officially never going to happen, but have fun shouting yourself hoarse

BDS is insipid performative clown shoes. There's plenty of legit criticism of Israel and strong support for a two state solution in the Democratic party, as partially evidenced by how much Bibi and his ilk still hate the last Democratic president. But let's play the all or nothing game - it continues to work wonders for everything we care about.

yeah, and little steven didn't end south african apartheid while we're at it! what a clownshoe.

BDS is insipid performative clown shoes

hence beloved by insipid performative clown posters

seriously the democrats have _no power_ on the national level, and pretending they do, that anybody who is in power gives a shit about them or is interested in giving them the time of day, is the ultimate in performative clownshoes bullshit. but by all means, let's go on and talk about _policy_ some more, like this shitshow will suddenly resolve itself if the democrats would just stop endorsing the _wrong ideas_.

xp To be clear, I don't think we have many of those left, and Simon certainly isn't in that category.

Much like Wall Street, Bibi and his ilk hate the last Democratic president for failing to make the proper cooing noises, not because they were prevented from doing a single thing they wanted to.

boycott: name all the things you had to stop buying that are made in israel - oh, you don't say?

clearly you haven't kept up with the Park Slope hummus wars

The Likud position on the Iran deal seems to be about more than "not making the proper cooing noises." But expecting you to know or care about diplomatic activities is the same as expecting you to care what anyone else actually thinks instead of coating them in a thick gloss of your frustrated projections.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' most recent essay indicts the Democratic Party for holding on to class-based arguments for economic improvement at the expense of race:

The focus on one subsector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which Trump’s presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony—even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president—is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country’s political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of. Moreover, to accept that whiteness brought us Donald Trump is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and the world. But if the broad and remarkable white support for Donald Trump can be reduced to the righteous anger of a noble class of smallville firefighters and evangelicals, mocked by Brooklyn hipsters and womanist professors into voting against their interests, then the threat of racism and whiteness, the threat of the heirloom, can be dismissed. Consciences can be eased; no deeper existential reckoning is required.

He got lazy.

1. Wait wait wait, he says "the left" - does he mean the Democratic Party or The Left? I'm so confused.

2. Wtf is a "womanist professor?"

3. In 2017 hipsters still only live in one place in America.

1. He's talking about practically every person on this thread.
2-3. I'm sure you actually do understand the use of stereotyping as a rhetorical device and are just being a dick here.

I'm not sure what womanist means tbh. It sounds like a right wing meme mocking feminists?

he's using "womanist" to mock right wing obsession with the prominence of women's rights

I love sentences like this: 'But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.' He has learned something from writing comic books.

he's using "womanist" to mock right wing obsession with the prominence of women's rights

I thought "womanist" was jargon used by leftists as a more inclusive alternative to the white-woman-centering "feminist."

That's true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanism That's kinda cool, actually.

sorry to go Fred B on the thread (=outlander patronisingly lecturing liberal americans on elements of their own culture and politics they shd probably actually know) but "womanist" (as well as being entirely googleable) is a known term of art from 80s black US feminism, coined by poet and novelist alice walker (admission: i had to look this up, tho i did once know it) to name a (black) feminism not entirely defined in the terms of and to accord with the interests of white feminists

it's probably a little outdated now -- AW coined it in 1983 and by 1989 kimberlé williams crenshaw as you know had coined "intersectionality", which addresses the same issue but puts the emphasis elsewhere, and seems to have more heft online (insofar as i'm in a position to judge, see parenthesis re outlander)

coates was at howard, so of course he's well aware of the subcurrents here: alfred is half-right, TNC is indeed mocking the right by deploying it, but it's also very much the correct term for a specific (not entirely academic) subcurrent within professorial feminism, and there will certainly be people who actively declare it as part of their politics

lolsome x-p but you can have the full post anyway to save you the click-thru

"alfred is half-right, TNC is indeed mocking the right by deploying it, but it's also very much the correct term for a specific (not entirely academic) subcurrent within professorial feminism,"

just from a rhetoric perspective i don't think it can be both since they're contradictory implications

no they're not

But expecting you to know or care about diplomatic activities is the same as expecting you...

yes, we're finished, fuck it.

"womanist" as a right-wing term to mock feminists and "womanist" as a feminist term to be inclusive of black women are absolutely contradictory rhetorical moves but i don't really care about arguing about it so whatever

1. He's talking about practically every person on this thread.
2-3. I'm sure you actually do understand the use of stereotyping as a rhetorical device and are just being a dick here.

1. ok, very helpful
2-3. mostly just being on the train with no coffee and spotty access. mark s and others' posts were more edifying than a search would have been, so it was worth it.

yes you can certainly make it into a contradiction if you rewrite what alfred actually said

as TNC is using it -- my reading -- "womanist" is an actually existing black feminist term (from the 80s, possibly now a bit dated) imagined* as it might be repurposed (by an entirely familiar rhetorical rightwing move) to be used in a scornful rather than a celebratory way

*or perhaps this repurposing has actually happened

it's like the little sneer and sarcastic tone you'd hear when a republican would spit out the words "women's lib" in decades past

rereading the last two sentences, I got his intent all sideways - so I was not being a dick, I was just being slow! good for me. conscience eased, no deeper reckoning required

i don't think the etymology of "womanist" as a mocking term for the alt right comes from the academy. i think it's like a variation on "islamist" instead. i doubt anyone on the right is familiar with the academic context. but maybe i'm wrong idk.

tbh we don't know whether the right is using it at all: this would entirely make sense purely as TNC's deliberate invention-projection of a term they could start using given their ways

either way, HE certainly knows this (not really just academic)* usage, and -- imo -- is much too good a writer just to opt for using their term w/o reference to it

*alice walker is quite a well known novelist, with a spielberg film made of her best-known novel etc

'womanist professors' is a mild insult bc womanist is obv a made-up word and it underscores how professors, just the type to make up words, don't understand political reality bc they think making up words can address it

works to insult the rubes who see them that way AND the professors themselves for inviting the insult!

are there uh maybe other aspects of the piece that merit discussion

impossible

my first reaction was i thought coates had supported bernie and i wonder if he feels like the post-bernie democratic left is trying to jettison race in a way the bernie campaign did not - or if he's retrospectively disappointed in the campaign too. it's an interesting spot bc a lot of ppl on the left are criticizing the democratic party for replacing economic policies w/ identity politics. and coates is going the other direction accusing the dem party of replacing identity politics with economic ones. it's a bit muddled for me.

The essay is terrific, yes.

iirc he criticized Bernie for dodging on issues like reparations

the problem is whenever class issues are brought up, people point to how large corporations are working on creating diverse workplaces

and whenever race is brought up, someone points out that poor white people exist

you can't just repeatedly hedge race and class against each other by claiming the one not currently under the microscope is the real problem, and in that respect, I think both criticisms about dodging the issues are true

I won't be happy until the CEO of every corporation makes no more than ten times the salary of the lowest paid worker, and they're both equally likely to be a person of minority status

it's not the same people hedging and afaict u have economic priority leftists who legit believe that focusing on economic issues *and not* on race issues is a better way to build a broad coalition that can win elections, and race priority leftists believe that they're going to get overlooked in favor of an economic agenda that doesn't address substantive race issues. it's a real tension bc it could very well be that talking about identity politics alienates certain voters (racists obviously but even ppl who aren't out and out racists but don't like identity appeals, or find them alienating), and it's certainly so that ignoring race issues in favor of economic ones just replicates racial inequalities. there isn't an easy fix to this afaict.

or rather the easy fix is some broadly charismatic figure who can express both sides without alienating anyone but when your election strategy relies on finding once in a generation political talents to smooth over your differences you're in for a bumpy ride.

Yeah, for example, you can't really say "it's all class" when so many additional deliberate steps were taken to keep black people out of the middle class and otherwise disempower and disenfranchise them, including even "liberal" governmental policies that still favored whites and excluded blacks during the 20th Century. At the same time, the suggestion that you can fix this by diversity of representation in the elites (and, IDK, charter schools or something?) is ludicrous, and that seems to be the implicit centrist position. FWIW I think a left, class-oriented position that fails to adequately account for race is still more likely to materially improve people's lives than a centrist position that ignores class.

xp also what Mordy said.

there were a bunch of people who were incredibly angry whenever Obama implied black people have it rough, but it was a smaller (and possibly angrier) group than it would have been had he not been president, and I think that last part is lost on some people

having someone in a position of power who seems like they can speak to issues, and be credible, is useful!

FWIW I think a left, class-oriented position that fails to adequately account for race is still more likely to materially improve people's lives than a centrist position that ignores class.

Have you ever asked yourself why you think this?

i think the number of "class-first" lefties is overstated (or seems higher than it is due to...twitter) and that many lefties are strawmanned as being class-only, but what mordy outlined seems consistent with my understanding of the current division. very interested to read the TNC piece (as always), especially given his support for bernie in 2016

He was not blind to Sanders' inability or disinterest in addressing race.

TNC very publicly criticized Sanders, then shrugged and said he would vote for him. It's weird how this is being remembered.

I mean, voting for someone is supporting that person so it isn't really that weird.

I am in the middle of reading the TNC piece now and holy shit this goes in in the best possible way

I teared up at a couple points.

i'm aware of TNC's cautiousness re: bernie btw, i assumed that was obvious

White people blah blah blah

The left has really set it up so the only way to win their game is not to play

Have you ever asked yourself why you think this?

― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Thursday, September 7, 2017 10:34 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cause I'm white obv. No people of color think that single payer healthcare or higher minimum wage are a top priority. Just white berniebros like myself.