Democratic (Party) Direction

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.

well

this was p good for Feb 2016:

Democrats: "Nothing's free kids we'll never have free healthcare or free college or a living wage or hey how did Trump become president"

— Jon Schwarz (@tinyrevolution) February 20, 2016

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.

You are proving my point even better than I could have possibly imagined.

I think our unique American brand of slavery and racism are the root to our also unique American version of classism. We have to eliminate both at the same time, and make true amends for our crimes, and give the rightful value that is due to its victims, otherwise this will be an endless war.

If we can rob black people of the value and contributions they make to the US by putting them in an unjustly shit station in society, why can't an employee also be robbed of their fair wages. It's a poison in our society that we have to cure, and we need to take out the root causes.

In my limited experience people of color who support the further-left agenda (namely medicare for all, livable wages for all, stronger unions, strict regulation of corporations, accessible education for everyone) lean hard on the ways these issues intersect with race because this is exactly where it's most necessary.

This is for two reasons: first, because addressing these issues without specific provisions to address structural injustices would result in a continuing social and economic disparity. If the better education opportunities are only in suburban white enclaves, if the ability to advance in careers and make living wages are only in jobs that are only accessible to some, we continue in building inequities into the system.

Second, because the people pushing from the fringes are the only way we're going to convince the majority of people that change is necessary. The center remains the center, although we may disagree about how many social welfare programs we need and their scope, the main difference between center-right and center-left (in this particular realm) is a game of small additions and subtractions from the social safety net. You need to people who are pushing for change to have a broad scope, and to be extremely vocal about what should be included in that scope, because the message will be diluted. As arguments influence the center, points aren't added -- they're discarded and diminished.

imo, they are right to focus on that intersection but the challenge isn't so much to convince people that racial justice and social justice should be intertwined in a political platform, it's convincing them that the kind of coalition required to win landmark social justice victories won't, for the sake of political expediency, be built by downplaying racial justice issues. Politicians from the left, not exclusively in the US, need to show you can bring in non-voters and right-aligned voters with a platform that both appeals to their material needs and challenges preconceptions some of them may have on issues of 'identity politics'. I don't think that's impossible but i can understand the scepticism.

good post, mh

regarding the hypothetical man alive posed, i think i probably reject the premise, because it depends on how "center" is defined. i certainly don't view people who take issue with what they perceive to be a leftism that is overly focused on economics at the expense of race to be "centrists".

my view is that as with most intra-left issues this comes down to tribalism and semantics. most people on "our side", whether they voted for hillary or bernie, support liberal economic policies that specifically address racial inequities.

obviously where this starts to matter is when we're evaluating political candidates. we should demand that our (at the very least, members of congress and national candidates) be economic progressives AND have specific plans to address systemic racial inequities. one or the other is not enough

they should!

but not all of them do. there's a diminishing, but there are still elements who lean toward the democrats that carry the baggage of the pre-60s era. it's implicit to us that you need to be on board with programs that move us toward social equality, and that you can't have economic equality without it, in order to be a real democrat, but there are people who still hem and haw instead of stating exactly that

sorry, that was an xp and you covered most of it

You are proving my point even better than I could have possibly imagined.

― this iphone speaks many languages (DJP), Thursday, 7 September 2017 17:55 (two hours ago) Permalink

If your point was that people of color are disproportionately poor because of a history of exclusionary policy, institutional racism and violence, that's what the other half of my post that you didn't quote was getting at, i.e. Why race can't be ignored. If your point is something g else I'm not following.

I think "you can't focus on economics at the expense of race" is a fair statement, it's just disingenuous coming from people like Hillary Clinton imo.

You listed a bunch of reasons why race can't be ignored and then added "I think that ignoring race will be better overall than ignoring class," which indicates that you DO think race can be ignored and that if pushed to choose, you would ignore race rather than class. I asked if you ever spent any introspective time over this decision and you exploded in a hurricane of white tears and called yourself a Berniebro. If we can't even have that level of conversation, between two people who ostensibly want the same thing, I'm pretty much fucked unless I stop screwing around on ILX and become a millionaire, and even then I am still probably fucked.

My takeaway from all of these threads is that very few people actually want to fix what's going wrong in this country but a hell of a lot of people are really, really eager for a wider audience to know exactly how much they hate Hillary Clinton.

Dan, I realize my post was a little salty and apologize, but Im not claiming hurt feelings. Been a long week. I think and hope we can continue to have these conversations. And if it wasn't clear, I think the answer to "race or class" is "both, duh." I'm frustrated with the way the Clinton campaign literally used race to shut down discussion of economic issues( her famous "will breaking up the banks end racism?" speech which I found extremely cynical. Not with you or anyone else here other than maybe Frederik B.

And honestly I wouldn't even be talking about Hillary anymore were she not back in the media once again reminding us that she was supposed to win and didn't.

A hell of a lot of people who are in the best position to fix what's going wrong in this country don't see how Hillary Clinton's approach to politics and governance is irrevocably flawed, so they will be reviving it every day through the 2020 election and beyond.

definitely agree that viewing every issue from the bernie/hillary 2016 lens is counterproductive, and that goes for both sides (and myself too)

anyway as i said the choice is ridiculous, who are these people, let alone candidates, who support material, radical corrective action to correct racial inequity but are economic conservatives? who are these definitely very real people who are economic progressives but don't give a shit about race? this is a stupid conversation. we need both, everyone agrees on this

xp

I don't think the Bernie personality cult is particularly helpful either at this point. The difference is that Bernie (1) is still in office and (2) seems to spend a lot more time advocating on issues rather than talking about the election. The Bernie people who keep moaning about the DNC honestly are annoying at this point. But Bernie isn't out speaking about why he lost the primary.

I would be a-okay with both Bernie and Hillary being dropped off a cliff at this point (assuming the Dems could hold onto Bernie's Senate seat)

yeah maybe a Feinstein-quality Dem could replace Bernie, that'd be great

if De Leon runs against Feinstein I think he'll win and I won't shed a tear, she's (mostly) awful: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/07/dianne-feinstein-california-primary-2018-242409?lo=ap_f1

"who are these definitely very real people who are economic progressives but don't give a shit about race?"

there are tons of ppl who "give a shit" but then push comes to shove will always decide that addressing racial injustice can be dropped like a hot potato if it's "alienating white working class voters" or something that's "gotten too radical" or something that will be magically solved by implementing the economic agenda. that kinda quickly ceases to resemble giving a shit imho.

from what i have seen, most of these arguments occur on twitter and most of them involve deliberately misrepresenting people's positions. usually the issue is something symbolic rather than substantive

no argument though that leftists/democrats need to be better on race. disagree with the implication that this is some malady unique to or particularly problematic with sanders dems

IIRC, Bernie voters were more progressive on every social justice issue than Hillary voters or Dems as a whole.

Bernie's personality cult would dissipate if Dems had the equivalent of Labour's Momentum or even the Tea Party as an issue group for people to identify with.