Identity politics [make more interesting plz]
In a now somewhat-controversial speech a couple weeks back at the Berklee Performance Center, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders condemned the overt use of identity politics. When asked by a woman how she could run and get involved, he told that an embrace of the working class, of a broad diversity of issues, is what matters most. Other things, like her race or her gender, ought not to be her sole talking point. That, according to Sanders, “is not good enough.”
Sander’s speech was nuanced, it was reasonable and his urgency on the part of the working class, especially now, matters. Everything he said, Democrats need to hear. But his rapport on identity politics is somewhat troubling.
I won’t rule out phrasing issues, because it is entirely possible that Sanders meant one thing and said another. I’m also sure the cherry picking of that particular part of the speech without any further context exacerbated the problem even more. And though I do have a record of supporting and loving Sanders, what I got personally from the speech is that class identity should take precedent to identities based on anything else. Who knows whether or not that was the intention, but I know that I’m not alone in my conclusion.
I agree with Sanders in that class consciousness should be realized further in that America and the elite do their very best to pit us against one another to divert attention from themselves. All of Bernie’s rhetoric on the millionaires and top 1 percent are not unfounded. When we don’t do well, they do better. The first step, then, in doing better, is finding common ground in class struggle.
However — and there is a “however” — the complete abandoning of others does those people a great disservice. The first thing I’m going to point to is 20th century progressivism. Class consciousness was at an all-time high. Labor laws were being drafted, regulations rammed through Congress, wide-scale trust and monopoly busting on part of our then-President Theodore Roosevelt.
But progressivism was characterized at the same time as an era riddled with racism. When Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House, there was extreme backlash among even his supporters, and the theory of eugenics began gaining steam with the passing of a 1907 law in Indiana. The white working class was taken care of quite nicely, sure, but black Americans and disabled Americans were left to fend for themselves.
The second thing I would like to point out is that we are naturally self-interested people. The white working class has interests, given their circumstances, that are going to differ from the interests of the female working class, or the black working class, or the Muslim working class. There’s significant overlap, sure, but I’m going to do what’s best for me at the end of the day. That’s why the white working class voted Trump, and that’s why ditching identity politics is dangerous in that the white working class is the largest and loudest faction, and their interests are likely to be addressed first and with the most fervor. We need to protect minority rights, or, at the very least, let them coagulate and protect themselves.
I worry, then, that the abandonment of identity politics for the sake of class consciousness will breed a race-blind, gender-blind, creed-blind kind of environment, and the failure to acknowledge these differences means the likeliness of ignoring their individualized interests. We are a country whose history has been driven by division whether we like it or not. We can’t help, now, that people identify best with their respective groups, that they feel closest to them, most supported by them, because when they were under attack for looking or behaving a certain way, those groups were their only source of safety and refuge.
I believe we can be conscious of both class and race, of class and gender, of class and religion. It’s not the abandoning of one in favor of another, but instead, it’s operated based on the principle of intersectionality. It’s the preservation of these groups but the acknowledgement that, given certain key issues, they converge and the battle includes and is fought by all of them. That is the solution, and that is how Democrats start winning.
