Occupy Oakland on privilege and identity

[Cain]

Since this touches on many (oh so many) discussions on PD lately, albeit from a somewhat different POV, I decided it might be worth sharing this link

http://escalatingidentity.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/who-is-oakland-anti-oppression-politics-decolonization-and-the-state/

The fact that we must specify our identities in advance before making our argument is an index of how powerful, widespread, and largely unquestioned is the premise that arguments always reduce to identity positions. While 21st century anti-oppression politics in the US is an evolving, ad hoc patchwork of theories and practices, we argue for the necessity of identity-based organizing while criticizing how dominant forms of anti-oppression activism have been incapacitated by an unquestioned rhetoric of checking individual "privilege," by a therapeutic idealization of "culture" and communal origins, and finally by the assumption that identity categories describe homogeneous "communities" of shared political beliefs. We argue that left unquestioned these practices minimize and misrepresent the severity and structural character of identity-based oppression in the US.

According to the dominant discourse of "white privilege" for example, white supremacy is primarily a psychological attitude which individuals can simply choose to renounce instead of an entrenched material infrastructure which reproduces race at key sites across society – from racially segmented labor markets to the militarization of the border. Whiteness simply becomes one more "culture," and white supremacy a psychological attitude, instead of a structural position of dominance reinforced through institutions, civilian and police violence, access to resources, and the economy. At the same time a critique of "white privilege" has become a kind of blanket, reflexive condemnation of any variety of confrontational, disruptive protest while bringing the focus back to reforming the behavior and beliefs of individuals. We contend that privilege politics is ultimately rooted in an idealist theory of power which maintains that the psychological attitudes of individuals are the root cause of oppression and exploitation, and that vague programs of consciousness-raising will somehow transform oppressive structures.

This politics assumes that demographic categories are coherent, homogeneous "communities" or "cultures." In Oakland, police, politicians, downtown business interests, and even many "progressive" activists have promoted versions of "community" with radically conservative political content. Communal identity is not automatically a site of political resistance. The violent domination and subordination we face on the basis of our race, gender, and sexuality do not immediately create a shared political vision even though it may create a shared sense of oppression. Identity categories do not indicate political unity or agreement. But the uneven impact of identity-based oppression across society creates the conditions for the diffuse emergence of autonomous groups organizing on the basis of common experiences and a common political understanding of those experiences. There is a difference between a politics which places an idealized and homogenizing cultural heritage at the center of its analysis of oppression, and autonomous organizing against forms of oppression which impact members of marginalized groups unevenly.

Anti-oppression, civil rights, and decolonization struggles clearly reveal that if resistance is even slightly effective, the people who struggle are in danger. The choice is not between danger and safety, but between the uncertain dangers of revolt and the certainty of continued violence, deprivation, and death.

This touches on some of the things Freddie de Boer has been saying on his blog recently:

Note, first, that the discussion was not just about racism, but rather gun control, and in fact my entire argument was that allowing gun control to be defined as an issue that pits black interests against white interests was a political and theoretical mistake. More importantly: I say that this position is fraught because it indicates the essentialism that I'm reacting against and the avoidance I'm cautioning against. The essentialism rises from the absurdity of speaking about nonwhite people as some sort of unified bloc.

I brought up the fact that, if I'm going to abandon any particular perspective on race myself and merely adopt the positions of nonwhite people, I might choice nonwhite people whose views are deplorable. I brought up Allen West in our conversation. My point about Allen West is simple: when people say "you should give up your racial arguments and simply listen to what nonwhite people say," they are suggesting that all nonwhite people have the same views. Allen West is black, and he is an Islamophobe. So when he says vile things about nonwhite Muslims, am I obliged to keep quiet, because of his greater understanding of race and racism?

Q dug deeper: "I explicitly specified the kind of people that would be valuable to link and implicitly excluded people who've internalized white supremacy to anti-black, racist ends."

Which is to say (explicitly) that no nonwhite person could arrive at opinions on race that Q finds objectionable unless that person had internalized white supremacy. This is the height of liberal essentialism, the need to look on nonwhite people not as people, with individual agency and fully developed consciousness, but as symbols of purity, which dehumanizes and infantilizes them. I will admit to not always knowing exactly what is right or wrong when we talk about race. But I am damn sure that saying that nonwhite people can only disagree with me because they've internalized white supremacy is a terribly ugly idea.

I don't think this person is a bad person. Hell, I'm certain that s/he has a far better take on race and privilege than 99% of people out there. But this call for enlightened silence is a corrosive seduction. The truth is that all of us are involved with race, and white efforts to remove themselves from the racial dialogue-- to say "forgive me, and I'll hold my tongue"-- are really efforts to be rescued from the discomfort of race talk, to be rescued from the possibility of being accused of racism. I understand that appeal, but I think it's ruinous, and based on a host of bad assumptions. Trust me: it would be far safer for me to adopt the company line of defensive avoidance and noncommittal silence that is the common tongue of social liberalism. I risk incurring the wrath of commenters like Q because I think that trying to hide out is a kind of capitulation.

I also like the Oakland Occupy comment (without necessarily endorsing it) because it brings back in material, social and ideological factors into the discussion, and those are the factors that are frequently neglected in American political discourse (I suspect because they are identified, rightly or wrong with Marxism, and because of the predominance of postmodernist thought on the question of identity) in favour of individual psychological factors - which I also agree is a mistake.

[Reginald Ret]

Hmmm, interesting.
It causes strange feelings to agree with something so contrary to my personality.
I am a rabid individualist and i endorse this message.

My usual experience with this subject:


Random Person: Society has become too enamoured with individualism, there is something to be said for community.

Me: (ZOMG THIS PERSON WANTS TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO!) I WILL NEVER SUBMIT TO YOUR GROUPTHINK!


Maybe i will hear them out next time.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Those are good posts, Cain, thanks for sharing them! I am especially interested in the interplay between identity, class, and individualism. I suspect that an emphasis on individualism plays strongly into the need to "find one's identity", which in turn reinforces class boundaries.

[insideout]

Freddie de Boer's words touch on something that bothers me.  It seems to me to be a default assumption in discussions sometimes that if you are white you can never say or even imply that a non-white might be racist in their motives or attitudes.   It's not as distinctly black and white as that;  there is a whole spectrum of racism at all levels of society regardless of efforts to whitewash it.  I can't even escape the terminology of the subject while discussing the subject.

regarding the first quote, I think I disagree with the authors.  I don't think the implication is that arguments always reduce to identity positions when we have to specify our identity in advance.  Rather it is a tendency, or even maybe a fallacy, to rate the quality of an argument based on who purveyed it rather than the merits of the argument as it stands alone.  If an argument was presented that Oakland Occupy would normally agree with, but then it was discovered that the presenter was in fact the grand-master of the Alabama KKK, or some other equally reprehensible human being, I think they'd be hard-pressed to find themselves in agreement, regardless of the merits of the argument standing alone.

To sum up, yes, identity matters, but i think it has more to do with credibility than with the notion that arguments reduce to identity.