[Peace-discuss] Adolph Reed: Identity Politics Exposing Class Division in Democrats

[David Johnson]

<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/adolph-reed-identity-politics-exposi
ng-class-division-in-democrats.html> Adolph Reed: Identity Politics Exposing
Class Division in Democrats

Posted on
<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/adolph-reed-identity-politics-exposi
ng-class-division-in-democrats.html> June 13, 2016 by
<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/author/lambert-strether> Lambert Strether 

By Lambert Strether of  <http://www.correntewire.com> Corrente.

NC Readers are
<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/adolph-reed-on-sanders-coates-and-re
parations.html> already familiar with Adolph Reed;
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_L._Reed,_Jr.#cite_note-7> his "early
call" on Obama is famous. Here's a video from Reed on
<http://thebenjamindixonshow.com/> The Benjamin Dixon Show; it's only ten
minutes, and well worth a listen.

Here's what I think is the key exchange:

DIXON: . the unbelievable use of identity politics to undermine a
class-based argument. You diagnosed this problem before we even got to this
problem. . In this election, I've seen like a swift-boating of class-based
arguments, using race to the detriment of black people.

REED [O]ne of the nice things about being an old guy - and there aren't a
lot - but one of them is that you see phenomena like this happening and you
recognize what's going on, and what's happened now - and I think that this
largely was consolidated by the Clinton administration - and subsequently
the centrist or dominant wing, I should say of the Democratic Party as its
been tightening its grip - is a disconnection of the notion of social
justice from economic inequality and economic security. 

And that's a notion of racial justice that first of all fits very
comfortably with the people in elite colleges where I've been teaching for
the last 35 years because they're all expected to be part of the upper
class, but it also has meant that we have a national politics now. And this
takes us back to the fault lines in the current race, that that we have a
national politics now that has for 20 years at least, longer, given us two
choices. And one of them is a party that's committed to Wall Street and to
neoliberalism and is deeply and earnestly committed to a notion of diversity
and multiculturalism, and a party that's committed to Wall Street and
neoliberalism, and is deeply opposed to multiculturalism and diversity.

So, if we have to choose between those two, obviously for most of us who are
committed to the ideals of justice and equality, the one that's committed to
multiculturalism and diversity is less bad than the one that's opposed to
them. But the deeper problem is that they're both actively committed to
maintaining and intensifying economic inequality, and as I and my friend and
colleague Walter Benn Michaels have pointed out tirelessly over the last
decade or so, that that ideal of a just society is one in which one percent
of the population can control ninety percent of the stuff, but it would be
just if twelve percent of the one percent were black, fourteen percent
Latino, and half of them were women, and whatever percentage were gay, and
what that means, then, is that most Black people, and most Latinos, and most
white people, and most Asian Americans would would be stuck holding like the
end of the stick with the stuff on it that I assume I can't call by its
right name.

Notice that if a "Reed Coalition" were to be created, it would encompass the
80% or 90% of the population that doesn't own or control "all the stuff."
The "Obama Coalition" (
<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/is-the-obama-coalition-even-a-thing-
was-it-ever.html> so-called), which Clinton hopes to leverage, is
necessarily smaller, because of conflicts and contradictions between the
identity categories it seeks to assemble. Hence, Clintonian incrementalism
is the flip side of identity politics; it's just math.

The audio, from which the video is taken, is a good deal longer, so sit down
with a cup of coffee; it's well worth it.

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20160613/aaa3cf67/attachment.html>