[Peace-discuss] P. Street on "Race v. Class? More Brilliant Bourgeois Bullshit from Ta-Nehesi Coates"

[Carl G. Estabrook]

I assume you mean Coates (a friend of my wife’s), not Street (who's spoken here several times). Neither would agree with all the quotes I pulled from their articles. 

I do think the Great Refusal (pace Dante) of American liberals - under the assault of neoliberalism - has been to choose to ignore economic exploitation, and substitute social discrimination (on race, gender, etc.) as the explanation for increasing (and accelerating) inequality over the last 40 years. (American wages have been flat since 1973.) But class position is objective (you’re a member whether you know it or not) while identity is chosen - as Coates and Chelsea Manning show.  

"The defensible heart of identity politics is its commitment to opposing forms of discrimination like racism, sexism, and homophobia. I share that commitment. But opposing discrimination today has no more to do with a left politics than do equally powerful ethical commitments against, say, violence or dishonesty. Why? Because the core of a left politics is its critique of and resistance to capitalism — its commitment to decommodifying education, health care, and housing, and creating a more economically equal society. Neither hostility to discrimination nor the accompanying enthusiasm for diversity makes the slightest contribution to accomplishing any of those goals. Just the opposite, in fact. They function instead to provide inequality with a meritocratic justification: If everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, there’s no injustice when some people fail...

"Discrimination is neoliberalism’s theory of inequality. Even poor whites have started to buy it — a large number appear to think anti-white bias is their real problem! Obviously, they’re wrong, but when, as Barbara and Karen Fields point out, the language of victimization has become so impoverished that it consists of nothing but discrimination, you go with what you’ve got. A new left politics will need to change that. Instead of a more complicated understanding of identity — of race, sex, and intersectionality (that opiate of the professional managerial class) — we need a more profound understanding of exploitation.” [W. B. Michaels]

—CGE


> On Sep 18, 2017, at 7:07 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> I have to admit the first time I heard him speak, I cried. He really knows how to pull the heartstrings, though, sometimes, it doesn’t take much to make me cry.
> 
> The second time I heard him speak, I was irritated at his lack of solutions and obvious manipulation.
> 
> Since then reading his words has angered me because he is so transparent in his attempts to promote racism, and guilt, with a “just suck it up, thats the way it is attitude,” 
> 
> When they ignore class, you know it’s another distraction from that which needs to be understood if we are to bring any change or progress to the world. 
> 
> When they focus on the personal, with no concern for the millions we have murdered……… 
> 
> 
>> On Sep 17, 2017, at 18:34, bjornsona--- via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Agreed. Have never found Ta-Nahesi Coates at all interesting.
>> Sent from my LG Phoenix 2, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
>> ------ Original message------From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discussDate: Sun, Sep 17, 2017 1:14 PMTo: peace-discuss at anti-war.net;Cc: Subject:[Peace-discuss] P. Street on "Race v. Class? More Brilliant Bourgeois Bullshit from Ta-Nehesi Coates"_______________________________________________
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