first, if we are to take cedric robinson’s work serious: there were examples of racial regimes prior to the slave trade as evident by europe’s antagonistic relationship with many, at the time seemingly “racialized” groups, who would later “become” white (irish/jews/etc).
even beyond that: race was created in europe & the contemporary racial order cannot merely be belittled to being an invented tool of the ruling class to prevent “solidarity.” race was politically mobilized to justify the dehumanization/trafficking/enslavement of black africans.
how can “race” be belittled to being a “tool to divide the working class”—when it is the foundation upon which capitalism was originally formed?
black africans were not stolen and brutally trafficked across the seas to europe/the americas, as even as much as “humans,”—in how europeans defines the term—and damn sure not workers—but as slaves, chattel, productive property.
^that, in and of itself, requires a specific reassessment—beyond traditional reductionist modalities about “race dividing the working class” when we consider how we have historically experience capital’s violence *vastly* differently.
we are all oppressed by capital: true. yet, some of us were/are not only oppressed by capital, but came here as capital to be brought, traded, etc. that is inherently a racialized position, that cannot be dismissed w/n these antagonisms—despite our (lumpen)proletarianization.
“race is a tool to divide the working class,” is often used to infantilize the white working class, as passive/unintentional upholders of white domination (lol, false). & claiming racialized people are being “divisive” by prioritizing rac[e/ism], especially by the white “left.”
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“race was invented to keep working class people divided,” in discussions about the antagonisms between black/white people is reductionist, and i think it would be more fruitful to name ideological whiteness as said tool that does ultimately negates solidarity & community building
the incredibly vague rhetoric of “race [dividing] working class people” implies race and its inherent constant terror & violence, is a two-way street—when it is, in fact, something that has been overwhelmingly enacted on wc/poor black people by white people of every class strata
yet, this is where the loudest & most dominant sectors of marxist discourse (that privileges a universalized + reductionist analysis of proximity/relationship to capital), particularly in the US/west, has historically failed, on the question of (particularly anti-black) racism!
i don’t think leftists who romanticize the fantasy of “radicalizing” fascists—whether they are poor or petite-bourgeois—understand they are often doing the very thing they hate about liberal representationists and how they treat/have co-opted & neoliberalized identity politics.
treating a marginalized positionality, identity—in this case “working class” standing—as inherently moral, good natured, and progressive. despite their ideological and political alignment representing that of a class traitor. is this not what liberal identity reductionists do?
i’m tweeting this because it’s something i’ve been thinking a lot, and feel i am just finding the words to articulate what i’m saying. but if i’m off base let me know.
the concept of “pretty privilege” has always been so odd to me, and i wish we’d retire it from our lexicon. as if being desired by men—and the structures dominated by ‘em—is somehow liberatory, or puts one in further proximity to power instead of male terror, violence, and death
oh my god. this is not saying that “undesirables” don’t face violence. when i have seen “privilege privilege” used, it’s usually in the context of one being hypervisible/desired—& i’m saying: how can that be a privilege, if hypervisibility makes one more susceptible to violence?
my issue is the word “privilege” here, reducing structural and material realities to mere individual experiences and pejoratives.
i’ve seen people call it “pretty privilege” for women to get free drinks at a bar. 😭 and i’ve hated the term ever since...
one of the most harmful—and most beneficial to the ruling elite—political myths, is that the pinnacle of political “success” and progress is putting more milquetoast democrats into office
there is no better depiction of democrats’ historical role as demobilizers of movements than them riding (and co-opting) the wave of m4bl to getting one of the most uninspired candidates in the contemporary era elected, than betraying said demands en masse once elected.
if anything, biden being branded by the professional misleadership class as the solution to police violence—amidst calls to defund the police via the largest, most sustained uprisings we’ve seen in decades—is what won him the election
it has never been more clear that we are on a plantation
there’s no way we should be celebrating, or taking pride in “saving” a country that we are structurally subjugated by and being held hostage in. slavery.
“black people saved the—” no, what you’re describing is slavery. the non-consensual prolongation of our subjugation and dispossession. the delaying of the inevitable. that is slavery. you’re describing an evolved slavery.
the liberal media apparatus acting like they are above trump as if they didn’t create and ushered him in on red carpet, and profited off it, and squeezed out every bit of legitimation via pretending to be in-opposition to his politics 🤣
like this shit means nothing to me when your non-stop free coverage of him in 2015-16 helped put him in the white house to begin with, lol like don’t stop now!