Essay: On Whiteness, Identity Politics & the Pig Empire Left (Link)

 

Whiteness, Identity Politics & the Pig Empire Left

 

 

I’ve never been one to subscribe to the popular, highly-memeable theory that the left is its own worst enemy. After all, despite all of our differences, bickering and open factionalism, we rarely get around to trying to actually kill each other; whereas we can say with some degree of historical certainly, neither capitalism nor its fascist henchmen, display any such reservations. There are however days, particularly when dealing with white leftists from colonizer nations built on genocide and slavery, where I am sorely tempted to pull out this old bromide, merely as a way to express my frustrations.

Of course, the nature of this discussion does really hinge around the word worst, doesn’t it? I mean, you don’t really have to be your own worst enemy, to still specialize in shooting your toes off and then getting angry at folks who point out that you’re bleeding, do you? And my friends, I must say that we on the left in the Pig Empire are still bleeding from a self inflicted wound at this point in our struggle against capitalism; the wound of whiteness and more specifically, the headcage that ideology traps many of us inside.

 

A Back of the Napkin Understanding of Whiteness & White Centricity

Oh, that one certainly got your attention, didn’t it? Alright then, so what exactly is whiteness? Frankly, that is a question you could take an entire college degree’s worth of courses to answer in full, because a world dominated by the American empire, which is itself founded on a cultural idea of whiteness, is a world dominated by the ideas and values of whiteness. Indeed one might say that since the idea of whiteness was essential to New World colonialism, which soon gave birth to capitalist America, who then in turn exported Americanized capitalism (still intrinsically tied to the concept of whiteness) across the planet at gunpoint, asking “what is whiteness” is akin to asking “what is the Pig Empire?”

Let us then for simplicity sake, turn to the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center for a properly cited compilation of information that can serve as a bit of a working definition of whiteness for the purposes of this essay; please note the highlights are mine:

 

Ruth Frankenberg defines whiteness as “a dominant cultural space with enormous political significance, with the purpose to keep others on the margin… white people are not required to explain to others how ‘white’ culture works, because ‘white’ culture is the dominant culture that sets the norms. Everybody else is then compared to that norm… In times of perceived threat, the normative group may well attempt to reassert its normativity by asserting elements of its cultural practice more explicitly and exclusively.”

Key Features of Whiteness

Whiteness is multidimensional, complex, and systemic:

• It is socially and politically constructed, and therefore a learned behavior.
• It does not simply refer to skin color, but to its ideology based on beliefs, values behaviors, habits and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color (Frye, 1983;  Kivel, 1996).
• It represents a position of power where the power holder defines the categories, which means that the power holder decides who is white and who is not (Frye, 1983).
• It is relational. “White” only exists in relation/opposition to other categories/locations in the racial hierarchy produced by whiteness. In defining “others,” whiteness defines itself.
• It is fluid—who is considered white changes over time (Kivel, 1996).
• It is a state of unconsciousness: whiteness is often invisible to white people, and this perpetuates a lack of knowledge or understanding of difference which is a root cause of oppression (hooks, 1994).
• It shapes how white people view themselves and others, and places white people in a place of structural advantage where white cultural norms and practices go unnamed and unquestioned (Frankenberg, 1993). Cultural racism is founded in the belief that “whiteness is considered to be the universal… and allows one to think and speak as if whiteness described and defined the world” (Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 327).
• Whiteness is a set of normative privileges granted to white-skinned individuals and groups; it is normalized in its production/maintenance for those of that group such that its operations are “invisible” to those privileged by it (but not to those oppressed/disadvantaged by it). It has a long history in European imperialism and epistemologies.
• Whiteness is distinct but not separate from ideologies and material manifestations of ideologies of class, nation, gender, sexuality, and ability.
• The meaning of whiteness is historical and has shifted over time (i.e. Irish, Italian, Spanish, Greek and southern European peoples have at times been “raced” as non-white).

 

There are two key things I’d like to point out here before we go on. First, a social construction, whiteness is not as much about the color of your skin, as it is about how you see the world – as explained by professor Nell Irvin Painter white identity, and therefore whiteness itself is about ideology, not biology. Secondly, and as you may have gathered based on the passages above I chose to highlight, the primary focus of this essay is about how the learned condition of whiteness alters the way we perceive the people, events and even the entire world around us in subtle ways, that feel so utterly “normal” as to not even merit observation to members of the dominant cultural group; due to this essay’s focus on cultural interactions inside the larger Pig Empire Left, that would specifically mean those (majority) white leftists who have not engaged in mental decolonization, and may indeed not even understand the need to do so, in this context.

Obviously then, I’m not talking about the entire left here, although to be clear we are all demonstrably affected negatively in our struggle, by the very existence of whiteness and the toxic beliefs it fosters in broader society, but especially folks who aren’t themselves white and are indeed, dedicated to dismantling the structures of oppression (physical, social and mental) whiteness engenders, who are perpetually forced to contend (against their will) with the influence of whiteness all around them. Furthermore, as the info-graphic above should imply, I’m not actually talking about, or to, died-in-the-wool racists at this point; I’d like to believe that one of the reasons crypto-reactionaries grifting a left wing audience have to hide their odious social views, is because a bare minimum qualification for being a leftist in the Pig Empire is that you be at least “not-racist.”

In light of (particularly American) history, that’s progress, I suppose; but there’s still a vast chasm between merely being “not-racist” and being an anti-racist, and that vast chasm has worked to undermine the “western” left, particularly in colonized nations, at virtually every moment of our existence. Unfortunately, and as much as such a discussion is sorely needed, I lack the time, and I fear even the ability to properly articulate to you how much the social and mental condition of whiteness, actively hampers the Pig Empire left in its quest to form broad, labor-class coalitions built around solidarity and mutual aid. For readers looking to explore the explicitly-stated historical role of whiteness in maintaining a capitalist, colonialist, and anti-labor class society in the New World (and the nations that sprouted from it) I’d encourage you to check out both volumes of Theodore Allen’s magnum opus, “The Invention of the White Race.”

 

What You Believe and Why You Believe It Are Separate Phenomena

In my opinion a good working example of this whiteness in action (even on the left,) that we can discuss here quickly however, might be the larger fight for slavery reparations across the colonized portions of the Pig Empire. I mean here we have, at least on a surface level, what is for all intents and purposes a targeted, economic wealth-redistribution program that is not only anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and founded on the concept of justice, but will also statistically raise up the standard of living for millions of the most economically disadvantaged and oppressed people in our society. It really doesn’t get much more left wing than that; and yet despite this, vast swathes of the Pig Empire left (including several highly educated non-white socialists) continue to oppose adding reparations platforms to so-called democratic socialist programs, specifically because they consider it divisive and such a universal program might provide benefits to a fairly small number of affluent or wealthy descendants of enslaved African-American and Indigenous people.

You might of course be one of those objectors yourself, and if so, right now I’m willing to bet you’re about to ask me “why we should help rich Black people when so many poor white people are suffering in our society” to which I would respond by asking why you have no such qualms about helping small handfuls of “rich people” with programs like say, universal healthcare, or free college? I think I know the answer, even if you don’t – it’s the head-cage of whiteness all of us in the Pig Empire are born into, and spend much of the rest of our lives trying to dismantle; through this lens, a policy like reparations becomes divisive precisely because it does not center the dominate cultural idea of whiteness.

All of which isn’t to say everyone on the left who opposes reparations policies is automatically a white supremacist; there are in fact good arguments about why reparations may not be the best way to address racial wealth gaps in pig empire societies – but let’s not pretend twitchy online leftists arguing that simply proposing to address that racialized gap is to divide the left, are the one’s making them. Furthermore, when even a Black socialist like the late Cedric Robinson acknowledged that a significant part of the reason he opposed reparations, is how white people perceive the idea, then it’s certainly fair to say whiteness is at work in at least limiting our options and controlling the boundaries of our discussions, on the issue of reparations.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, I’m not calling anyone reading this a racist; if you were a racist, you’d probably have slammed the close window button around about the moment I first mentioned “whiteness.” What I’m talking about is an almost unconscious ideological head-cage, a type of dominant social order-centric myopia that unfortunately influences far too much of all our thinking in Pig Empire faux-democracies even to this day, and yes, even on the left. I’m no different from anyone reading this journal in that regard, I assure you; the things I believed five years ago were more shaped and controlled by the head-cage of whiteness than the things I say today, and lord willing the things I write five years from now will be further liberated from the prison of whiteness yet again. It is a poisonous ideology for any labor class person in the capitalist societies that create it, but the head-cage of whiteness is especially debilitating for an anti-capitalist and must at some point be breached to even really understand socialism as a concept.

 

The Malleability of the Term “Identity Politics”

Sadly, here again I find myself shooting for the moon when we haven’t even hooked the horse up the buggy yet, and so I should return to the matter at hand; baby steps through the mental muck of white supremacy as it were. Let us then focus in on the increasingly rat-f*cked, colonized and hyper-loaded term “identity politics” for a moment, and try to punch a peep-hole in the shroud of whiteness the debate around this term has engendered.

The first problem we encounter with the generalized term “identity politics” is that its use and abuse over the past fifty some-odd years of Pig Empire history, has lead different types of people to believe that the term means completely different things. On the right for example, the phrase “identity politics” has become a pejorative term used to diminish or attack any attempts by marginalized people to band together and alter the social contract as it pertains to capitalism, patriarchal authority, or the basic tenets of white supremacy.

The mainstream corporate media however, uses the term “identity politics” to describe any like-group of angry people, banding together for any reason at all, against any aspect of the establishment as “identity politics” – which has the convenient side effect of allowing them to subtly suggest to the home viewing audience that there really might not be that big of a difference between say, white “identitarian” street gangs full of neonazis, and gay people marching against legalized “conversion therapy.” You could perhaps also say the ruling political and donor class uses a third unique interpretation of the term “identity politics” to define the (often corrupt and elitist) political party machines used to (at least try to) convince minority voting blocks to support specific candidates in political elections; although how effective that strategy is in our modern political environment is definitely up for debate.

Most importantly to us here today however, are the divergent ways marginalized people whose politics reside firmly on the left, and vast portions of the (often white, but more importantly influenced by the whiteness our social order enforces) labor class left understand the term “identity politics.” To far too many on the left, particularly those who don’t read a lot of theory and have been through the past five years of un-Civil War being waged against the labor class by the (neo) liberal mainstream, the term “identity politics” means nothing more (or less) than the cynical weaponization of issues surrounding race, gender and sexual orientation to divide the left, divert attention from the ongoing class war and promote an elitist, hyper-capitalist ideology sometimes known as “neoliberal multiculturalism” – a theory which itself posits that staggering inequality and exploitation are fine, so long as the right percentage of demographic groups occupy the positions at the top of the capitalist pyramid.

Now to be clear, this disingenuous weaponization of very real barriers and oppression due to race, gender or other marginalizing factors, to protect capitalist power in our society is unquestionably rotten and evil. Furthermore, because this (again, twisted) application of “identity politics” can be used to push social representation literally at the expense of both racial justice and economic redistribution, the larger labor class is correct in identifying it as a dodge for elite capitalism – a way to wash all the blood on their hands from (often racialized) exploitation, while pretending it’s really the left promoting a racist, misogynist, and anti-LGBTQ agenda; which is of course, hogwash because the relationship between white supremacy and capitalism itself is mutually supportive, and it’s sure as sh*t not the left trying to maintain the neofeudalist order at all costs. You needn’t waste your breath telling me of all people that issues of identity can be twisted and weaponized by the ruling class to attack and hinder the labor class left. Cast under the far-too-welcoming and largely meaningless blanket of “progressive politics,” the ultra-wealthy liberal elite have adopted this “representation-as-progress” mantra to justify maintaining unequal, but extremely profitable hierarchies in our society while demonizing and dividing anyone who would oppose those hierarchies on an economic level; including people from those very same marginalized groups supposedly being represented by this type of politics.

I mean let’s cut the crap here for a second, alright? You don’t need anyone to tell you that having an African American president bomb the shit out of seven countries full of brown people isn’t anti-racist. Nobody reading this is dumb enough to believe that Biden’s extremely “diverse” cabinet of Wall Street crooks and blood-soaked warmongers represents any sort of progress for anyone whatsoever; with the obvious exception of minority Wall Street crooks and blood-soaked warmongers that Biden owes a favor. When sh*theel rich people tell you supporting Bernie Sanders is somehow antisemitic, or it’s racist and misogynist not to love an obscenely rich white woman who spent most of her life pushing racist policies in government, folks in the labor class don’t have any real problem sensing that’s a hot cup of bullsh*t.

 

It’s Not Always About You

So what’s the problem here? Well, for starters if you’re calling all of that “identity politics,” then you’re using an extremely narrow, hyper-specialized and quite possibly wholly inaccurate definition of the term; and you’re doing so in a way that is actively harmful to building a broad labor class coalition based on solidarity and mutual aid in our supposedly “post-colonial” liberal democracies. This is because to marginalized people whose politics reside on the left, the term “identity politics” simply means the activity of banding together and building political power for protection against an objectively hostile, exploitative and violent white supremacist, patriarchal and ultimately capitalist order that means them very real harm. To the marginalized leftist, “identity politics” is not a distraction from material concerns, but quite literally the politics of survival.

Thus, when a labor class leftist says that they are against identity politics, particularly in instances where that attitude is being used as a cudgel to silence marginalized people in the larger discussion, what those people hear you saying is that you’re against mutual defense of marginalized communities, in the face of cracker exploitation, disenfranchisement and suppression – period. As you can perhaps imagine, folks applying this broader (and more historically accurate) definition of “identity politics” might thus be disinclined to work with you after such an implied statement; they might even on some level, have trouble distinguishing you from the reactionary chuds who use identity politics to explicitly mean any attempts to dismantle white supremacy or other unequal hierarchies of power. Is that what you’re about? More importantly, is that what you want marginalized people who would otherwise be with the larger left on every issue, to think you’re about?

Aha, gotacha snowflake; yes words actually mean things and you don’t get to change them willy-nilly because you can’t be bothered to read a book or two. Was Emma Goldman engaging in your definition of “identity politics” when she challenged patriarchal social structures in an explicitly feminist manner? Were the Black Panthers engaging in crappy liberal “identity politics” when they passionately argued that African Americans needed to literally arm themselves against white terrorism in our society? Was it somehow sh*tlib identity politics when Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow reminded folks that Hillary Clinton was no friend of American Americans during the 2016 Democratic Primary contest against Bernie? Sticking with Sanders, was it “identity politics” when Bernie told interviewers that, as a member of a family who lost many relatives in the Holocaust, he had a unique perspective on what Trump’s ideology represented that few other candidates in the Democratic Primary could really comprehend? Is it liberal “identity politics” to call for the defunding of police forces that openly murder young, African-American males in the street on the regular; even as actual neoliberal leaders are decrying those demands and promising to give the police even more funding? Is it really disingenuous liberal “identity politics” for someone to say quite simply, that “I can’t breathe?”

This problem of course is only further exacerbated by the fact that this “anti-identity politics” posture is in fact, often used to silence marginalized voices on the left; particularly when those individuals are trying to get white leftists to address structural inequity or oppression that doesn’t on the surface seem to affect white leftists very much. Ultimately, if you’re arguing that even bringing up issues of identity and representation is a divisive distraction from the class war, you’re essentially arguing that fighting racism, sexism or other forms of oppression based on identity is anti-leftist, and indeed a liberal ploy to disarm the left – as a marginalized person myself, let me tell you that this is not only inaccurate but a rather reactionary and frightening position to hear other leftists openly adopting; and I’m certain I’m not alone in feeling that way. Putting aside your own position in society and examining those ideas from a logical perspective, does any of that sound like solidarity and mutual aid to you?

 

Taking Baby Steps Towards a Diverse Labor Class Coalition

Right; let’s just be honest with each other here for a moment and admit that you hadn’t really thought your working definition of “identity politics” through, and let me remind you that this doesn’t make you some kind of racist, but rather just another victim of the whiteness head-cage I’ve been talking to you about throughout this article. White supremacy is a mutherf*cker, but it’s a very profitable mutherf*cker for some and as such, the ideas and head-cages necessary to support it are actively propagated throughout the media we consume, the history we’re taught, and even in the so-called “American values” or moral norms we exist under in our daily lives. Furthermore, the inseparable relationship between capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy means that there really is no such thing as the so-called “class reductionist” left – you’re either for dismantling capitalist hierarchies and uplifting the labor class, or you aren’t; thus to be anti-capitalist is to be anti-racist or you’re just talking about increasing the spectrum of society that directly benefits financially from white supremacy. Presumably I don’t have to tell you at this point that such a position is utterly incompatible with anything I’d recognize as leftism, but I guess I just did anyway.

At the end of the day, I recognize that we on the left need a proper short-hand descriptor for the cynical manipulation of identity issues to further capitalist exploitation and existing, repressive power structures. But that term is not, and cannot be simply “identity politics” or it will hinder our ability to recruit marginalized groups into a broader, class-based coalition against capitalism, and in turn render our quest to dismantle the neofeudalist ruling order ultimately futile. It’s not an accident that the last guy trying to put together a nation-wide coalition of broke white people and pissed off African Americans caught a bullet for his troubles; nor is it an accident that in the decades since, Martin Luther King Jr’s final fight against the triple threat of racism, imperialism and capitalism has been wiped from the history books. The people, united, cannot be defeated; but that means all of the people and if the difference between dying apart and thriving together is adding the words “neoliberal,” “weaponized” or “falsified” to the phrase “identity politics” then for the love of christ already, let’s do that immediately.

In other words, we can either stand together on the larger left as one against all aspects of the capitalist war on the labor class, or we will surely fall as individuals bickering about who gets to air their grievances first.

As a white trans leftist, I’m asking you here and now to take that first small step towards standing together, and to discard this objectively white-centric, reactionary position about the simple phrase “identity politics.” It will, in the long run, cost you nothing to demonstrate solidarity with marginalized comrades and potential comrades in our larger collective struggle against capitalism; there is no kind of anti-capitalism that isn’t also anti-racist, anti-misogynist and about uplifting folks on the margins. Furthermore, I am begging you to habitually question the assumption that the politics of survival employed by the marginalized, are somehow separate from the politics of the larger labor class; because quite simply, they are not – and realizing that is how we stop the neoliberal machine from dividing us, not crying about “identity politics.”

As I mentioned in a recent theory essay, the future of the labor class left is ultimately in the hands of a young, extremely diverse coalition of labor class activists and thinkers; whiteness as a concept simply has no future on the left, because the future of the labor class is no longer majority white. Thus it then simply behooves us as leftists, to educate ourselves on how our words and ideas may seem to our marginalized comrades in arms across the larger labor class – it is high time that we started the process of mental decolonization on the left in earnest here in the Pig Empire; because tomorrow isn’t as far away as you think it is and collectively, regardless of our differences, we’re all running out of time to beat capitalism before it kills us.

Take these small steps, begin your journey towards our future as a diverse labor class coalition today and let us together, take the fight to capitalism. In the end, I promise you the effort will be worth it, because when the revolution is for everyone, then everyone will be for the revolution – and that’s how we beat these bastards and win the right to a future.

 

Additional Resources & Citations

“Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization” (Essay) W.E.B. Du Bois

“The History of White People” – Nell Irvin Painter

“Toward a Global Idea of Race” – Denise DaSilva

“The Fire Next Time” – James Baldwin

“Stamped From the Beginning” – Ibram X. Kendi

“The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism” – Gerald Horne

“An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

“Slavery by Another Name” – Douglas A. Blackmon

“Settlers” – J. Sakai

“The Wages of Whiteness” – David Roediger

“White Trash” – Nancy Isenberg

“John Brown” – W.E.B. Du Bois

“Black Against Empire” – Joshua Bloom & Waldo Martin Jr

“Assata: An Autobiography” – Assata Shakur

“Malcolm X Speaks” – George Breitman (editor)

 

 

– nina illingworth