Trump’s America
12-11-2016
, 06:07 PM
12-11-2016
, 06:51 PM
12-11-2016
, 10:48 PM
12-12-2016
, 01:00 AM
12-12-2016
, 01:03 AM
12-13-2016
, 08:12 PM
12-13-2016
, 10:53 PM
Quote:
Racism greeted Obama in both his primary and general-election campaigns in 2008. Photos were circulated of him in Somali garb. Rush Limbaugh dubbed him “Barack the Magic Negro.”
12-13-2016
, 11:13 PM
12-13-2016
, 11:41 PM
12-14-2016
, 01:37 AM
Quote:
Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto, political scientists at the University of Washington and UCLA, respectively, have found a relatively strong relationship between racism and Tea Party membership. “Whites are less likely to be drawn to the Tea Party for material reasons, suggesting that, relative to other groups, it’s really more about social prestige,” they say. The notion that the Tea Party represented the righteous, if unfocused, anger of an aggrieved class allowed everyone from leftists to neoliberals to white nationalists to avoid a horrifying and simple reality: A significant swath of this country did not like the fact that their president was black, and that swath was not composed of those most damaged by an unquestioned faith in the markets. Far better to imagine the grievance put upon the president as the ghost of shambling factories and defunct union halls, as opposed to what it really was—a movement inaugurated by ardent and frightened white capitalists, raging from the commodities-trading floor of one of the great financial centers of the world.
Last edited by Huehuecoyotl; 12-14-2016 at 01:45 AM.
12-14-2016
, 02:45 AM
Quote:
If Black Lives Matter is “identity politics,” then identity politics has provided one of the most significant political mobilizations in defense of freedom in the United States in my lifetime. That doesn’t belong on the “to be sure” exception side of a rule that is driven by the politics of gender pronouns. It’s precisely the other way around.
If there is any feature of identity politics that has triggered a political backlash, I think it is far less likely to be gendered pronouns or the more exotic extremes of campus politics that Soave covers on a regular basis, and far more likely to be the high-profile Black Lives Matter. But on any plausible account of political action and political change—something liberals have sometimes lacked—the political energy provided by BLM is sure to be vital to any effective long-term solutions to the policing and incarceration crises.
The point generalizes. Until 2003, many states criminalized a variety of forms of sexual behavior between consenting adults. There were identity-neutral ways of describing the illiberal wrong of this. But the laws weren’t identity neutral in intent, and often weren’t even formally identity-neutral; they were criminal prohibitions on homosexual sexual activity that legitimized routine police harassment even when they weren’t enforced. The laws were unjust according to liberal principle, but would never have been repealed (in many states) and struck down (in the rest) without the identity-conscious political mobilization of gay and lesbian activism.
Identity politics at its best, in other words, isn’t just a matter of being on some group’s side. It’s about fighting for political justice by drawing on the commitment that arises out of targeted injustice, and about having the intellectual resources to let us diagnose that targeted injustice. It lets us spot the majority group’s identity politics rather than treating it as the normal background state of affairs, and to recognize the oppression and injustice that it generates.
If there is any feature of identity politics that has triggered a political backlash, I think it is far less likely to be gendered pronouns or the more exotic extremes of campus politics that Soave covers on a regular basis, and far more likely to be the high-profile Black Lives Matter. But on any plausible account of political action and political change—something liberals have sometimes lacked—the political energy provided by BLM is sure to be vital to any effective long-term solutions to the policing and incarceration crises.
The point generalizes. Until 2003, many states criminalized a variety of forms of sexual behavior between consenting adults. There were identity-neutral ways of describing the illiberal wrong of this. But the laws weren’t identity neutral in intent, and often weren’t even formally identity-neutral; they were criminal prohibitions on homosexual sexual activity that legitimized routine police harassment even when they weren’t enforced. The laws were unjust according to liberal principle, but would never have been repealed (in many states) and struck down (in the rest) without the identity-conscious political mobilization of gay and lesbian activism.
Identity politics at its best, in other words, isn’t just a matter of being on some group’s side. It’s about fighting for political justice by drawing on the commitment that arises out of targeted injustice, and about having the intellectual resources to let us diagnose that targeted injustice. It lets us spot the majority group’s identity politics rather than treating it as the normal background state of affairs, and to recognize the oppression and injustice that it generates.
12-14-2016
, 10:00 AM
12-14-2016
, 10:06 AM
12-15-2016
, 10:20 AM
12-15-2016
, 01:01 PM
