Carrol Cox wrote:
> most Americans objectively refuse to believe
> that African Americans can be trusted to think for themselves. THat is
> the only assumption that, for me, makes Rakesh's position intelligible.
i think it was daniel (?) who suggested there may well be something of a generational divide here. now, Australians tend to associate gen-x as a term that advertisers have coined, so i'm not going to use it, but i do think there is something to be said by way of explaining at least part of what has been going on here. an example, would be the above quote from carrol. over his history as an activist, every time someone moaned about black-only groups, most likely they were doing so because they did not think that blacks could 'think for themselves', felt they could not trust blacks left alone for long to organise themselves, and any other 'white panic' that you care to name. no doubt about it. and, carrol, i have no doubt worked hard to learn some lessons about how he should relate to a particular formation - black separatism - without being a racist. fine. i don't doubt this was a hard lesson to learn, but i'm going to suggest that maybe a different 'lesson' needs to be learnt today by the 'white' left, that may turn out to be a lot harder than this one. maybe it's different, maybe it's actually the same one but in a more complex way, maybe it is just the same one with a whole lot of other complications tossed in that were there all along but only more recently have surfaced to become significant.
i mentioned instrumentalisation of anti-racism by the 'white' left, which i think is pervasive... here is my problem in the crudest possible way: a politics which bases itself on identity tends to delimit the boundaries of its presumptions and aims by reference to some essential identity, so x, y or z strategies become debated/established by virtue of whether or not they are 'truly' whatever that identity may be. those obviously outside this identity are confronted with the question of how to relate to this from the outside, as in how does the 'white' left relate to black orgs, etc. and, here carrol's rule may work for a time to constrain the temptations to undermine those orgs from the perspective of the dominant identity. but it amy also do another, less explicit thing as well... that is, how does someone who is black, but female relate to a masculinist black politics? how does a black gay man relate to this? that is, does carrol's rule of thumb work in the event that those who are approaching these particular political formations are themselves marginal and marginalised by such politics, and indeed hounded out of what is defined as the 'community' by an essentialism which excludes them? the answer is very different and much more difficult.
which brings me again to how the established code of conduct for the predominantly 'white' left actually works to fortify the sexism and/or homophobia that may be an implicit and yet essentialised part of how the 'community' is defined, since by refusing a thorough critique, they end up - practically! this is not just a theoretical, academic issue as some have claimed - siding with a politics which is neither progressive nor radical, but in fact quite conservative. it's a dilemma i know, but not one that those who are on the 'inside'-yet-excluded can walk away from because it's just too hard.
moreover, ken and charles don't really have to face this as such. they are black men who are easily fitted in to a masculinist and het black 'community' - whatever may be the extent of their anti-sexism or anti-homophobia, they don't confront this in the same way. now, we can either move toward an ever-expanding pluralism to solve this (don't laugh, i actually tried for a brief time), which has groups for black lesbians, for black women, for working class gay men, etc. ad infinitum. or we can argue against identity as the point of departure for politics and think of some different ways to organise. if identity politics took a while to be established in the 60s and 70s, i think in the 80s and 90s, when i 'grew up' politically, it was a time of discovering all the limits and dangers of such a politics. the 'white' left that grew up in an earlier time can't simply wish this struggle away in favour of recruiting imperatives, whilst resorting to formulaic accusations against those they only hear as echoes of a past response to black separatism. if 'white' leftists don't feel comfortable about articulating a critique of identity politics, fine, i don't have a problem with this, since i do think at times that it is articulated as a kind of racism, where anything other than 'white', male subject-positions are deemed particularistic - thus implicitly universalising white, male subjectivities... but, to engage in a police action against those who have a critique of identity politics who aren't 'white' strikes me as just as dangerous and placing the goal of potential recruitment of the predominantly 'white' left over and above the ostensible principles of the left as a whole and - more importantly - the fate of those 'within' these identities who are nevertheless excluded from them in practice and assumptions.
there is however a debate to be had on these issues which is still to get beyond people seeing ghosts. rakesh's response to these dillemas is different from mine, but i actually thought it was important to argue first for the importance of allowing this debate to proceed without the hostility that has been evident so far.
best,
angela