> It is your use of "identity politics" in inappropriate contexts, your
> insistence in applying the label where it does not apply, that led
> me to include you among objectively racist marxists.
what's so innappropriate about it? especially when you seem so concerned to delineate -- instead of an appropriate strategy as you claim (which would require at some point that it be open to debate and discussion about whether or not it is appropriate or effective) -- real blacks from not-real blacks based on their political positions, as if (NB) politics and identity are _the same thing_. if it wasn't an identity politics, you wouldn't talk in these terms in the first place. it's an assertion about the rightness of a particular anti-racist strategy without having to debate it, and in this, the accusation of racism (as well as the assertion of real identities) is merely (merely!) a convenient way of doing just that.
> You oppose
> the tactics and strategy necessary for the unification of the U.S.
> working class.
which is really quite strange, given that the heading under which this thread began (that of butler's accusation that 'conservative marxists' insist on placing class before race), is what you now proclaim: that black nationalism is the strategy necessary for the unification of the US working class. and that is precisely where you and rakesh differed. he does not think it is a unificatory strategy, you do. which means that at some point, you have to consider butler's criticisms as warranted: you instrumentalise, and subordinate, anti-racist politics to a class politics. which is also why you find it so easy to invoke accusations of racism as rhetorical polemic, but not to notice it when it's peddled by your polemical buddies -- in short, it's always been about reproducing and delimiting a political tendency that has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with a political modus operandi, as well as unstated aspirations*.
i happen to disagree with your injunctions to separatism, as much as i disagree with rakesh's radical integrationism, and i'd be happy to debate both. but most of what we saw was not debate but pushing and shoving as to credibility*, which is why your arguments were always so much more risible. in particular, because you tried to legitimate stereotypes (real black people must beleive x) and police them in a way that was more vicious and self-satisfied than any black people did during this debate, specifically hauling out rakesh for a few whippings when i would have assumed, at the very least, _your_ much-touted principle of 'black leadership' would have suggested that you hold your tongue -- or at least be embarassed by your obvious pleasure. there were others who disagreed with you, as there were others who had criticisms of black nationalism, but funnily enough, you don't single out any white folks for such a hiding. and, in order to not be embarassed by such an obvious contradiction between stated principles and polemical conduct, you had to declare that rakesh was 'not really black' and, since then, you cover over your embarassment by maintaining a grudge as if _your_ performative embarrassment was caused by others.
as for the accusation of objective racism, well, surprise me. either this means that we're all going to carry around with us a certain enjoyment when it comes to racialising others _given_ that this is, increasingly i think, the preferred way of organising who 'us' and 'them' is on the political and economic landscape, which means we all have to attend to it; or it means that you've decided (for reasons which are not at all persuasive to me) that black nationalism is the only strategy available for dealing with racism in the US and anyone who has criticisms of what might an empirical necessity but hardly an unequivocal virtue is derided as not being 'really black'! what does that make you if you claim to be an adherent? really, truly black? pshaw.
* that you keep thinking the BRC was the stake in this argument, which it certainly was never for me, and nor for rakesh as i recall initially anyway, means that it has more to do with how you want to present yourself to the BRC than with anything that was being discussed or not here by anyone else. that's for you and the BRC to work out. but it all strikes me as one of the more cynical pieces of political maneuvering i've seen in a long time.
Angela _________