'Identity Politics'

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Carrol wrote:
>I think two very different things -- in fact two sharply opposed
>things -- are being collapsed into one. On the one hand there is
>the view -- the correct marxist one in my opinion -- that *within*
>a unified left there was a need (a) to give priority to the struggle
>against institutionalized racism and sexism (against the realities,
>that is, of which these two isms are the ideological expressions)
>and (b) in order to guarantee that priority the necessity for
>independent organizations of different kinds for blacks, women,
>gay and lesbians, latinos, etc. These positions were, ultimately,
>based  not on anyone's feelings or any psycho/social conceptions of
>identity but on a historical analysis of the u.s. left which saw it
>essentially crippled and divided by failure to honor the necessary
>struggle against racism. This politics had/has nothing whatever to do
>with anyone's sense of "who am I" or anyone's sense of his/her
>"identity."

To begin with, the very fact that the need for child care facilities has
yet to be universally _recognized as a working-class demand_ argues for the
continuing necessity for feminist orgs and analyses.

Yoshie