On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Chris, I must not have been clear enough. The argument, in and of itself,
> is not the problem... and I was very clear that I had not read his stuff.
> There is no question that a class politics is the key. The question is, and
> my questions were focused on, how the hell does stating it the way Michaels
> does do anything but alienate people, working with people with real
> immediate everyday needs, trying to deal with the system we have at the
> moment - which, everyone here and doing that work, acknowledges sucks.
>
> How is saying that "we" all embrace the neoliberal immigration agenda
> really helping?
> How is saying that folks working with the "truly disadvantaged" - the
> staggeringly disproportionately poor and imprisoned communities of color -
> are cozying up to neoliberals going to bring anyone to the post-class
> politics class analysis side of things? It matters not an iota to poor
> disenfranchised Black folks living on the south side of Chicago or Gary, IN,
> or Flint or Detroit or Oakland or... that there are more poor white people
> than them... The political question is: why does Michaels rant about
> identity politics - more a feature of the academy than the street - instead
> of working to get poor white people to see their shared class location with
> poor minorities? Chosing what you write on, who you critique and who you're
> speaking to is a very political act and indicative of one's politics. Read
> bell hooks - who has made pretty similar arguments in many different places
> - presents a different model of how one active in a particular community
> might push that community towards less parochial modes of thought. It is
> possible to be polemical with being a prick and angry without being a
> bitch. Hell, read Shag and Chuck day to day.
>
> Man, I was in grad school in Santa Cruz, CA, at the height of
> postmodernism, I know all about the insanity of identity politics. I know
> all about being objectified as "that white guy who keeps on bringing up
> class" (and stuff like the vast majority of poor people being white). I
> studied labor organizing in the Imperial Valley, I know all about the power
> and greater threat of of multi-racial unions. But I am neither stupid nor
> prick nor asshole enough to suggest a conflation of all racial politics, of
> all gender politics, and of all sexual politics with class-blind identity
> and neoliberal politics... and whether or not he means it that is how
> Michaels comes across to a number of us. He seems to give no credence to
> how fraught racial, gender and sexual poltics have been within the
> class-focused left over the years...
>
> I can tell you no one I know doing community organizing or social work or
> what-have-you, much less my students, are going to listen to someone making
> the argument that I think needs to be made the way Michaels makes it. As I
> said, as far as I am concerned the differences he elides, the levels of
> analysis he collapses, and the aspects of American politics he backgrounds
> means that - at least to me - he comes off as a self-important UCB/UofC
> out-of-touch-with-the-lived-experience-of-the-people-he-claims-to-be-in-alliance-with
> prick. Maybe his written work is better and I'd think differently if I read
> it. Maybe not.
>
> Did any of the issues I raised about how folks on the ground know a great
> deal more about the world than they see themselves being able to address
> make any impact on your reading of my post? I do my best not to tell such
> people how little they understand what's really going on... I made that
> assumption as a self-importantly prick-ish grad student and - quite properly
> - had my ass handed to me by a hard working, really insightful
> community/labor organizer in El Centro and a hard working, really insightful
> entomologist for the California Cooperative Extension office in Holtville.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Chris Maisano <cgmaisano at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Calling Michaels a "prick" or "assholic" based simply on listening to the
>> interview is total projection. I listened to it too, but I fail to see how
>> either his argument or his comportment on the interview qualifies him to be
>> regarded as such.
>>
>> Alan says: "Why not make the same basic argument by means of the
>> remarkable similarities associated with the disproportionate consequences of
>> neoliberalism for lower income historically oppressed minorities and low
>> income whites? Why not make an argument for class struggle rather than one
>> denigrating the prioritization of race and diversity? Because such an
>> argument gets you fewer readers, is way less sexy and garners you far less
>> renown?"
>>
>> - Michaels argues against the prioritization of race and diversity for the
>> same reasons Reed does: 1) "race" doesn't adequately explain a lot of the
>> ills that prevail in, say, predominantly African-American inner city
>> neighborhoods (and it does nothing to address the fact that the vast
>> majority of the poor are white); 2) you're not going to be able to do much
>> to address those ills unless you organize for universal social programs.
>> Most white people (and lots of socially ascendant people of color) will not
>> want to pay taxes to fund programs that they see as primarily benefiting
>> poor black people. Sad, but true; 3) diversity/multicultural talk more often
>> than not pays little more than lip service to class politics, even within
>> the left (such as it is). It's very good in my view that WBM, Reed, and
>> others are taking whacks at some sacred cows and making the argument that -
>> gasp! - class politics is what makes the left "the left." It's kind of weird
>> to me
>> that people are freaking out over this point.
>>
>> It's also really interesting to see Alan and Shag impute ulterior motives
>> to Michaels for which there really is little to no evidence. Shag
>> acknowledges that it's unfair to characterize his argument as driven by
>> resentment toward rising women and people of color, but does it anyway. Alan
>> claims that WBM's entire critique is premised upon nothing but
>> personal advancement. Perhaps folks are just having trouble acknowledging
>> that WBM's argument has more merit than they'd like it to.
>>
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *********************************************************
> Alan P. Rudy
> Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> Central Michigan University
> 124 Anspach Hall
> Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> 517-881-6319
>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319