There’s Always More Labor After

[ludickid]

That well-fed fellow up there is the Reverend Douglas Wilson.  A product of Idaho’s state university system and a recipient of the largesse of his flock, this noble sky pilot is best known for his series of debates with the notoriously godless Christopher Hitchens on the topic of whether or not Christianity has been a boon for mankind.  (Rev.

Comments

[fengi]

Your writing is always very good and smart, even when I disagree vehemently, but this sentence is way more reactionary than you intended: "Liberal identity politics have hurt rather than helped this trend; many minorities, women, and gays, elevated to new success, have bought into to the lie of a classless society, but as the seats at the bosses’ table grow fewer, they will learn the hard lesson that poor white trash learned ages ago."

I'd like to see some sourced examples of this. Where is this many who, because of "liberal identity politics" (a right wing term of art), formed the gay black woman anti-union movement.

Many of the growing union membership is minority and female. Two of the most visible unions in recent fights - nurses and teachers - are predominantly female. Last time I checked, the most vocal, uncompromising critics of class and supporters of labor were female, minority, gay or all three.

Minorities can't ignore class because they experience it disproportionately. Gender is different as women are in every class, but in "liberal identity politics" terms, women are more vulnerable to class and labor issues. More than half of those so-much-wiser white trash are women. Gay white males may have bought into the lie of a classless society but this is not the entire LGBT community - do you really think most lesbians aren't aware of class issues?

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but this sentence seems to accuse groups who have enjoyed brief moment of "liberal identity politics" of being class traitors, as if race, gender and class are mutually exclusive in a zero sum game of advocacy. Isn't it white trash dudes who most often defy their own interests in a resentful embrace of the oligarchy?

[ludickid]

My point is, precisely BECAUSE minorities experience oppression disproportionately, they marginalize class issues at their peril. It happens in proportion to the degree of oppression that they suffered during the worst of times, so you see these polls indicating that there's close to 0% support for Romney/Ryan in the black community; but there's an increasing amount of conservativism amongst Hispanic voters, and quite a lot amongst Asians. Gay white males tend to be, predictably, more conservative the wealthier they are; I haven't seen any numbers, but I would imagine lesbians are the same. Herman Cain certainly thinks that being rich trumps being black (he learned otherwise when he tried to challenge his own party on the "NIggerhead" thing).

In other words, as members of any minority group become successful, they tend to become more sensitive to their status as minorities, but less sensitive to the plight of the poor -- forgetting that if they were to lose their wealth, they would also lose the limited immunity to bigotry that wealth has purchased them. As I wrote about last week, Jonah Goldberg claimed that Condi Rice's presence at the RNC proved that Republicans are fine with blacks and women; but I'm sure you would agree that you don't judge the party's attitude towards minorities by how they treat the most wealthy, educated, ideologically compatible members of that minority, but how they treat the ordinary majority.

Liberal identity politics may be a right-wing term of art, but it certainly does manage to manifest itself, everywhere from the Log Cabin Republicans to the writings of Amanda Marcotte. My comments weren't directed towards working-class blacks, women, gays, and other minorities who are bolstering the union movement, but to the middle- and upper-class minorities who think that wealth has bought them an escape from class issues and are thus ignoring them in favor of focusing exclusively on identity politics. (The greatest minority leaders have always found a way to speak to the plight of minorities and the poor, who will always be the biggest 'minority' of all.)