Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Race (Page 11 of 12)

These are posts on race from the blog Base and Superstructure. Race is one of the most important issues of political and social power. Topics include the relationship between race and class, racism in the United States and the rest of the world, and the relationship between race and political movements.

Stamped from the Beginning

September 16, 2018 /

stamped from the beginning

Ibram X. Kendi is Professor of History and International Relations and Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D. C. Most of his work covers 20th century racial justice movements, from the student activism of the 1960s to current activism. He’s the author of the recent book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

Stamped from the Beginning is rather sweeping and ambitious. Kendi places the entire five or six century history of racist thought into a consistent historical narrative. He also takes steps toward assessing the relative importance of racist ideas to American life. The project is historical, sociological, political, and philosophical.

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White Women and Trump

August 29, 2018 /

Contemporary racial justice movements often focus on white women as both ally and enemy. They’re both lead consciousness-raiser and target of activist opposition.

On the negative side of the ledger, white women have bolstered the Jim Crow system. See, e.g., Elizabeth McRae’s Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy. They call the police on black people for going about their everyday business. See, e.g., Permit Patty and BBQ Becky. They strategically use emotions for racist impact and sometimes engage directly in violent assault.

These issues, of course, aren’t new. The case of Emmett Till is the usual case study when talking about historical precedents.

On the positive side of the ledger, white women often make up most of the audience at racial justice events. This is especially true at ‘Racial Justice 101’ events. They are also at the front lines on any campaign for racial justice within white-dominated economic or social spaces, such as workplaces or schools.

The reasons for this are complicated. But one common theme is that racial justice organizers, particularly black and other POC organizers, tend to perceive white women as simultaneously a group harmed along one axis of oppression (i.e., gender), which gives them a certain empathy for oppressed non-white Americans, but also advantaged along another (i.e., race), which provides them with incentives to bolster white supremacism. The accuracy of this perception is an issue I’ll set aside, though I think it’s accurate enough to proceed.

This all brings us to Trump. There’s overwhelming inertia, within this broader discussion of race, to place Trump’s win at the feet of white women. Outlets from the New York Times, to the Washington Post, to Emily’s List, to the Huffington Post, and the Huffington Post again, have all pointed to this group as the decisive factor in electing Trump.

How could white women vote for this man who abuses and insults women of all races? How could they vote for a misogynist?

So, why did white women elect Trump?

*Drum Roll*

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ta-nehisi coates

Between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Touré Reed

August 23, 2018 /

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a compelling writer.

He works at the crowded left-liberal intersection, where we can find so much phooey. But Coates’s work isn’t phooey, which vaults him to the upper ranks of this crowd. He brings something new, I think particularly (though not exclusively) to white audiences.

I recently read We Were Eight Years in Power. It’s a collection of Coates’s essays from The Atlantic, placed into a common narrative. The common theme of Coates’s essays is black power and white backlash. This post is about his book, and I’ll include some page numbers in case anyone’s interested in following along.

But it’s not just about Coates’s book. I think it’s worth reading Ta-Nehisi Coates alongside one of his hardest-hitting critics internal to black political debate.

Coates is probably familiar to anyone in intellectual or political circles. But who’s Touré Reed?

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mistaken identity

Mistaken Identity

July 2, 2018 /

There’s a big market out there for hot takes and sober literature challenging ‘identity politics.’

Many an ill-conceived book and article has been written on the topic.

I addressed some of this in one of my opening posts by drawing a distinction between identity politics and identitarianism. I still think this is very useful.

But I’ll admit to being a little crotchety on these issues. I’ve never had a high tolerance for nonsense, and whatever tolerance I’ve had in the past is declining. So this isn’t going to be a post about Mark Lilla’s Once and Future Liberal (it’s likely he never was). It isn’t going to be a post about “We are the Left” (they’re mostly a group of liberal or centrist Democrats, not leftists).

This is a post about Mistaken Identity, a book by Asad Haider!

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economic anxiety

Economic Anxiety and Trump’s Base

June 25, 2018 /

The New York Times recently reignited the debate on whether Trump’s base was motivated by something called ‘economic anxiety’ or something else. This something else is variably ‘racial anxiety,’ ‘status anxiety,’ or some other anxiety based on an identity term or sociological term.

The NYT cites status anxiety in the article linked above, while 538 argues for economic anxiety. Different conclusions, same framework.

I think the quick story here is that the social science research underlying these conclusions flows from many nice, tidy distinctions that can be studied empirically. These distinctions facilitate research, but may not map particularly well onto the actual world.

I’m looking at three questions in this post: Who in the world would do something as vile as vote for Trump, or, alternatively, who is most important to Trump’s base? Why would they do such a thing? And how does ‘economic anxiety’, or other forms of anxiety, fit into this picture?

I think we can approach these questions from a few angles.

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