Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
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.
Cedric Johnson dropped After Black Lives Matter into an ongoing debate between a ‘woke’ and ‘anti-woke’ left. It’s an older debate, but one running hot in the last few years. Unlike many other authors, Johnson tries, at least in some ways, to work around and between the two camps.
Not that he always succeeds. And it’s pretty clear which side he prefers (the ‘anti-woke’ side). But I think he wrote After Black Lives Matter in an effort to move the debate forward.
Let’s take a look.
Nearly a decade ago, the article ‘Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person’ appeared on Huffington Post. It dropped to much acclaim, especially among people dissatisfied by the classic Peggy McIntosh article ‘White Privilege and Male Privilege’.
The basic thought is simple enough: McIntosh comes up with lots of great examples of white privilege. But many of her examples speak more to class than race. Especially given her status as a professional at an elite private university (Wellesley) and the kinds of people she interacts with at that institution.
To the broke white person, such an article amounts to a farce. Who cares about finding a publisher (literally one of McIntosh’s examples) when you can’t even pay rent?
But let’s take a closer look.
So, I recently read W. E. B. Du Bois’s famous 1935 history of the Civil War era, Black Reconstruction in America. Like most leftists, I’ve read a million excerpts from the book over the years. Not to mention many other Du Bois texts – Dusk of Dawn is a personal favorite. But I hadn’t read Black Reconstruction until now. Let’s say a word or two about it.
Hi all – just posting briefly to wish readers a Happy Juneteenth!
For anyone not aware, the U.S. government just last year recognized Juneteenth as a federal holiday. It commemorates the ending of legal slavery in the U.S. While the official day is June 19 (i.e., yesterday), many workplaces take off the following Monday or preceding Friday when it falls on a weekend. In line with that, my workplace gave everyone the day off today.
So, here’s one of the biggest challenges on the left that I’ve been thinking about lately. We start with the core of a good idea. The idea even works well in specific situations. But then we turn that idea into some kind of Iron Law, trying to apply it way beyond its limits. The result? It doesn’t work so well any longer! I think we see this problem a lot with appeals to the notion of ‘lived experience.’
What’s going on here? What’s wrong with the appeal to lived experience?
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