Identity Politics II
Aside from merely interesting, race/ethnic or identity politics is such a curious subject — particularly as it relates to African-American and European-American relations, given the “odious history of slavery” (and all that came after) in our country. Increasingly, however, when we speak of race relations, the picture MUST be more complex than merely how it’s routinely framed; that is, I belive that when the phrase “race relations” is uttered, it’s often used as shorthand for “black and white race relations”. Of course, in many parts of the country this dynamic still holds; however, more and more, specially in our urban centers (particularly in the so-called “Blue States”), when we speak of race relations solely in terms of “black and white”, we leave out a growing numbers of Americans.
I’m a 31 year old Latino that, like many progressives, specially non-European American progressives, my formative introduction to politics and community activism was largely influenced by my early involvement in identity politics organizations (i.e., Latino student organizations). Accordingly, much of my early political consciousness was centered around the idea of Chicanismo and of bridging nationalistic schisms among the various Latino communities — so that Latinos in the US could more uniformly assert political influence. My friends and I saw the African-American activist community of the 50s and 60s as the model to follow. Now, please keep in mind that we were just a bunch of very young people looking for ways to help our community, and our organizing efforts often fell miles short of the goals. However, my friends and I all learned many important lessons.
The most important lesson that I learned from my early experience with organizations centered around identity politics was to recognize the limits of that model of community organizing. Hmmm… perhaps that’s too strong a statement, rather, I should say, personally, I found the model of identity politics organizing to be limiting. Of course, racism persists and it always will. Of course, homophobia persists and it always will. Of course, sexism persists and it always will. Of course, xenophobia persists and it always will. Why do I belive that these social maladies will always exists? Because, like terrorism, these are conditions that cannot be 100% eradicated; as long as the name of the game is access to finite resources, the need for a scapegoat will persists. But, as I tend to do, I’ve gonne off in a tangent… back to my point.
What I found personally limiting about identity politics organizing is how hard it was to abandon the old models, and to look at things anew and across communities. Now, I ended up finding the traditional socioeconomic model (nothing new about it), rather than the identity politics model, more flexible and better suited for the populist (and I hope, progressive) politics that’s just around the bend. For me, this doesn’t mean that the dialogue on race relations ends. However, I personally find the need for a socioeconomic dialogue, across communities, increasingly resonant and, too, think that this conversation would afford us a much wider net.
Let me just add: as long as the social maladies that I listed above persist, there’ll exist the need for the identity politics organizing model; and, too, as long as socioeconomic disparities persist, there’ll be the need for the socioeconomic (progressive populist) model. Therefore, it looks like those of us in the progressive community that advocate or emphasize one approach over the other, will need to collaborate, coordinate and depend on each other — just as our opposition, the corporatist and social conservatives, have done in the other side.
