The “Woke” Discover Racism

 And in doing so, immediately disregard any and all issues of social class, or classism, in favor o “identity politics” racial essentialism, and deride any and all serious attempts to inject socio-economic class into the discussion of race and racism as nothing but “class reductionism.”  As if merely being black, or Latinx, or another person of color, no matter what one’s class standing, wealth (or lack of it), influence (or lack of it) or power (or lack of it) automatically made one a “spokesperson” for the whole of the community on issues of race, racism, power, influence, wealth, or any and all else.  Thus, a black college professor at an elite university, or a grad student, is automatically an expert on how the black poor and working-class experience race, racism, and all other matters sundry to these.  For there is no class difference in the communities of color, all are essentially in the same boat because of allegedly “lived experiences,” don’t you see?  And when people such as retired black professor and socialist activist Adolph Reed, Jr. try to point out the non-truth of this, and note pointedly that “racial solidarity” has often been but a get-out-the-vote ploy to win support among masses of ordinary working and poor people for an essentially middle-class, professional-managerial political and social agenda, they are vilified in no uncertain terms as—worse than an avowed Uncle Tom!

 

But socio-economic class is real, and so is societal stratification because of it.  People of color are not all “essentially in the same boat” anymore than white people are.  It is indeed as the Preamble to the Constitution of the radical union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) put it, “The working class [i.e., those who work for the rich and powerful, whose labor turns the wheels of, and makes the goods and services that arise from, capital and the means of production] and the employing class [i.e., the rich and powerful, the owners of capital and the means of production]  have nothing in common.”  Except to be bound together in continual struggle against each other, no matter how individuals within both such groupings may subjectively feel otherwise.

 

This lack of commonality was vividly brought home a few years ago on an iconic video that appeared on the Internet, where a Latina woman employee of McDonald’s confronted the African American CEO of McDonald’s at the stockholders meeting, and vociferously agitated for a $15 an hour Living Wage for herself and her fellow employees, and the African American CEO had her arrested and thrown out of the meeting by the police!  A very clear case of socio-economic class trumping any form of racial essence, may I point out!  An African American CEO of a corporation such as McDonald’s no more has the desire to pay the employees a Living Wage any more than a white CEO has!  It is simply—not—in their class interest, no matter what “identity” as a person of color might “indicate.”  In today’s largely integrated equal-opportunity, workplaces, it’s not uncommon to have managers, supervisors, bosses over one, who are black, or Latin, or women, or intersectional:  Yet how many ordinary employees in such workplaces can specifically say they benefit because their manager, supervisor, boss, is a “fellow” person of color, or a “fellow” member of one’s gender, and thus is not a—boss—in the usual sense?  To ask the question is to answer it; and the answer is, overwhelmingly, “It makes no difference!”  Why?  Because of the social position of the boss, an alienating power over the worker, not at all because of the accident of race or gender.  An insight which is but an updated understanding in this age of “identity” of that which was noted long ago not only by Karl Marx, but those first who tried to organize their fellow workers into trade unions!  Which explains why the “ideal” spokesperson for the race or gender as a whole (most of whom, overwhelmingly, are ordinary blue- and white-collar workers) is simply not some lawyer, or politician, or grad student, or whatever, who is not of the ordinary working class him (or her) self!  Something at the heart, by the way, of what Adolph reed, Jr., says, or his son Touré Reed says, or other alleged “class reductionists” say!  Yes, class does matter, and it infuses the whole of social structure.  The Haves differ greatly from the Have-Nots, even if the Haves and the Have-Nots are of the same race, or gender, or share a common intersectionality!  The Ruler is simply “not essentially” the same as—the Ruled!

 

The only good fallout (but it’s only a paltry one) from this obsession of the “woke” over racism to the detriment, dismissal, of class has been to broaden somewhat our understanding of class in notably the U.S., but throughout the capitalist world, to include gender and racial components in the working-class’s composition.  We of the left no longer have as much the conception of the “working class” as predominantly comprised of white males.  We of the left are now more consciously aware of the role racial minorities, marginalized groups generally, and sexual divisions play in the working class’s composition.  But this seeming “slight” of women and minorities in the working class was only implicit, an oversight, rather than a conscious manifestation.  Simple truth is, the vast majority of minorities and women in the workforce are ordinary blue-collar and white-collar workers forced to sell their labor power (in Marxist terms) in order to make a living (or somewhat alternatively, their education and skill sets to qualify for selling certain more advanced forms of labor power to the employers).  Overwhelmingly, they are not, decidedly not, of the professional-managerial class, nor are they business owners or business executives; nor, even if they own some stock, are they major stockholders.  They are as “ordinary” a part of the working class are supposedly “privileged” white workers, and thus share a class commonality with them—something leftists have pointed out all the ways back to the days of the Communist Manifesto, even if racism among whites has obscured this commonality ofttimes—to the detriment of the working class as a whole, black, brown, yellow, red and white, male and female, gay and straight alike!   Racism and sexism is thus not a “white privilege” that benefits white male workers to the detriment of non-white, non-male workers, it is but a form of false consciousness (to invoke an “archaic” term our left has wrongly forgotten) that works to undermine white and male labor as well as colored and female labor.  It is an injury to all.  Period.

 

Further, if racism were still as ubiquitous as the “woke” maintain, then the whole of the Civil Rights Movement has been—in vain!  However, 2021 is not 1962, important progress and gains in equality have been achieved, and, as Bernie Sanders has emphasized, while much still needs to be done, much has already been accomplished.  No, we are not an equal society yet; but we are far less unequal than we used to be.  Progress has been made.  And prominence for blacks and Latinos, for example, is no longer confined to athletes and entertainers.  In fact, so much progress has been made that hidebound white supremacists in political office and on the Supreme Court now work assiduously to roll back these gains in equality achieved!

 

But this is something the “woke” don’t seem to see.  Nor do professional anti-racists such as Robin DiAngelo of Ibrahim X. Kendi.  But it bears emphasizing once again:  this is not 1962, this is 2021, and much has positively changed!  And denying that it has is only an ostrich-with-head-in-the-sand outlook.  Worse.  The “woke,” completely lacking a positive program to combat this supposedly ubiquitous racism that’s all around us, can only retreat into a pursuit of secular sainthood and shaming, calling out “racism” everywhere, even it can be ascribed to mere inadvertence, and developing a form of what can only be called a Manichean Christianity filled with sin, but offering no forgiveness.  Thus does the strident call for “racial wokeness” only increase resentment, undermine self-reflection and changing of attitudes, and inhibit the very anti-racism the “woke” demand.  Truly it is counterproductive to create enemies where there are none—but that is precisely what today’s “woke” seem to be aiming for.  And, sadly, succeeding, at least partially.  To the detriment of all of us, black, white, brown, yellow, and red; male and female; gay and straight alike.  An effective “divide and conquer” approach that’s the envy of many an anti-union employer faced with a working-class unity against him!  (Or her.)           

Fondly Remembering the Solidarity Books Collective

 

They were known fondly, but also, sadly, hostilely, as “The Kids.”  They, the Solidarity Books Collective, were comprised, when they formed in 2001, as a group of feisty young anarchists ranging in age from 17 to 25.  Some were Indianapolis homegrown, some had come from out-of-state to take jobs here.  Their great ambition was to form a nonsectarian left bookstore in Indianapolis, which they did—Solidarity Books, on Indy’s South Side.  And from the beginning, they were regarded hostilely by the “respectable churchgoing progressives,” who comprised what passed for a left here in the justly named IndiaNOPLACE.  As I was alienated from these “churchgoing progressives” already, I was naturally drawn to the Collective by the very hostility it generated.  My first exposure to the Collective came when I overheard Harry Van Der Linden, a pacifist philosophy professor at Indianapolis’s Butler University and then President of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center, the political home of the “respectable churchgoing progressives,” indignantly complaining to the two leading “churchgoing progressives,” Ron and Jane Haldeman, how the Solidarity Books Collective had the temerity to ask Van Der Linden’s son, a teenager same as others in the Collective, to give $70 toward making the bookstore a reality.  A whole $70!  (But that’s typical of cheapskate Indianapolis—I had encountered it many a time as a writer here, people telling me, “I love what you’re doing!  Where’s my free copy?” with the emphasis on “free,” as though everything just grew on trees!)  Right then and there, I just knew I had to check out the Solidarity Books Collective.  I wasn’t in the least disappointed when I did, met them, and from the beginning regarded them as a fine bunch of young radicals of whom more were needed in IndiaNOPLACE.

 

They formed their bookstore, Solidarity Books, and kept it alive even after having to relocate it, then having to relocate it again, changing the store’s name to Paper Matches, and worked long and hard to keep it alive, despite its being deliberately boycotted by the “respectable progressives” due to the young Collective’s open espousal of anarchism, and its frequent non-pacifist rhetoric, even though the Collective’s members themselves were all de facto nonviolent and highly democratic, welcoming, and inclusive.  Certainly at first.   Further, they took Solidarity Books’ non-sectarianism seriously by stocking its shelves with a wide range of offerings for sale.  (Later, frustrated and beleaguered by the “respectables’” slighting of its efforts, the Collective became more specifically, more hegemonically, anarchist, and stocked the bookstore’s new titles exclusively with offerings from anarchist AK Press.)  Frustration, and with it, sectarianism, had set in, as the Collective grew beleaguered and chagrined by the deliberate sabotage of what they were trying to do by the “respectables,” and by 2005 they’d all left, in anger, frustration, bitterness and resentment.  Meanwhile, what remained of the left in Indianapolis only grew older and more hidebound, and lost all attraction it had once had among Indianapolis’s young.  Yes, a fatality engineered by the “respectable churchgoing progressives,” who just couldn’t stomach anyone not calling himself (or herself) a Christian, a “spiritual person,” or religious.  (The members of the Solidarity Books Collective, same as I, were overwhelmingly atheists.)  Or possessing boldness, which the Solidarity Books Collective had.  But they were gone by 2005, killed off by “churchgoing respectability,” a “left” form of it that differed only from the right-wing version of it by whom they considered “fellow respectables.”  Their “respectables” were Democrats, as opposed to the others’ Republicans.  But that was the only major difference.  Rather than embrace the Quaker principle of “Speaking truth to power,” I’d suggested to the Solidarity Books Collective, which heartily agreed with me, the “respectables’” approach was, instead, “Begging ‘Pretty please’ from power,” which, I really believe, sums up the whole of the “political approach” of Indianapolis’s “respectable churchgoing progressives”—a group not nearly so much pacifist with a “c” as they were passive-ists with an “i-v-e,” when they weren’t being outwardly passive-aggressive!

 

Needless to say, Indianapolis, one of the Top Ten cities in the U.S. by population size, thus lost its chance to have what nearly every large city has, a prominent left bookstore.  Now it has no independent bookstores, only national chains, and the chief source of left books in Indianapolis is ordering them online.  All because Indianapolis, through its “respectable churchgoing progressive” denizens, insisted on being moored down by “respectability” first and foremost, thus ensuring that Indianapolis would resemble, and remain resembling, despite its growth and gentrification, a city more out of a Sinclair Lewis novel than anything else.

 

Which is a prime reason why Indianapolis has not, nor ever has really had, any kind of serious left movement, let alone any left movement of any notable size.  But it’s always had “respectability” of a shabby middle-class sort.  A “respectability” borne of—not being anything of consequence!