At the Colors Lounge, or, The Ineffectiveness of the Left

Properly understood, these stories reveal much about the profound ineffectiveness of the modern Left:

https://www.thelily.com/how-many-women-of-color-have-to-cry-top-feminist-organizations-are-plagued-by-racism-20-former-staffers-say/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/national-organization-for-women-members-say-racism-ran-rampant

The young women in these stories take identity politics with total seriousness, and of course that’s an obstacle to working effectively with people who aren’t just like you—and with building a mass movement. For the most part, identity politics doesn’t work politically; it’s great if you want to find twenty or thirty people who share your identity and go to meetings with them forever. But beyond that?

You might say, what about Black Lives Matter? They’ve had success. But I don’t see BLM as an identity movement. They are actually an old school civil rights organization, with excellent branding and communication skills. And by “communication skills” I mean they are great at talking to the media and white people. They have laser-like focus on a few specific forms of black oppression, particularly police violence, and with a particular emphasis on using images—videos—to communicate. The photographs of bleeding Freedom Riders and of the firehoses on Edmund Pettus Bridge have been replaced by the videos of George Floyd and so many others; Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy would easily recognize BLM’s methods.

Nationalist movements—which include modern identity movements—mostly communicate to the in-group. BLM is winning because it communicates with society as a whole.

Identity groups often find communication outside the group unsettling, even shocking. And in the linked articles, the young women of color are of course shocked when white feminists push back and insist on their own identity. But that’s inevitable because identities are identities. White people have identities too, and they are free to insist on them. Your ethnic studies professors may have convinced you that white identities are racist or illegitimate—but they didn’t convince white people of that. You may believe your identity is more important than the next person’s but everyone else feels the same way, regardless of how privileged they may be. For example:

Monica Weeks knew she was taking a risk when she ran for vice president of the National Organization for Women. She was young—29 years old—and campaigning on the first all-women-of-color ticket in the organization’s 50-year history. Her friends thought the group was old-fashioned, and her mother, an immigrant from Cuba, was anxious about her taking on such a high-profile role. But recent family events, coupled with the devastating results of the 2016 election, had convinced her that now was the time to step up.

That’s how Weeks found herself in front of a sea of older white women at the Colors Lounge in Melbourne, Florida, in June 2017, addressing the Brevard County NOW chapter. Her voice broke as she spoke about what motivated her to run, and the conversations she’d had with her mother about the importance of fighting for both women and people of color.

“It’s important because we need to give a voice to those most oppressed in order to make everybody better,” Weeks told the audience, many of whom were around her mother’s age. “That’s women of color, that’s disabled people, that’s LGBTQ people.”

She was about to move on to the most relevant part of her stump speech—how NOW could help do all this—when she was interrupted by a white woman in the audience.

“White women, too!” the woman yelled.

“And then yeah, don’t forget the white women,” Weeks replied evenly.

“Just the women with the pussies!” another woman called out, in what seemed to be a reference to trans women. In video obtained by The Daily Beast, you can hear an audience member groan.

“It’s OK,” Weeks said, attempting to press on. “It is important to include all women.”

“All women!” the first heckler cried.

“It is important to include all women,” Weeks tried. “But if you don’t realize the privilege that’s been afforded to you because of a difference in color…”

“We recognize it!” the first woman yelled.

Eventually, Weeks was able to get the crowd back under control. But she says the experience made her realize, for the first time, that there were systemic issues in NOW that even she couldn’t fix.

“This organization has a problem of racism and ageism and [they] don’t know how to deal with it,” she told The Daily Beast in an interview.

“I thought when I was coming into the feminist movement I was joining this big sisterhood,” she added, “and that was the biggest disappointment in my life.”

 

If I sympathized with Weeks less than I do, I would laugh. Of course white feminists think that being an upper-middle-class woman is the same as being a sharecropper! And of course Weeks didn’t see that coming!  Her audience had probably had a drink or three each (the meeting was at a lounge instead of the Episcopal Church for a reason) and Weeks didn’t pick up on that either.

So—self-important drunks yelling “pussies” in a public place—we’ve all been there. And Monica Weeks was so well-meaning, so sincere. The parking lot was probably full of bumper stickers saying: “Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History.”

On the other hand, if this is Monica’s “biggest disappointment” in life then her parents did a great job of keeping her away from about 40% of the human race.

Lesson number one: everyone thinks they’re just as special as you think you are, and that’s just life—and identity politics. You may think your problems are part of the profound suffering of your people, and that your group’s oppression is unique—and it may well be. But other people have their own problems, and if you want them to listen, you have to find common ground. That’s not just white feminists, that’s everyone.

Lesson number two: read the room. They were drunk, Monica, drunk! At least some of them were. And you didn’t tip your hat to them—you just launched into your concerns without acknowledging the audience or its concerns.

Here’s the deal with audiences. You have to earn their respect and attention. Fortunately, it usually doesn’t take much.

Lesson number three: if you have to talk to drunks, keep it light. If they wanted a serious, heart-felt discussion, they wouldn’t have been stinking by the time you arrived.

Unfortunately, because Weeks is steeped in identity politics, and takes herself a bit too seriously, all she can see is racism and ageism. If people don’t react the way you expect, they are oppressing you—but even if that’s true, so what? You still have the problem of getting what you want, which is the post of vice-president of NOW.  You’d probably make some money and some friends, and even if it’s a hellhole it’ll look good on your resume. And best of all, you might get some valuable work done.

I’m having fun with Monica Weeks’ experience at the Colors Lounge, but there’s a serious underlying issue in these articles, besides the obvious and severe limitation of seeing everything in terms of identity politics.

I once went to a talk by Robin Morgan, who presented a vision of a socialist feminism, in which there was a clear path to reconciliation with men. This was 1969 or 1970, in Austin. And yes, that was a long time ago in terms of a human life span, but kalpas ago in terms of feminist ideology. (And I’m aware that Morgan herself has followed a winding road since then.)

“Socialist feminism.” First, why did she use that adjective, and second, whatever happened to that concept?

She used the word “socialist” because she had actually thought about what feminism would mean within capitalism, and had rejected that possibility. What were her reasons? I don’t know, but she might have figured that capitalism would inevitably absorb or “co-opt” feminism and make it part of the capitalist system.

Let’s go back and re-read that last sentence again.

NOW and all feminist groups I know of decided to accept capitalism long ago, at least implicitly. And in fact NOW is basically an organization for middle-class or wealthy women who want to eliminate gender barriers (to their own success) and not touch the class system or anything else. Educated white women have somewhat lower status and earnings than educated white men, and they want to fix that. And that’s fair enough as far as it goes. But is that as far as we need to go?

Do we believe that there are NOW members who are racist? That sounds strange at first—they don’t seem like the type—but then think about the context. If you accept capitalism then you accept billionaire capitalism because that’s currently the only game in town. If you want to “break the glass ceiling” then that will only happen—if it does—if you completely adopt the values and habits of billionaire capitalism, in other words, if you are socialized to it. Otherwise, you’ll only get promoted by mistake.

You have to accept the on-going concentration of wealth, the divisive and paralyzing class structure I discussed earlier, unchecked climate change, murderous policing policies and a complicit criminal justice system—plus the denial of any system of values not based on money or power. You can’t have a religion or a philosophy, you can’t care about the Constitution or the ideals of the Enlightenment. It’s okay if you believe you have a religion, as long as you never ever act on any of its precepts—what Jesus said about the camel can never darken your inner monologue. And you have to support existing hierarchies wherever you find them.  (Once in a while, for branding purposes, you may have to pretend to care about something other than your own career. This is still consistent with capitalist socialization.)

If you can accept all that and nevertheless believe that feminism can accomplish anything valuable inside capitalism, then okay—have at it. You might get promoted and break that glass ceiling. Maybe you can buy a castle in Spain or endow a chair in the Women’s Studies department where you went to college.

And that will help the rest of women how? (I won’t even mention the human race as a whole.)

So okay, there’s no sisterhood, at least not at NOW. And that “support existing hierarchies” requirement implies that you absolutely cannot care what happens to poor people, or homeless people, or people wrongly convicted of crimes.

Or women who can’t afford to have children, or who can’t get good daycare if they do. Or women who need a good union and a good husband and don’t have either.

And if you have an employee who is young and dark-skinned who tries to talk to you about the plight of women of color, systemic racism, privilege, marginalization, and all that? You might want to listen, but you are required to support existing hierarchies. You may not feel like a racist, but you will act like a racist.

This is what feminism within capitalism looks like. It’s not a matter of personalities; it’s an ideology. If you uncritically accept capitalism in its current form, you are also accepting a hierarchical class system. And that means you will talk down to poor or non-white employees because that seems like a completely normal thing to do.

Now, if the acceptance of capitalism had been reasoned out and explicit, then it could have been precisely defined.  For example: “We accept the productive and innovative aspects of capitalism, but we reject billionaire capitalism as a political movement, its class structure and its de-humanizing policies.” And that would have been reasonable and honest.

But you don’t break any glass ceilings with that sort of talk; billionaire capitalism is an all-or-nothing proposition.

As for my second question, what happened to the concept of socialist feminism? The answer is simple: if NOW has been co-opted by billionaire capitalism, then that’s that. They aren’t going to discuss some alternate reality in which that didn’t happen.

In terms of policies, NOW is still largely focused on the ERA. Of course any interns they hire—of any ethnicity—are likely going to question why the ERA is more important than policing, the health issues of black women, gun policy, or any one of about fifty different issues. And that’s not just true of young people; I have trouble understanding that myself.

Now, if you believe that the only problem women face is job and housing discrimination due to gender, then I suppose that a focus on the ERA would make sense. But you can’t say that about most women in America. Would the ERA guarantee health care to all women? No, of course not. It would only guarantee that women wouldn’t be denied healthcare because of their gender, a rare or non-existent event.

There is nothing in the ERA that will prevent further concentration of wealth and power, that will improve education or allow young people to start families and get good daycare and so on. It might help women get equal pay for equal work—if it were enforced, and under any conceivable Republican administration that won’t be the case. And what that means is that you can amend the Constitution all you like, but billionaire capitalism won’t be bound by the Constitution if it doesn’t want to be.

How did NOW end up in this trap? The founders and members were and are mostly sincere and meant to do the right thing, as they understood it. You might say they are an elite movement and dismiss them, but that’s historically naïve. The Enlightenment itself started out as an elite movement, and groups like the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood have benefitted people far beyond their own membership.

The problem with NOW is that it was founded on a nationalist model; no universal or socialist message was ever articulated. Because of this nationalist model, they were forced to discuss problems that are unique to women. So they talk about the health problems of women, even though: (a) the health issues of men are closely correlated, e.g., heart disease, cancer, obesity; and (b) universal coverage with a focus on preventive care would help both genders.

This feminist approach implicitly concedes the argument in favor of overall reform. If you complain, for example, that male doctors tend to ignore female patients (and I don’t dispute the fact) without pointing out that the medical system itself isn’t working—as evidenced by our declining life expectancies—then you’ve effectively changed the subject from a tragedy to a detail. We’re no longer discussing a public health catastrophe; instead, we’re talking about rude doctors.

And this problem is inherent to identity politics, not just feminism. Social problems that affect everyone are divided up by their effects on identity groups, and in the process general solutions—meaning fundamental change—get ignored. By always reducing the scope of every discussion of social problems to their effects on a particular identity group, we inevitably end up consumed with trivialities. Instead of advocating for a convenient, inexpensive, carbon-neutral transportation system, we kvetch about “man-spreading.”

The Left is stuck on identity politics. Is there any form of oppression that isn’t primarily racism, sexism, transphobia, etc.? I think many Americans would say no—if it doesn’t hurt a specific group, it’s not oppression.

But what about the following issues?

1. Climate change. We are seeing devastating storms, floods, fires, and soon enough crop failures.
2. Loss of democracy. There is gerrymandering, voter suppression, foreign interference, and anarchic campaign financing.
3. Loss of science. Our best tool is being undermined by billionaire capitalism.
4. Declining life expectancy. This started with working-class whites, but now it’s affecting the entire population.
5. Declining birth (and marriage) rate. Economic pressure and health problems are keeping young people from starting families; Americans are a species going extinct.
6. Opioids
7. Benzodiazepines and suicide.
8. Trans-fatty acids
9. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
10. Obesity. Doctors all over the country are handing out diets to patients. Let’s try outlawing HFCS and trans-fats and see what our obesity rate is then.
11. Unsafe processed foods
12. Micro-plastics in the food chain. These are potentially catastrophic endocrine disrupters.
13. Homelessness. It would take FDR or LBJ two or three years to make significant progress on this problem.
14. Pervasive dehumanization. All of our oppression involves a denial of the value of human life. This dehumanization is “pervasive” because it affects everyone.
15. Social Despair. Mental health issues, drug addiction, suicide, crime, belief in conspiracy theories and a denial of social obligations.
16. Mass shootings.
17. Hollowing out of Christianity. One of the worst crimes of billionaire capitalism is its corruption of organized Christianity. Almost every church is now a Church of Trump. Where are people supposed to go for Christ’s mercy and empathy?
18. Loss of antibiotic efficacy. We have fewer and fewer antibiotics that actually work. The drug companies aren’t investing in developing new ones.
19. Loss of public health discipline. The covid-19 pandemic has proven that the United States cannot deal with any sort of serious public health challenge—unless we have the permission of billionaires, which we don’t.
20. Loss of manufacturing. To take the tools from the hands of American workers was a terrible moment in our history.
21. Social Media and isolation. Social media has paradoxically resulted in more isolation, alienation, and hatred.
22. Loss of contact with nature.

I realize there’s a some overlap on these issues, but I wanted to drive home the point that NOW and that ilk—other identity movements—are doing blessed nothing about any these problems.

And the majority of these issues lead directly to death, to the despair of a human soul in its last moments. And we are talking about tens of millions, perhaps billions of deaths. Take this list of problems as a whole, and we face the end of our civilization.

Racism and sexism did not cause any of these issues; all these are down to billionaire capitalism.

If identity politics could stop billionaire capitalism, it would already have done so. Identity politics can often spotlight specific oppressions, but it can’t find root causes or even general patterns. It can’t see the forest for the trees.

The grocery list of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia and whatever all else assumes that our society is basically fair and just—-except to certain groups. And that is simply false. Our system is profoundly destructive to the entire human race.