<
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/why-we-write/459909/>
"Black poverty is fundamentally distinct from white poverty—and so cannot be
addressed without grappling with racism."
Social exclusion works for solidarity, as often as it works against it.
Sexism is not merely, or even primarily, a means of conferring benefits to
the investor class. It is also a means of forging solidarity among “men,”
much as xenophobia forges solidarity among “citizens,” and homophobia makes
for solidarity among
“heterosexuals.” What one is is often as important as what one is not, and so
strong is the negative act of defining community that one wonders if all of
these definitions—man, heterosexual, white—would evaporate in absence of
negative definition.
That question is beyond my purview (for now). But what is obvious is that the
systemic issues that allowed men as different as Bill Cosby and Daniel
Holtzclaw to perpetuate their crimes, the systemic issues which long denied
gay people, no matter how wealthy, to marry and protect their families, can
not be crudely reduced to the mad plottings of plutocrats. In America,
solidarity among laborers is not the only kind of solidarity. In America, it
isn’t even the most potent kind.
The history of the very ideas Johnson favors evidences this fact. At every
step, “universalist” social programs have been hampered by the idea of
becoming, and remaining, forever white. So it was with the New Deal. So it is
with Obamacare. So it would be with President Sanders. That is not because
the white working class labors under mass hypnosis. It is because whiteness
confers knowable, quantifiable privileges, regardless of class—much like
“manhood” confers knowable, quantifiable privileges, regardless of race.
White supremacy is neither a trick, nor a device, but one of the most
powerful shared interests in American history.
And that, too, is solidarity.
An interesting article, but the above quote really is a vital point. "White"
isn't actually an ethnicity; it's just "not one of them". See also this
article by Marc Randazza:
<
https://popehat.com/2016/02/08/marc-randazza-why-we-need-white-history-month-too/>
The same is true of our cultural definitions of "manhood", defined as "not
feminine". And bless the Bronies (and others) for rejecting that.
Via Susan Stone.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
