I find this a little strange. On the one hand, I can grasp what Grim is getting at. On the other hand, it seems typical of the type of mangle you find a lot with this topic, in part because the question is so loaded. (You can kind of feel the sweaty palms that these tweets were composed with.) My confusion can be summed up in asking, if there is no such thing as a race-first person or a class-first person, and those are mere labels that get applied to people, then what are the constituent elements of the race-class narrative? Why would we preserve that frame if it refers only to two illusory fragments? I dunno.
Fred Hampton in particular had some rather choice words on racism and how it was best fought using economic and revolutionary means, such that none other than Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ) intentionally misquoted those words not so long ago.
That said, so much of "race first" really boils down to "race only!" Or "we demand more diverse oppressors!"
To me race first people are people who think races themselves (not the people in races) are units of flourishing/suffering. They seem to advocate policies that, for example, say because black people are disproportionately poor in group metrics and our racist past is a factor in that, then all black people are good targets for intervention to improve the group data whether or not they actually embody the suffering metric more common to the group. So, for example, making 10 black Elon Musks would statistically help the racial wealth gap, so this would constitute social justice. I agree more with Adolph Reed Jr., that group level data can have disparities that wouldn't exist without past racism, but it isn't like every individual in a race embodies the disparate group data of that race and shares in some metaphysical fashion the group's position. I also agree with Reed that racism wasn't the cause of slavery - white supremacy was an ideology that developed gradually to what was already in place for economic reasons. Black people were enslaved in the 16th/17th century because that is who was for sale, not because the Portugese had some desire to be mean to black people specifically. Reed has a great quote that the race people think the purpose of slavery was to grow white supremacy while class people understand the purpose of slavery was to grow cotton, sugar and tobacco and white supremacy was an effect of that.
Following on the observation that it's more of a tactical question than a values question, a way of identifying people as class-first or race-first is by looking at who within their own coalition they spend more time scolding. Bouie and Grim may in their heart of hearts have similar views on what causes inequality, how different types of inequality are linked, and what should be done to remedy them. But Bouie is much more likely to scold people for being too narrowly focused on class at the expense of race -- there's a reason why he's the resident Sanders voter at the New York Times.
“Race first” is such a perfect red herring to distract from class issues, because red herrings do exist and they do smell strongly. Classic misdirection.
"Your average Republican probably has some nominal commitment to dismantling racial inequality, even as everything their party does makes that task harder."
Sure. As the Democrats decry the Court's decision on affirmative action which ends blatant racism directed towards whites and especially Asians.
A sincere question - you noted that racism and classism are distinct, and I agree. But I have often thought that there is some linkage between the two. I would perhaps put it as the two are mutually reinforcing - that maintaining an economic system that deprives people of colour reinforces negative perceptions and stereotypes *partly* through classism.
With this in mind, might it be reasonable to posit, whilst maintaining that the two are distinct, that addressing classism might *partly ameliorate* racism?
I consider myself proudly class-first, but it seems to me the potent argument is that as long as certain aspects of our society dislike class activism because they don’t want POC to disproportionately benefit, since they are “different” and need to fix their own problems, attacking the cultural foundations of racism is the only way to build a political bloc that can effectively agitate for class changes.
Which fits right in with your title to the piece, of course, but it kind of explains why going after how people feel about race might make more sense.
(But why am I steelmanning this, we all know that the main reason for the 2020 approach is that class wars are hard but telling people that they are racist and evil is easy)
I think this debate really emerged because Bernie Sanders, the class-first left-wing candidate, performed very poorly with Black voters, and this poor performance cost him the nomination twice.
There are a lot of interesting reasons for this - you could look at why most Black voters identify as Democrats but not as left-wing, the role of Black churches in shaping voting behavior, building trades and other institutions in Black neighborhoods, the conservatism of many Black voters, and the real strategic reasons Black voters often seek to vote as a bloc.
Leftists between 2016 and 2020 ignored all of this, and instead listened to a bunch of NGO/academic types who promised Bernie could do better with Black voters if he adopted a left wing social justice platform. Bernie courted these social justice leaders, they all endorsed Warren anyway, and Warren got essentially no Black votes.
Adolph Reed points out that many of the things recited as race oppression were actually class oppression and only appeared racial if you are obsessed with proportional disparities. You see this in the woke efforts to "problematize" the New Deal (which should actually be a model for the Democratic party) and the provisions that excluded certain categories of workers - considered racist because blacks were affected at levels higher than their numerical presence in the population, but in absolutely fewer numbers. You see this in discussions of redlining where more whites were actually redlined than blacks, although not at the same rate as their population representation. You even see this in Black Lives Matter - more whites than blacks are killed by police each year, but you dare not say violent crime commission/victimization rates could possibly have anything to do with the disparity and that perhaps our real problem is we think throwing cops at the problem is our only answer to crime for everyone. When you have a high amount of colateral damage in allegedly racist policies harming white people, you gotta start to think you might actually have a class issue on your hands.
As you reference, one major problem - and the reason we have debates on sort of ancillary issues like this - is that so many “thinkers” never get to the how, or execution strategy. Some are intentionally on the grift, but many just don’t think in concrete terms, i.e., how we get from Point A to Point B.
"Even if you could eliminate all of those little vestiges of social racism (you can’t), doing so would not put a dent in the Black-white wealth gap or eliminate mass incarceration of Black men or anything of that nature. That kind of focus does, however, fit comfortably with the social expectations of the kind of educated white liberals who buy her books."
And sadly, educated white liberals tend to drive the discourse, and as a result the discourse flatters educated white liberals and does little or nothing for black people or poor people or poor black people.
It is simply pragmatic to recognize that what you “can” do is a smaller circle than,(and hopefully with some overlap with), the larger circle of what you “should” do on life’s Venn diagram. Those who focus only on “should” without allowing for “can” are useless navel-gazers. That’s most of the “anti-racists” today, except they are harmful as well as being useless.
Great point about the simple math of race vs class. You will simply have more support for class based initiatives just based on numbers….and raising the tide among the lower class will lift a lot of black boats along the way.
The problem with a "race first" approach is that it's not a question of whites on one hand and minorities on the other. It's actually Asians and whites (in first and second in terms of earnings) and then Hispanics and then blacks, hence the need to specifically single out "anti-black" racism. Faced with a complicated reality ideologues are compelled to define carve outs such as labeling Asians as "white adjacent", tie themselves into logical knots in an attempt to defend affirmative action despite the fact that Asians are probably the group most injured by racial quotas in colleges, etc. etc.
What's the class based alternative? A narrative that Income inequality is on the rise and is approaching levels that could potentially have serious repercussions for the country at large. Pretty cut and dried by comparison.
I've got an itchy blocking finger today. Please don't test me.
Fred Hampton in particular had some rather choice words on racism and how it was best fought using economic and revolutionary means, such that none other than Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ) intentionally misquoted those words not so long ago.
That said, so much of "race first" really boils down to "race only!" Or "we demand more diverse oppressors!"
To me race first people are people who think races themselves (not the people in races) are units of flourishing/suffering. They seem to advocate policies that, for example, say because black people are disproportionately poor in group metrics and our racist past is a factor in that, then all black people are good targets for intervention to improve the group data whether or not they actually embody the suffering metric more common to the group. So, for example, making 10 black Elon Musks would statistically help the racial wealth gap, so this would constitute social justice. I agree more with Adolph Reed Jr., that group level data can have disparities that wouldn't exist without past racism, but it isn't like every individual in a race embodies the disparate group data of that race and shares in some metaphysical fashion the group's position. I also agree with Reed that racism wasn't the cause of slavery - white supremacy was an ideology that developed gradually to what was already in place for economic reasons. Black people were enslaved in the 16th/17th century because that is who was for sale, not because the Portugese had some desire to be mean to black people specifically. Reed has a great quote that the race people think the purpose of slavery was to grow white supremacy while class people understand the purpose of slavery was to grow cotton, sugar and tobacco and white supremacy was an effect of that.
Following on the observation that it's more of a tactical question than a values question, a way of identifying people as class-first or race-first is by looking at who within their own coalition they spend more time scolding. Bouie and Grim may in their heart of hearts have similar views on what causes inequality, how different types of inequality are linked, and what should be done to remedy them. But Bouie is much more likely to scold people for being too narrowly focused on class at the expense of race -- there's a reason why he's the resident Sanders voter at the New York Times.
“Race first” is such a perfect red herring to distract from class issues, because red herrings do exist and they do smell strongly. Classic misdirection.
"Your average Republican probably has some nominal commitment to dismantling racial inequality, even as everything their party does makes that task harder."
Sure. As the Democrats decry the Court's decision on affirmative action which ends blatant racism directed towards whites and especially Asians.
A sincere question - you noted that racism and classism are distinct, and I agree. But I have often thought that there is some linkage between the two. I would perhaps put it as the two are mutually reinforcing - that maintaining an economic system that deprives people of colour reinforces negative perceptions and stereotypes *partly* through classism.
With this in mind, might it be reasonable to posit, whilst maintaining that the two are distinct, that addressing classism might *partly ameliorate* racism?
I consider myself proudly class-first, but it seems to me the potent argument is that as long as certain aspects of our society dislike class activism because they don’t want POC to disproportionately benefit, since they are “different” and need to fix their own problems, attacking the cultural foundations of racism is the only way to build a political bloc that can effectively agitate for class changes.
Which fits right in with your title to the piece, of course, but it kind of explains why going after how people feel about race might make more sense.
(But why am I steelmanning this, we all know that the main reason for the 2020 approach is that class wars are hard but telling people that they are racist and evil is easy)
I think this debate really emerged because Bernie Sanders, the class-first left-wing candidate, performed very poorly with Black voters, and this poor performance cost him the nomination twice.
There are a lot of interesting reasons for this - you could look at why most Black voters identify as Democrats but not as left-wing, the role of Black churches in shaping voting behavior, building trades and other institutions in Black neighborhoods, the conservatism of many Black voters, and the real strategic reasons Black voters often seek to vote as a bloc.
Leftists between 2016 and 2020 ignored all of this, and instead listened to a bunch of NGO/academic types who promised Bernie could do better with Black voters if he adopted a left wing social justice platform. Bernie courted these social justice leaders, they all endorsed Warren anyway, and Warren got essentially no Black votes.
Adolph Reed points out that many of the things recited as race oppression were actually class oppression and only appeared racial if you are obsessed with proportional disparities. You see this in the woke efforts to "problematize" the New Deal (which should actually be a model for the Democratic party) and the provisions that excluded certain categories of workers - considered racist because blacks were affected at levels higher than their numerical presence in the population, but in absolutely fewer numbers. You see this in discussions of redlining where more whites were actually redlined than blacks, although not at the same rate as their population representation. You even see this in Black Lives Matter - more whites than blacks are killed by police each year, but you dare not say violent crime commission/victimization rates could possibly have anything to do with the disparity and that perhaps our real problem is we think throwing cops at the problem is our only answer to crime for everyone. When you have a high amount of colateral damage in allegedly racist policies harming white people, you gotta start to think you might actually have a class issue on your hands.
As you reference, one major problem - and the reason we have debates on sort of ancillary issues like this - is that so many “thinkers” never get to the how, or execution strategy. Some are intentionally on the grift, but many just don’t think in concrete terms, i.e., how we get from Point A to Point B.
So many!
"Even if you could eliminate all of those little vestiges of social racism (you can’t), doing so would not put a dent in the Black-white wealth gap or eliminate mass incarceration of Black men or anything of that nature. That kind of focus does, however, fit comfortably with the social expectations of the kind of educated white liberals who buy her books."
And sadly, educated white liberals tend to drive the discourse, and as a result the discourse flatters educated white liberals and does little or nothing for black people or poor people or poor black people.
It is simply pragmatic to recognize that what you “can” do is a smaller circle than,(and hopefully with some overlap with), the larger circle of what you “should” do on life’s Venn diagram. Those who focus only on “should” without allowing for “can” are useless navel-gazers. That’s most of the “anti-racists” today, except they are harmful as well as being useless.
Great point about the simple math of race vs class. You will simply have more support for class based initiatives just based on numbers….and raising the tide among the lower class will lift a lot of black boats along the way.
The problem with a "race first" approach is that it's not a question of whites on one hand and minorities on the other. It's actually Asians and whites (in first and second in terms of earnings) and then Hispanics and then blacks, hence the need to specifically single out "anti-black" racism. Faced with a complicated reality ideologues are compelled to define carve outs such as labeling Asians as "white adjacent", tie themselves into logical knots in an attempt to defend affirmative action despite the fact that Asians are probably the group most injured by racial quotas in colleges, etc. etc.
What's the class based alternative? A narrative that Income inequality is on the rise and is approaching levels that could potentially have serious repercussions for the country at large. Pretty cut and dried by comparison.