Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/justice-for-all/race/page/4/)
Are identity and class-based politics necessarily at odds? Jakobi Williams answers with a resounding no, recalling a historic period when identity and class-based politics were dynamically entwined: the moment when the original Rainbow Coalition came into being. Set up by the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, the Rainbow Coalition offers an inspiring example of how identity politics can result in cross-class and interracial solidarity, rather than a fragmentation of the Left.
Built into Sikh tradition is a firm ethic of adhering to a truthful and just process—the idea that the ends do not justify the means. As a result, simply stating that attacks upon Sikhs in a post-9/11 context are “mistaken” or “misdirected” because they should be directed toward another group, Muslims, is an untenable deflection. Instead, American Sikhs walk a thin rhetorical line between declaring what we are—a group that aims to elevate the consciousness of all people to appreciate our common divinity—and declaring what we are not in order to avoid the short-term consequences of popular confusion.
Obama won by appealing to a broad swath of voters—the young, ethnically diverse, and non-affluent—who typically aren’t a part of the traditional political calculus. But he failed to garner much support among older, whiter Americans. If our political fights pit one group, one generation, or one race against all the multicultural “others,” then we all will surely lose.
The online exclusives below are freely accessible articles that are part of an ongoing special series associated with Tikkun’s Fall 2013 print issue, Identity Politics, Class Politics, and Spiritual Politics: How Do We Build World-Transforming Coalitions? Many of our most provocative articles on this topic appeared in that print issue, which is only accessible to subscribers. Subscribe now to read the subscriber-only print articles on the web (explore the table of contents to see what you’re missing!). If you appreciate the free web-only articles below, please do enable us to keep up this important work by becoming a print subscriber or offering a donation. We will continue to update this page as new web articles in this series come out.
There is value for leaders in being deeply rooted in their own primary identity group while at the same time learning how to be a fierce ally for all groups.
We need to commit revolutionary suicide. By this I mean not the killing of our bodies but the destruction of our attachments to security, status, wealth, and power. These attachments prevent us from becoming spiritually and politically alive. They prevent us from changing the violent structure of the society in which we live. When Huey Percy Newton, the cofounder of the Black Panther Party, called us to “revolutionary suicide,” it appears that he was making the same appeal as Jesus of Nazareth, who admonished, “Those who seek to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for the sake of [the planet] will save them.” Essentially, both movement founders are saying the same thing. Salvation is not an individual matter.
Neoliberalism, the broad set of ideas positing the market and market-centered values as the ultimate “civilizing” agent at home and abroad, has now structured our society for forty years. Ever since it began its gradual ascendance in 1973, we have experienced a marked increase in income inequality, witnessed the slow death of the labor union movement, and keenly felt a growing sense of anxiety. The task of the American Left has never been simpler and clearer—it’s to reconstitute the very idea of the public, in the hope that this reconstitution will generate a large-scale movement against neoliberalism.
Class exploitation and racial discrimination has diminished in popularity as an explanation for our society’s continuing social inequalities. In its stead, a “post-oppression” ideology and rhetoric has developed, which leaves “distortions” (such as race-based disparities) to the market alone to resolve.
In today’s world, our lives are systematically fragmented and our relationships are transactional. When we try to put the pieces back together, we call it an intersectional analysis. However, the heart of the matter involves more than identifying intersections between different forms of oppression: it involves healing a broken vision and recovering our wholeness.
The great promise of identity politics is its ability to raise powerful consciousness among oppressed groups of people and also build bridges among those groups. When that occurs, the results have the power to create more permanent alliances that challenge the egregious injustices that still pervade American society and politics.
To really transform our society and liberate ourselves from the capitalist ethos and transnational corporate rule that structure all of our lives, we need to listen harder and learn from those on the left who have found ways to combine identity politics with class politics and a call for a deep spiritual transformation of our society.
The killing of Trayvon Martin moved me, like so many other Black people, to my core. Americans talk a lot about “race” but are bound up in a highly specious construction of it. We need to have real discussion about our changing ethnoracial order, including religious division, color, class, and imperialism, if we are to survive as a society.
The travails of deportation will cease only with its abolition. From Dayton, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., activists are joining forces with targeted communities in the burgeoning movement to end this unjust system.
To build a world free of borders and border violence—a world where no one yells, “go back to where you came from”—we need to address the fear motivating those who would shut the door.
We are all capable of prejudice and must remain vigilant to observe and change it within ourselves. Perhaps that’s why the most repeated commandment in the Torah is to love the stranger.