Black Lives or Blue Collars

Image source: 4plebs.org

The American Left was driven to choose: Do we support the Black Lives or the Blue Collars? I do not mean the blue collars of the police, but those of working people and of those who are desperate for work. Do we attempt to reduce the founding sin of slavery, which resulted in Jim Crow and persistent racism and police brutality, or do we build a more equitable nation for all of the 99%? This is, essentially, the battle that was fought in the Democratic primaries of 2016 and 2020. For better or worse (and I think for the better), that battle has been decided in favor of the Black Lives. Any attempt to undermine that decision at this point is a historic mistake.

Progressives will doubtlessly make the case that it was the white collars that really won. Maybe so, but progressives failed to convince the Black community of their case. Joe Biden was carried to the nomination by the Black vote. The same was true of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton also won their nominations, in part, because of women’s votes. So too, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton won with older voters. Though a discussion about the Hispanic vote may be interesting (Sanders did well with the Hispanic vote), the image of the Sanders supporter is largely White, male, and young. Furthermore, though this is not from the data but from personal experience, the image of the Sanders supporters was young, white men who were combatively sure of their correctness.

Below the fold, I discuss why progressives are getting the short end of the political stick, and why - for now - they deserve what they get. Essentially, racism is not what they think it is. Beyond that, however, I discuss what progressives can do about changing their behavior to be more politically and socially effective. In short, it is about doing more community and fewer polemics.

Hate in Time of Corona

Image source: The Jewish Star

We are living through the summer of our discontent. Plague and prejudice. They may be the worst of times, perhaps in some future it’ll be seen as the best of times – the time when history is made, hopefully for the better. In this disease-ridden election year, there seems to be more than a little hate to go around, and it seems like the time to think about the dynamics of that hatred.

Portland, until recently my beloved home, is ablaze. Or, at least, there is a downtown park that I used to ride my bicycle through on my way to the university, where there have been standoffs between the federales and protestors. What is striking is that the protestors are ostensibly engaging with the police on behalf of the Black Lives Matter movement. That the federales in question are supposed to be US Border Patrol agents detached from their mission of hunting illegal immigrants, puts the matter of immigration as part of this flareup. However, Portland is an odd place for a ‘race riot’, given that Portland is not particularly well endowed with a vibrant black community as I had the pleasure to experience in San Antonio.

That, I think, is the point. The people of Portland, as I know and love them, stand on the side of Black Lives as well as undocumented immigrants, not at all out of a direct connection with them – out of sameness with them - but out of solidarity with them. They are being their brother’s (and sister’s) keeper. Bless them for that.

My more cynical sociological side, however, suggests that it is mostly out of the identification of their common enemy, the Trump Administration and the nationalist/rural/conservative population that provides the administration with its political foundation. My reading of conflict theory is best described by the ancient adage, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. What is animating the solidarity of Portland is not a mechanical solidarity of sameness. Nor is it what we emotionally would like it to be, an organic solidarity of people embracing their differences.

Below the fold I explore the dynamics of a non-materialist conflict theory. I look at the question of ‘why they hate us’, Russia, and the propaganda of the golden shower. The point of it is to consider how these identities live in our minds, but have real-world consequences. The particular labels attached to the identities may shift and be renamed, but the conflicts that underwrite them are much more structural. The point is, by opposing one another, we strengthen the solidity and solidarity of those we oppose. Each material victory of one party is a ‘moral victory’ of the losing party, and so it goes on.

Culture and Identity: Not the Same Thing

People talk about their ‘cultural identity’. It is a very powerful concept and people are prideful about those so-called cultural identities. That pride, however, creates alienation and gets in the way of a deeper understanding of human dynamics. It exacerbates our current problems in the world.

Unfortunately, talk of ‘cultural identity’ creates nationalist narratives, even among those who look at culture in an attempt to understand and sympathize with others. In so doing, it can make ‘others’ of people who on many other levels are similar – thereby alienating those people from ourselves. It also blends together two very different concepts – culture and identity – that operate by different dynamics, at different rates of change.

A Matter of Identity

Over the period of the last seven years, I have become increasingly impressed with the power of identity – ergo the title of this blog. The big revolution in my thinking came by learning that the notion of identity is a paradoxical one. Identity is not the definition of what makes an individual unique, but the groups to which the individual belongs. In complex societies, people may become more unique by having a unique selection of groups to which they belong. Yet, the more complex a person’s identity profile, the more latitude they may have in terms behavior deemed appropriate for them, but the more that they and the people around them become confused as to that person’s place in society. That confusion has consequences.

I am an American; I am a Dutchman. I am an intellectual; I am a manual worker. I am a man; I am a feminist. I am a serious thinker; I am a gamer nerd. Etc.; etc. These descriptions are labels that define me as being together with other people who carry those labels. None of these are actual opposites, but they do hint at paradoxes. They trigger stereotypes and expectations of behavior. As an American I’m expected to be a loudmouth braggart. As a Dutchman, not so much. As an intellectual, I’m expected to inhabit an ivory tower removed from reality; as a manual worker, I’m expected to not think, but do. As a man, I’m expected to be masculine; as a feminist I’m expected to be feminine. As a thinker about serious things, I’m expected to not like playing games with plastic spaceships.

People like to have their expectations met. It helps them orient themselves in the world. Disturb that too much, and people start to dislike you. Expectations also help people know what to do with you, and if you confuse that, they don’t know what to do with you – and as a result – have no use for you. More consequential still, this is not only true of other people: it’s true of ourselves as well. We also need guideposts to our own behavior and place in society. Somewhere between our own expectations of ourselves, and others’ expectations of us, we negotiate that place in society. If these expectations are too confused – within ourselves as well as with others – then finding and negotiating a place in society is troubled.

On Nationalism

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of nationalism. Left-wing and centrist thinkers generally fear that this is a throw-back to the ugly past of the early twentieth century. Cosmopolitans deride the movement as a reaction of the rural and white working classes who are too unsophisticated to understand the bigger picture. They are wrong.

Nationalism is still on the march, and it is too powerful a force to break. People hoping to improve civilization should not attempt to do so. Instead, they should embrace nationalism and civilize it.

Nationalism is not some primordial force that has existed since the first people divided themselves. It has not been on the wane since people discovered reason. Nor is it a movement that came and went as an ugly byproduct of industrialization or capitalism. In the nineteenth century it represented the widening of solidarity among the common people. I argue that it still does – and that this is a good thing. Only a small sliver of humanity considers all of humanity as their nation. Most people in the world have a dominant attachment to some – usually smaller – group of people (e.g. family, tribe, town, sect). We are a social species, with our primordial origins being in the ‘band’ of hunter-gatherers. On balance, growing solidarity with ‘the nation’ still represents a broadening of solidarity, not a retrenchment.