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[...] Why IââŹâ˘m not an ally - Bitch | Lab “…I think it might be a bad idea to simply label yourself ally or to even label the work youââŹâ˘re doing ââŹĹally work.ââŹÂ Why does a white person get to say that about themselves? You know? It also sets up this sort of superiority thing…” (tags: caucasian white whiteprivilege ally oppression racism anti-racism) [...]
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[...] But to bring this around full circle with the original discussion, should these feelings exclude me from movements designed to combat racism? (And we can ask the same question regarding experiencing internalized sexism as a feminist.) I certainly believe in the equality of races and the underlying superficiality of race, but can I still be an activist (not simply an “ally” [more discussion here]) when I can’t reconcile my own deeply internalized racism? Like Tom said, we may be able to eradicate most of these feelings from our conscious thought patterns, “but they’ll always be there in the background,” lurking in our subconscious and leading us to snap judgments (implicit associations?) we might not make if we were fully aware of them. [...]
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You raise many valid points here. What strikes me hardest is the notion that one might get a thrill out of ally work. It’s something I hadn’t really thought about before. I don’t have a problem with the notion of ally work or being an ally if it’s sincere (and that’s another question). I find the term and the ideas behind it quite usefull. I’m reminded of the idea of Bill Clinton as the “first Black president.” It bugs the shit out of me. Clinton can be an ally to Black people, but he was NOT the first Black president. Or to make it personal, I consider myself a feminist ally, but not A feminist (see Chris Clarke, I agree with his take on the matter). So, while I think you raise many good points about the use of the term ally, I’m not sure how else one can get across the idea of solidarity without crossing into more ugly realms of appropiation (right word?). In other words, how does one express that one stands in solidarity with the working class, women, or people of color, yet also acknowledge that one is not working class, a woman, or a person of color and therefore can never fully understand where said person is coming from?
Geez, I feel like none of that made sense. I think I need to think through this some more.
I’ve never actually called myself an ally, I’m realizing. I just mostly think–support, self-educate, do what you gotta do.
I mean I feel strongly about trans issues in particular, I realize, for my own reasons which i haven’t quite worked out–but i don’t feel the need to label myself, especially.
just a friend who takes interest, i guess.
…and I get what you’re saying about class. I think you’re absolutely right that it needs to be addressed more rigorously (again), among “allies,” among all of us.
i know for me it feels really fraught.
in a weird way, i think, the “appropriation” thing is why i’ve never called myself a socialist–i have really stinky associations with middle-to-upper-middle-class (even by derivation) people who start going off about “the workers” this and that. (and i don’t mean people using it in the sense of “anyone working for a living,” i mean peple fetishizing blue-collar workers and doing the “downward mobility” thing and constantly policing each other for signs of decadence and…)
oh. yeah. Belledame. See, that’s why I can’t be an ally, too.
The class thing — it’s not the same dynamic as race. Nor even gender. It’s a completely different framework.
There is nothing you or I or anyone can do that would comprise a comparable set of practices — as described by changeseeker — that would contribute to the end of class.
It won’t fix poverty. it won’t fix relative poverty.
And it’s another reason why I dislike the framework: people who pick up on it then transpose it to discussions of class — and I want to pluck my eyeballs out!
again, that will be opaque. and i’m not sure how to change that other than make you believe what I believe. and I’m not interested in that!
How can one not return to an issue of class when discussing racism and sexism in America as both these groups, women and blacks, have been in a position of being owned by the dominant culture, which is white and male? I think both are inseparable from class.
Just my two cents and I readily admit that much of what you discuss here is way out of my league!
Please don’t pluck out your eyeballs, B | L?
I guess maybe I don’t understand what you mean when you say “ally work.” When I read this: “ally work ainââŹâ˘t gonna go far without an analysis as to the causes of racism” - I thought, “well, why the assumption that no one who calls themselves an ally is analyzing the cases of racism?”
Here’s what I’d like to see more of:
a starting assumption that human beans, as a species, if not each and every individual, have more or less the same equipment and the same capabilities, for good and for ill.
and holding to it rather rigorously, even through similarly rigorous examinations of the realities of institutionalized (racism, classism, sexism, homophobia).
otherwise it’s way too easy to drift into, if not actual essentialism, a form of reification; and that includes the misty idealization of “the proletariat” that, perhaps inevitably, cropped up.
…in other words, i guess: digging into territory that would tend to be classified under philosophy or psychology. “how do people actually work?” as individuals, in groups?
sounds good, Belle, but what does it mean?
who doesn’t do this for you?
This is the sort of thing I feel awkward discussing with folks who’ve read more relevant material than I have, but here goes:
Ever since I read Foster’s Marx’s Ecology, which went into some detail about the importance of Epicurean materialism, I’ve been wrestling with the idea that there’s an opposition between an ethics based upon individual desire and an ethics based upon abstract duty, the former materialist, the latter idealist and therefore illusury.
There’s a widespread idea, more or less Kantian, that following abstract duty, being altruistic, is morally superior. I reject that idea. Among other problems, if you think you’re a good person because you sacrifice your own desires for the common good all the time, wouldn’t you resent others for seeking their own desires instead of sacrificing themselves? That seems to lead away from, rather than towards, compassion and solidarity.
On the other hand, humans are social creatures, and our individual needs are met socially.
So, “What’s in it for me?” is not just the cynical question it’s usually made out to be, but can be the basis for real compassion and solidarity, based on an honest assessment of your own needs and desires.
You should be able to answer why it benefits you if your ally succeeds in a struggle.
While socialism comes most directly from the struggles of the working class to meet its needs, socialism would benefit nearly everyone in the long run. Other classes have a harder time perceiving that, particularly since struggling for socialism in the long run can undermine their class interests in the short run. But you don’t have to be working class to perceive socialism to be in your own best interest.
Have you read anything by Frans De Waal or Robert Trivers? Both talk a lot about the notion of “reciprocal altruism.” I actually wrote about this a little way back in January on my own blog. Essentially it’s the idea that no “true” altruism can exist and that everything is based on give-and-take, even if the benefits to the “altruistic” party are only potential future benefits. So I agree with you that it’s not so cynical, and I would even go as far as to argue it’s the most natural and honest human expression.
To reduce things to completely biological terms, we’re essentially all in it for ourselves. Natural selection operates on the level of the individual and not the group, so it makes sense that we’d place ourselves first. The reason it’s important we look out for others is because - as you mentioned - we’re social creatures and we’ve gotta maintain a functional society in order to maintain ourselves.
Another neat little tie-in back to socialist ideology is De Waal’s concept of the “floating pyramid,” which is kind of a weird concept/analogy, but bear with me:
Our ability to do charitable work starts first with ourselves, that’s the top point of the pyramid. Below that is family, then community, etc. etc. until the sphere of influence grows larger - that’s the whole pyramid part. And the floating part - well, that’s where it gets a little strange, but it makes sense - is where your own resources are. If you only have the resources to take care of yourself, that’s all you can do, but the idea is to extend outward as far as your capabilities will let you.
This is reciprocal because, if everyone were to practice this, there would essentially be a trickle-down effect of charity. Or a kind of “pay it forward” thing, if you’d rather leave out the Reaganesque phrases. By extending charity, we raise the available resources of the underprivileged and then they in turn can extend the reach of their altruism. When the status of the underclass is elevated, everyone’s status becomes elevated, because then the underclass is more capable of helping elevate others.
Part of the problem with De Waal though is that he doesn’t offer a biological explanation as to why we ought to do this, but it seems to me that the benefits would be pretty apparent.
Recently I was involved in a campaign to stop young muslim women wearing a hijab being excluded from French schools. One such young woman asked me in the course of this why I was doing it. Of course to me it was obvious why I was doing it, because I had been involved in long intricate debate on the matter, which split the French left down the middle for nearly a year, but it suddenly struck me how odd my behaviour as a non-muslim adult could seem to her.
But I was not an “ally”, I was fighting for freedom of speech, of thought, of religion, against racism and therefore for greater strength for the class of wage-earners I am a part of. When right-wing politicians were going on about the sacred values of the Republic being threatened by hijab-wearers, I couldn’t forget that I was fighting against the very same Republic, the imperialist state, its cops, its enforcement of social inequality, etc. and that I could be next on the list barred from public services, jobs, etc.
For working class people (and that’s most of us by far, whether we work in factories, call centres, shops, or offices), fighting racism is not about being a nice person it’s about strengthening our side against our ennemies.
Since you mention whiteness, I’m going to mention Sharon Smith’s excellent critique ( http://www.isreview.org/issues/46/whiteness.shtml )
A clear understanding of the articulation of class and race is crucial. I must say I can’t help but notice the very brief mention of the question of wages in Alcoff’s text and then with the idea that the problem is that corporate culture “continues to use racism and cultural chauvinism as an excuse to pay people of color far lower wages by undervaluing what is actually comparably challenging or even more difficult work.”
Er, companies don’t pay their employees depending on their ideas or on how much they “value” the employee’s work. They pay them always *as little as possible*, (given the job market and the level of class struggle).
Speaking of which, some facts to always keep in mind re the fact that racism is bad for people who have to work for wages :
“Indeed, as Shawki points out of the 1970s, ââŹĹIn a study of major metropolitan areas Michael Reich found a correlation between the degree of income inequality between whites and Blacks and the degree of income inequality between whites.ââŹÂ23 The study concluded:
But what is most dramaticââŹâin each of these blue-collar groups, the Southern white workers earned less than Northern Black workers. Despite the continued gross discrimination against Black skilled craftsmen in the North, the ââŹĹprivilegedââŹÂ Southern whites earned 4 percent less than they did. Southern male white operatives averagedââŹÂŚ18 percent less than Northern Black male operatives. And Southern white service workers earnedââŹÂŚ14 percent less than Northern Black male service workers.ââŹÂ24
Racism against Blacks and other racially oppressed groups serves both to lower the living standards of the entire working class and to weaken workersââŹâ˘ ability to fight back. Whenever capitalists can threaten to replace one group of workers with anotherââŹâpoorly paidââŹâgroup of workers, neither group benefits.’
Thus, the historically nonunion South has not only depressed the wages of Black workers, but also lowered the wages of Southern white workers overallââŹâand prevented the labor movement from achieving victory at important junctures. So even in the short term the working class as a whole has nothing to gain from oppression.”
Alcoff’s husband, Larry, is a huge union guy. I mean huge in: he worked his ass off when I knew him. She comes from a long marxist tradition. She writes in certain ways to the audience, and as a philosopher. She can’t really write as an idealogue and expect to get published.
———
But i have to ask: I think this is all obbvious — why ending racism matters to individuals, even if they aren’t the targets of racism directly.
The thing with the “ally work” movement, critical whiteness studies, race traitor, etc. is that some portions of it have been quite explicitly hostile to Marxism and socialism. They have seen those attempts fail and they’ve seen them as pretentious fuckwits who have merely used race and fighting against racial interest to serve their own ends: building solidarity among the proletariat.
thus, some portions of this approach to racism have little use for all of these marxist claims about workers,etc etc.
we are indeed in it for our own good and for an ulterior end and thus we aren’t true allies because, on this model of thinking we are making themistake of privileging class struggle.
i’m not saying all proponents are like this. Clearly, as Alcoff’s article points out, it’s not the case with all
What I will say, though, is that most approaches the appeal to your typical white person of middle class or upper middle class background, is not going to be talking any blather about workers, class, etc.
hence, not surprisingly, if you look at the blogs for whom ally work matters, you will find zip having to do with class analysis and a lot more to do with discussion of class as status, if there is anything at all.
I find that a dissappointment, of course, but not at all surprising.
marxism, socialism class analysis is not appealing to people in the US. people have been beaten over the head since they were born that it is anathema. that it didn’t work. that it is dead.
bla bla bla.
gotta get to work.
Amber — good question.
they are. i just see a disconnect. on one hand, it’s acknowledged that racism is structural — that it’s unintentional. otoh, the focus is almost always on what individuals must do to change it and, thus, end racism.
thus, my complaint is that, while there’s lip service paid to the fact that racism is a structural system of oppression, the solutions offered don’t address structure.
e.g., i see racism deeply tied to capitalism — in its origins, for instance, for one set of reasons and in its current instantiation for yet another set.
but, for ideological reasons, i think folks who do ally work shy away from class analysis — and when I say that,I’m signaling a marxist class analysis where class is about exploitation (not social status).
someone like bell hooks or angela davis doesn’t shy away from that at all. it’s very much a part of their thinking. but in its current form what is often called “intersectional analysis” of race, class, gender is often focused on the epiphenomenol experience of what’s it’s like to be a member of an oppressed group.
the focus is thus delimited and ignores the structural aspects as to _why_ racism and sexism and class society exist.
I talked about it a bit, here:
“Oppression: It’s a process, not a product”
Ah. Makes perfect sense.
I agree w/ you - I see this kind of problem in a lot of areas. I see people - well-intentioned people who sincerely want to work to ease social problems - working on what are essentially Band-aid solutions or operating on a top-down approach. That kind of stuff can have an effect to a degree, but for fundamental change to occur there has to be a culture shift from the bottom up.
Amber — reminds me of your post yesterday, on the logical fallacy embedded in “get over yourself”.
what i’m not clear on, though, is top-down v. bottom-up.
>Who doesn’t do this for you?
Present company excluded…
I dunno; I clearly need to do a lot more reading in both actual Marxism and post-Marxist theorists before shooting off my mouth here.
but i have this impression that for the old-school Marxists I’ve known as well as the various progressive schools of activism that don’t particularly address class, as you say, there’s this…I want to say, externalization? to a degree that I don’t think is…
egh.
I’m entering talking-out-of-my-ass territory here, clearly.
but, like, okay, this here:
>To reduce things to completely biological terms, weââŹâ˘re essentially all in it for ourselves. Natural selection operates on the level of the individual and not the group, so it makes sense that weââŹâ˘d place ourselves first.
…so, we’re still talking Darwin; modernism.
but more to the point, atomism. reductionism. materialism, yes. the world that Marx came out of.
I guess I’m looking for something more…holistic.
I could talk better about what I mean wrt say movements within psychology, spirituality, even medicine.
wrt political analysis…I guess I’m just not aware of an approach that really takes on both the reality of the individual and the notion that there are interlocking systems/the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that -clicks- for me.
like i say: talking out of my ass at the moment, mostly.
Trying to force change on a group of people from above, vs. the change coming from the ground up. E.g., the Supreme Court ruling that public schools couldn’t be segregated ultimately doesn’t do much to change individuals’ feelings of racism. It is a step in the right direction - but it doesn’t mean racism has been eradicated.
Hmm, I feel like I’m not doing a good job explaining this. Myab eit’s ’cause I feel guilty for procrastinating at work! Anyway, perhaps I will comment again later and come up w/ a better description!
I don’t think it’s a reduction to talk Darwin and evolutionary biology. It’s a remarkably encompassing field if you really dive into it. If you’re willing to buy the fact that we’re all essentially animals and products of our environemnt, you can explain quite a bit through terms of how we interact naturally/biologically - social interaction is an extension of our biological nature, a city can be a “natural environment.”
Holistically we’re all part of a larger social organization. It eliminates differences of class/race/gender when we see each other all as equal products of the same species, and it makes it easier to work together to eliminate inequities caused by those largely superficial differences.
so, but, okay, what I’m saying here is really: it’s not so much that I don’t see assumptions about human nature and even metaphysics undergirding most of the sociopolitical theories I’m best familiar with–clearly, they’re there, and often spelled out–it’s more that I think I don’t agree with a number of those assumptions.
what I am also thinking of at the moment: the sort of breakaway and work that was started by Reich. who I think was also a product of his time, which is what ended up discrediting and eventually killing him (his attempt to explain in quasi-scientific-language what these days is generally talked about, if at all, in other terms–the “orgone” thing, primarily).
like i say: you tend to see his influence more on certain schools of psychology these days. (along with Jung, even less obviously) the idea of the bodymind; the idea that there’s such a thing as shared energy. Gestalt and later “transpersonal.”
but apart from a handful of sociopolitical theorists like Lipton and in some areas like environmentalism, where the notion of interlocking systems has clearly been key for a while, I don’t see much of this in current–well, like i say, i’m not nearly as up on current theory as i should be. and in activism: well, in just these past few years we’re starting to see people take new tactical approaches based on the whole “netroots” thing; and as such, I think that’s great. but it isn’t enough, clearly.
just struggling to articulate why i *think* it seems like the loosely-defined left keeps going around in circles. sure, class is a big elephant in the living room in the States. and sure, there’s been corruption and laziness and cowardice.
but i don’t think that’s all of it.
we need new ideas, or at least new syntheses of the old ones.
I’m not saying toss Darwin and evolutionary biology out the window, clearly. I just…aggh. over my head.
and/or: I realize I’m heading in a direction which is probably gonna lose a lot of people here, and is an area I’m still very wary of talking about in much detail given how much it’s been abused.
…but, she said, still dancing around, let’s throw existentialism into the mix while we’re at it.
Please talk, though, Belledame.
I can’tunderstand what you’re saying if you don’t. I suspect there’s plenty of overlap, given the bits of what you are saying. But I can’t tell how much I’m imposing on what you’re saying.
So, Bitch Flame Gun: On — to anyone who gets out of line if Belledame takes the time out to enlighten us. Y’heeeyah?
Flame Gun ON!’
LOL
yeah, second B|L, I’m curious to where you’re going - you’re hinting at things but I’m not quite clear and I don’t want to say more without knowing, with risk of sounding like an ass and making claims about what you’re saying when you’re not really saying/thinking it at all.
Anyway, what I mean, I think I probably don’t disagree with you but I can’t know ’til you say it.
well–a couple of things.
first of all I’m going -nod- to BL talking about the solutions in anti-racism not addressing the structural level–and I’d extrapolate from that to most of what’s become of leftie activism.
And I -think—correct me if I’m off here–but I think I hear you saying that besides your frustration with the inattention to class/economics, which is, as you say, a particularly U.S. thing for a bunch of reasons, and is a problem in itself–I’m hearing echoes of what I know is Tony Kushner’s big theme: that Marxism/socialism provided a structure that allowed for revolutionary change in a way that nothing since has (except, I think, fundamentalisms of various sorts. and nihilism, I guess: the anti-structure).
…and going back to fundamentalism, I think there’s a reason why a lot of people turn to it instead of socialism. and now I really wish I had the Reich quote I wanted here, because it’s relevant. basically a quote within a quote: the gist was that the reason the National Socialists won was because they hit a deeper chord that the leftists weren’t able to touch. there’s also a remark to the effect that it’s ironic and sad, because the makings of what would’ve been necessary were right there in dialectics, if people’d actually used them properly.
Reich himself came up with something that was heavily derived from Freud, of course…
…but I’m drifting again, circling the airport.
bluntly, this: I think what’s been termed “spirituality” and has by and large been the province of institutionalized religion has been missing for a while.
Spirituality is a loaded term, and I’m damned if I know an adequate way to convey my own feelings on the subject shorthand…
and i think part of -that- has to do with the mistrust of organized religion (and rightfully so) among many folks on the loosely-defined left, in which tradition i find myself and my family and many of the people i admire.
but i also think that simply excising the supernatural from the equation did not begin to address a whole bunch of baggage from monotheism, and the idea of the Father, and the idea that the body is somehow shameful, and dualistic good versus evil, and…
and, back to the fascism/fundamentalism question: I think that that “deeper chord” hasn’t been addressed or well articulated for quite a while; and that whoever can do that first and better is gonna lead the next revolution.
…and I realize that’s still only about one quarter articulated, because that’s as far as I’ve gotten, pretty much.
I find myself groping for a spirit-infused structure that somehow stays free of dogma and reification.
am also thinking–Lipton has a book called the “Protean Self,” which i need to reread. somehow i found it less accessible than his more dire ones about apocalyptic cults. which probably says something.
-Lifton.- fuck. i gotta eat.
More later, Belle, Bryan, and FO. One thing I think is going on is differences in how we think about and what we mean by ’social structure’.
I don’t mean government or the supreme court.
and as for religion, I always like the whole quote from Marx:
While it’s easy to see that as an insult, what Marx means is that there is a demand or impulse in us that senses the alienation we experience and turning to conventional religion was an attempt to redress that alienation — only to have it all too frequently leave us just as alienated and deluded about the real problems — what really causes our alienation from one another — the lack of wholeness.
basically, Marx wanted us to create a world where our capacities for reason and our need for human freedom were realized. in such a world, it wasn’t that religion — spirituality wasn’t necessary — it was, rather, that in such a world we would actually “cull the living flower” and that, to me, means realize that longing, enjoy it in the here and now, etc.
if that makes sense.
more later, though.
and thanks. much appreciated.
but more on that later.
Belle, hate to bring thins back around to Darwin yet again, but I’ve got a lot to say on the subject, haha. I apologize for never having precise references/quotes for these sorts of things, but I’m blogging from work and don’t have access to my bookshelf here, so I’m going mostly on memory.
Larry Arnhart has a book called Darwinian Natural Right where he talks about evolutionary biology through an Aristotelian lens. He lists twenty basic human desires, one of which is “religious understanding.” You can take this as either a desire to explain the unexplainable, etc., or as an example of genuine spiritual presence, that which you say is absent from lots of organized religion. So I think there is room for a lot within this conception, and I know you not directly addressing that idea and I’m soryr I keep coming back to this if it’s bringing the discussion off track, but I think it’s a good way to conceptualize the system of social interactions that go on.
And B|L, do you want to address what you do mean by ’social structure’ if not gov’t, etc? When I think social structure, I think social behaviors/interactions between individuals that form the core of society, which then branches out via extension into larger scale structures like government and such, but those are just extensions (and often corruptions) of the basic interactions that we all have. Representative, but not quite - which is why we have lots of different governments and social structures despite similar underlying brain chemistry and adaptations - no one gets it quite right and its hard to reconcile the intricacy of social interaction/structure with one overarching structure. Hard to find something representative of all experience.
(But is anything representative of all experience? I always find it ironic (?) when I start talking about universality and similarity and how we’re all the same when one of my favorite quotes ever is the one from Eve Sedgwick: “What if the richest junctures aren’t the ones where everything means the same thing?” So much focus on “we help our brothers/sisters/rhetorical allies because we’re all the same” etc. but when it comes down to it the beauty might really be in the differences we have and things we don’t share. It’s like “God is in the details,” to bring the spiritual aspect back into things. We might all be essentially related [literally too, via common ancestor maybe even 2000 years ago] but the things that bring us together and we should appreciate may just be the things we thing separate us?)
B|L, your last big paragraph reminded me a little of the Tao - or I suppose any idea of omnipresent spirituality. Living in the moment, etc.
This was dashed off too quickly, so apologies for anywhere I don’t make sense. I’d hate to be one of those rambling types that never gets anywhere you see all too often, but I figure we’re all pals here and you can put up with a little nonsense once in a while that I may not get away with elsewhere :)
have you read much Maslow, BL?
I think you’re right about Marx himself–and as you’ve pointed out a number of times, that “opiate of the masses” quote always gets taken out of context–but still I think it’s not a coincidence that the best-known interpretations of his work contain the notion that religion belonged properly on the scrapheap of history.
which is a notion i still hear with reasonable frequency among people with whom I share a number of political beliefs.
and part of this is, again, the rebellion against the corrupt and oppressive institutions of organized religion;
but also, and this is what i was groping for before: we’re still dealing with the influence of mechanism and Descartes.
Cartesian dualism posits that there’s the human mind/soul, and then there’s everything else, essentially dead matter.
which is the attitude you still see more or less in fundamentalist monotheism; a lot of implicit assumptions spring from this and influence, I believe, conservative politics, msot visibly in what’s become of the Republican party. there’s actually a philosophy of sorts at work here; it’s *not* just mindless greed and corruption. it explains a lot about why the dire need to address the environment doesn’t seem to get through to these people: it’s just ours to do what we will with, innit?
so with materialism you take away even the mind/soul business; now everything’s…well, material.
which attitude in and of itself of course does not have to connote a lack of vitality or meaning or “soulfulness.”
but you couple that with the Industrial Revolution and the result is, regardless of whether you still buy the Sky-God exemption or not, an understanding of the universe as a machine, more or less.
which, again, doesn’t have to connote grinding gears and steel and mindless automatons: material mechanism and rationality are the major cornerstones of the Enlightenment. art, science, all that good jazz.
even at its best, though: is all of that enough, is always my question. the Apollonian worldview, basically; in Jungian terms, everything that doesn’t fit that frame gets cast as shadow.
and which I submit is one huge part of what keeps leaping us to bite us in the ass, at least this past century or so.
This is an excellent discussion, and some very important points that have been made. I have ambivalent feelings about the concept of “ally work.” Let me start by sharing a story.
When I was in grad school we had anti-gay backlash on the UCONN campus. The Rainbow Center passed out pins to people who wanted to support the center. One said, “ALLY” with a rainbow on the pin. The other said, “Gay Rights=Human Rights.” I purposly didn’t want the Ally pin because it felt to me that the subtext was, “hey I’m not gay.” So I chose the other pin. While I understand the idea that not being in an oppressed group makes it difficult to understand fully, etc. But I think the concept of ally can unintentionally reinforce the social divides.
Other Random Points
1) On the issue of social class, poverty, and capitalism. For my part it is intentional that I rarely talk about these issues, and I am most definitely doing so in response to the margialization of racism studies in my discipline. In sociology there are countless books on the intersections of race and class. In fact, this has been the sort of primary way that race has been discussed in sociology here in the US. The race vs. class debate is huge. I have had several Marxist who have mimized my work arguing that intermarriage is not an important topic because it doesn’t deal with the labor exploitation that working class Blacks face. When it comes to oppressions, the heiarchy in critical sociology definitely places class at the top. So my minimal engagement with class is partly a to let these Marxists know that the exploitation of labor is one of many ways that racism works. I don’t dismiss class. I have whole chapter in my dissertation that deals with the ways that the intersections of race, class, and gender affect family approval of IRs. And personally, I think it matters profoundly, and I definitely feel like I need to include more.
2) On structure–you are very right about structure. It is virtually impossible to explain structure in a concise sort of way, and I have been grappling with this tremendously in my blog. Because when I write for a popular audience. I have the tendancy to erase this sort of analysis, in part because I know people are so used to the dominance of psychology. The language of social structure, which is so key to the sociological perspective, gets lost. I recently thought about adding a post based on the lecture I do on micro, meso, and macro perspectives to address this sort of problem. That is a sort of problem that really needs to be addressed.
I guess those are the main points for now.
I often hear “totalitarianism” used as some simple synonym for “authoritarian,” when I think it’s intended as a slur against the dialectical concept of totality, which is terribly important. Belledame, when you talk about wanting a more holistic approach, I think you may want to consider whether what you’re looking for is a totalizing theory — like Marxism. Again, I have to recommend Foster’s “Marx’s Ecology.”
B|Lab, I find I use that passage from Marx a lot in arguing against elitist atheists who insist everyone religious is an idiot, before I go on to explain how religious movements have often pursued progressive ends. ilestre’s comment is a good concrete example both of that, and of the point I’d just made abstractly.
Speaking of concrete examples, I was just reading about how even the secular left in Lebanon and in the Middle East generally supports Hezbollah, as principled fighters against their common oppression. This is significant, given how much of the liberal left in the US and Europe treats Hezbollah as if they were simply reactionary religious fanatics.
“Few people bother with class analysis and the examination of exploitation.”
Now that is true, but that is what social workers do every single day. Most people don’t want to be social workers, because it doesn’t pay much and the work is quite hard.
>I have the tendancy to erase this sort of analysis, in part because I know people are so used to the dominance of psychology. The language of social structure, which is so key to the sociological perspective, gets lost…
thing is, psychology shouldn’t necessarily have to mean “individualistic, no greater cultural contexts” either.
my thing is that the personal is the political is the psychological, pretty much always.
…will check out “Marxist Ecology,” thanks for the rec.
off of the “twenty needs,” and back to both psych and uber-structure, then: I’m also thinking about Maslow, here: the idea of the hierarchy of needs as well as the idea that in fact the primary “goal” (as well as one can define it) for us critters, both on an invidual and collective level, is not in fact simple survival and reproduction but an attempt to become more fully conscious.
but also the notion that if your basic survival needs aren’t being met, chances are excellent that you’re not gonna be thinking much about the so-called higher needs.
which I think is fairly well acknowledged.
what I think is less talked about is the possibility that in fact the idea of “moving on” might be -scary,- not just blocked by practical difficulties and conflicting needs (on the macro level).
…I wrote about this idea more extensively here:
http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.c.....-back.html
I think psych can be connected to structure, but in practice modern psychological is much more micro in it’s analysis and it rarely makes the connection with social structure. The starting point is almost always the individual aor in some cases a small group.
There is a perspective called the social structure and personality view in sociological social psych., which unfortunately doesn’t overlap much at all with psychological social psych. It’s like these two groups don’t even communicate with each other.
Seems a shame, doesn’t it? I wonder why.
I was in therapy for years, and I think it became useless mostly because my therapist was in denial about class issues. My impression was that I was her only client who wasn’t, like her, a middle class professional, and she seemed to believe that it would take only a small effort on my part to become one; so, she focused on my refusal to do so as the main problem, and wouldn’t discuss my emotional issues in a realistic matter.
I suspect that a lot of practicing psychologists are like that, and I’ve heard there’s a tendency for trained psychologists to flee social work for better paid careers as therapists. That would doubtless contribute to a tendency to fail to take issues of class and social structure fully into account when dealing with individual problems.
I’m gonna have to come back tomorrow and read this thread of comments really carefully. It is so chock-full of juicy goodness! I haven’t seen a “conversation” this interesting to me in light years. And it’s right on time, too. I’ve been trying to get fully engaged in writing a chapter on race for my book on capitalism and I just couldn’t seem to get my brain to focus. I’ve been stuck two pages in. But I think this discussion is exactly what the doctor ordered. (Thank you, Universe. I so needed that!)
Far from feeling attacked on any level, BitchILab (I still get surprised coming across my “name” unexpectedly when reading a post on a blog I respect), I’m delighted to have helped to provide a springboard for a topic of crucial importance. For the record, I used the term “ally” for the post in a generic sense, meaning (as Kevin suggested) standing in solidarity with people of color while never being able to fully understand their experience of life and where they’re coming from.
I have, needless to say, been hashing the nexus between race, class, and gender for at least fifteen years, but, personally, I don’t think race and gender are subsumed under class. I mean, even in a “raceless” society, class would still exist (apparently), but at the same time, at least at the present, even a rich “Black” doctor is still a “Black” doctor. I do believe that race and gender are both separate constructs utilized ruthlessly by capitalist class interests for the purpose of the exploitative accumulation of wealth and power.
I also agree that “allies” (particularly when they are new at it) inappropriately chase and relish the rush of feeling “one” with people of color or workers or whoever. And I agree with Rachel that wearing an “ally” pin (for example) can become an advertisement of disavowal. For that express reason, even looking like I look, I still choose to challenge my students to identify me as African-American or European-American (based only on my looks and how I sound and carry myself). They invariably become loathe to do it the minute I challenge them to do so. I also often speak of “people who look like me” and receive the benefits of privilege (rather than “European-Americans”) because race is a socially-constructed, political notion, though culture is much, much more complicated.
In any case, however, I’m not prepared tonight to say anything further because I’m winding down and don’t have the mental acumen for it, but I will be back–to read, consider, print out, and comment. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to see this. My chapter may get written after all once you all make me better understand what it is I feel the need to say. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And good night.
[...] Why IââŹâ˘m not an ally - Bitch | Lab “…I think it might be a bad idea to simply label yourself ally or to even label the work youââŹâ˘re doing ââŹĹally work.ââŹÂ Why does a white person get to say that about themselves? You know? It also sets up this sort of superiority thing…” (tags: caucasian white whiteprivilege ally oppression racism anti-racism) [...]
just to say that I’m busy today, but hope that space iwll open up to say more.
i think we’re all on the same page — Rachel, Changeseeker, and I — when we don’t want to privilege one analysis over another.
I think ilestre and I got into a tense conversation about that with regard to feminism and why I’m not a marxist feminist, but a socialist feminist. :)
And I do struggle with the way Marxists tend to dismiss race/gender analysis, but I think I come out of an entirely different tradition in sociology, Rachel. Marxists who do ethnography would have no problem with what you do and would, in fact, applaud it.
I’m only familiar with the atittude you speak of re: old time Marxists I meet on discussion list — but they wouldn’t understand or want to indulge in _anything_ that smacked of an individual-level analysis where the focus “appears” to be on epiphenomena. Dogmatic.
If Gar Lipow’s reading, he will laugh to think how, for years, we’ve been having the same argument with certain marxists about the neeed to define a professional-managerial class and to outline the way cultural norms uphold and shape such a class.
FO actually laid it all out once in comments at Punkassblog, as to how one can incorporate class analysis without necessarily privileging class. It was in our discussion of radfems and my argument that they have a “merely dialectical” conception of social change. ( a notion I stole from Roy Bhaskar’s work on Berger and Luckman’s theory of the rel. between self and society.)
Alas, I’m rambling and running out of time.
Must get to work.
>I have, needless to say, been hashing the nexus between race, class, and gender for at least fifteen years, but, personally, I donââŹâ˘t think race and gender are subsumed under class. I mean, even in a ââŹĹracelessââŹÂ society, class would still exist (apparently), but at the same time, at least at the present, even a rich ââŹĹBlackââŹÂ doctor is still a ââŹĹBlackââŹÂ doctor. I do believe that race and gender are both separate constructs utilized ruthlessly by capitalist class interests for the purpose of the exploitative accumulation of wealth and power.>
Works for me.
wrt the “ally pin” thing–yeh, I see that even more so with stuff like the “straight but not narrow” buttons.
i understand that for the most part it’s well-meant, but it’s always been mildly (just mildly) irritating to me.
I mean, I understand the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t business with not wanting to appropriate on the one hand, not wanting to disavow on the other; and i don’t want to be in the position of putting well-meaning people into a double-bind because of my own remaining…stuff.
otoh, i think actually wearing a -pin- that says “straight but…”–as opposed to casually outing oneself as being in a het relationship when asked–makes me think, sometimes, perhaps uncharitably, “I’m here to support you, but please don’t hit on me!”
I’d like to think I was on to something, but I’m not sure what comment of mine you’re referring to, and the argument you say you made doesn’t sound familiar.
I’m a bit concerned, as it seemed above that you were disagreeing with ilestre about Marxism, and ilestre’s coming out of a political tradition very similar to mine, and frequently refers to material published by my socialist group. I believe my arguments are Marxist, so I’m left wondering whether I went off track somewhere, or whether I managed to stumble upon a novel insight.
I’m not sure what’s meant by “privileging” class. I’ve heard that used in the crude claim that Marxists believe that sexism, etc., will just magically evaporate after the revolution, so there’s no use in worrying about it now. (To be fair, I run into self-described socialists and Marxists who make such claims now and then, and I make a point of going for their throats, figuratively speaking.)
I understand class as the fundamental structural principle of our society — and I see all forms of oppression as forms of class oppression.
Sexism will not magically go away magically after a socialist revolution any more than Beirut will magically be rebuilt after the IDF pulls out. Of more immediate importance is that socialism cannot be achieved unless a struggle against each form of oppresion is part of the struggle for socialism, both before and after the working class takes power.
Recognizing the centrality of class is strategically critical. A movement against any form of oppression will have to confront the class system. The trouble is, in any political movement, the middle class will rush to the front, and try to bring the whole thing to a complete halt. The insidious thing in the contemporary US is that the middle class succeeds in doing this almost before there even is a noticeable movement. While it’s possible to find allies in other classes, it has to be understood that making cross-class unity a matter of principle means condemning a political movement to defeat.
[...] But to bring this around full circle with the original discussion, should these feelings exclude me from movements designed to combat racism? (And we can ask the same question regarding experiencing internalized sexism as a feminist.) I certainly believe in the equality of races and the underlying superficiality of race, but can I still be an activist (not simply an “ally” [more discussion here]) when I can’t reconcile my own deeply internalized racism? Like Tom said, we may be able to eradicate most of these feelings from our conscious thought patterns, “but they’ll always be there in the background,” lurking in our subconscious and leading us to snap judgments (implicit associations?) we might not make if we were fully aware of them. [...]
Well, I finally muddled my way back here only to take copious notes and find, of course, that there’s no way in hell I can begin to find the time to write a comment that would touch on even a fraction of what this thread made me think about. A few things I want to throw out there, though, way too simplistically:
*on ilestre’s story about assisting Muslim women in their struggle for an education in France, when I was neck-deep in the prison abolition movement in the 1970’s, prisoners used to ask me why I was “involved”. I said, if a power structure can remove all the rights of any group in a society, it can remove all the rights of any group in the society.
*on the question of how the socially-constructed, political notion of race was developed/defined and has then been maintained, Stuart Hall’s theory of race as the “floating signifier” is interesting.
*Cynthia Cockburn in In the Way of Women suggested that it might be more interesting, helpful, and to the point to turn away from spending so much time examining the struggle of women (e.g.) and start focusing more on what men do/how and why they do it in the effort to hold women down.
*Belledame, where did that Marx quote come from? I love it too, too much!!!
Changeseeker — I first read the quote from Marx in a big fat book on feminist criticism of religion — when I was in my trying to find religion stage. :)
Later, I’d read it from Marx directly in the introduction of Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
there are different translations and I’m not sure which one this is, but it always stuck in my head becasue the feminist text used ‘cull the living flower.”
Which puzzled me b/c the only thing I understood cull to mean had something to do with “cull potatoes”.
So I scratched my head and said, “huh?”
LOL
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to the book you’re working on, so I hope you keep us up to speed. Please?
Thanks, B|L. It’s a great quote, for sure, and one I will mull over for some time. My favorite Marx quote of all time (despite the fact that he was apparently only writing about half the population–snark!):
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” (from the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852)
As for the book(s) I’m working on, I hope to see four books sold to publishers in 2007. After which I want to start traveling about, blithering to crowds. :^) Or maybe I’ll just sit home in my jammies and blog all day long (anybody else read “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster?)