Description:

In this time of blatant white supremacy, leftist social movements feel under-resourced, fractured, and on the defensive. While identity politics and identity based organizing have been critical to winning material gains for specific groups since the Civil Rights era, is it time to think beyond identity politics in our organizing and movement spaces? What does (and has) identity politics offer(ed) our social justice movements more broadly, and specifically here in political climate of the Bay Area? In what ways do our identities inform our political engagements, and how have identity politics stifled or ignited our willingness to engage in outside struggles? Given what is at stake, where do we go now?  

Suggested Readings and Listenings:

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

  • EMDR therapy has been personally relevant in sorting out individual instances of gendered violence vs broader narrative of gendered messaging that I’ve adapted to; the therapy has been weird and infuriating
  • Situationally being in the Bay Area and having anti-racist work, especially for white activists, being a requirement to gain access to political community, which makes sense, also feels different than any other place that I know of; different discourse around race and oppression
  • Since 2016, seeing the way that identity politics and class reductionist Marxism are being used, feeling confused and trying to figure out what to do that feels right as a way to use my time and energy
  • Went to DSA in 2016, thought “wow there are so many white people here, maybe I should be here”, and it didn’t seem like is was worth my time
  • Have seen leftists who claim to be very radical to be articulating politics that seem pretty authoritarian, saying “we can’t touch the race issue so we are just going to stick to class” – have a question about if these people are plants/infiltrators or if they just don’t get it?
  • Since I came to the bay, pretty much all of the organizing I have done has been identity based; either anti-racist/fighting white supremacy, queer/trans liberation, and indigenous solidarity; everything is identity based
  • All of this identity based organizing has good intersectional practices and focus on economic violence as well; but also think about how I can’t show up to do my job because I’m always facing microagressions or my colleagues are always facing microaggression; no one can use someone’s correct pronouns
  • I’m happy to transcend these identity politics at the point at which our society has transcended the oppressions, and until then it is a necessary thing to talk about
  • Helps that I do identity based organizing both around my privileged and marginalized identities, helps me remember why the work on the other side is important
  • Before the 2016 election, was living in Iowa; when I was there SURJ was my happy place, I didn’t find very many groups that were around my marginalized identities, what seemed important to me there was to take care of the people doing the organizing
  • Keeanga -Yamahtta Taylor, if we appreciate the way black women vote in elections then maybe we should bring them into our movements
  • It feels safe personally to organize around identity politics
  • Thinking about language, and how we treat identity politics within a culture that has rapidly evolving terms; the way that identity politics and other terms like sustainability, intersectionality, feminism, queer, etc. all of these terms that get tossed around now that for me, a term only carries weight when someone really knows what they are talking about, but it is increasingly difficult to determine who knows what they are talking about in this call out culture
  • Hard to talk about identity politics without talking about perfectionist activist call out culture
  • Thinking about death doula-ism from an animist place, since so many things are dying right now; for me identity politics has to come from a willingness to experience/embrace repeated deaths of my identity if I want to change
  • The term growth is actually kind of gross, I don’t want to grow, I want to learn, there is a difference
  • Feel confused, both angry that my friends who are white are not using their privilege and platforms to talk about anything that matters, and at the same time I am being excluded from a process I’m interested in because of my race; this is painful but also understandable
  • Being called out for saying something as a white person that a person of color is able to say (a personal opinion, for example) – toxic activism or the toxic left
  • Also thinking about identity politics in generations, and the serious lack of eldership or elders that I want to listen to who have evolved their discourse to be current to today; really wishing there was someone to hold space and hold all of the questions without needing to have solutions or answers
  • Rachel Rice and Bayo Akomolafe
  • Thinking about identities not just from a place of race and gender but also class, age, ableism, etc.; if we are actually going to use the term intersectional than we have to be specific about where those interlocking layers exist; if we are being specific we get caught up in the perfectionism, which feels like a vicious cycle
  • The topic seems pretty controversial, particularly in the Bay Area. Finding myself largely agreeing with the arguments that Asad Haider makes. It feels like a new orientation but it’s not new – it came out of Black radical thoughts 70 yrs ago.
  • The examples about the presidential election and how white privilege was “white wages” and then became “white privilege” is just co-opting to maintain control under capitalism.
  • I’d like to talk about it in a group in an organizing context
  • Insurgent universality – reading from Mistaken Identity pg 108: “Is it possible to go beyond the liberal paradigm of…” “universalism that comes from above…” “juridical universalism grants no agency to these subjects…”
  • “Justice in the politics of Difference” similar logical conclusions that are made with group identity and ownership and what we need to do in order to have liberatory society. Different types of oppression and how they operate but still confusing and very academic but basically that it is important for particular groups/identities to articulate their problems and how decisions affect them. She didn’t talk about class reductionism but it reinforced the idea that black and white people need their own spaces to talk frankly about what their concerns/issues are but then that those spaces should transition into more collective processes. She talks a lot about universal demands and building those with informed analysis of whatever your demanding affects particular people.
  • Starting school next week as a high school teacher. Been there as a leadership advisor for leadership kids.
  • Limits and possibilities of white-centered or white-only space is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. We do a unit on race, gender and class in my classroom. It is hard to offer to the students a “next-step” or more collective-building step. We do a lot of work on history of racism and other marginalized identities and oppression but I don’t feel like I have much to offer them outside of history. I think for teams and adults we need something else.
  • Noticed in radical spaces white people get nervous to do something wrong and end up organizing with other white people. I also think about the way that identity, in particular marginalization gets leveraged and demonized in this way. It seems like an oversimplification that I think we’re ready as the “left” to complicate a little bit.
  • Got dumped, got septum pierced, getting back together with ex.
  • Sharing passages from book Mistaken Identity talking about black people organizing in the 60’s, nationalist movements and how they got co-opted and weren’t that revolutionary and so turned towards communism and Marx-based organizing <- pgs 76, 77.
  • Pg “For intellectuals seeking a way of being political in the absence of such organizations, passing is an understandable temptation. Strange as it may seem, Rachel Dolz… “Politicizing oneself as marginal, is the recognized…” “Passing, in this sense, is a universal condition.”
  • Pg. 101 quoting Stuart Hall, famous british sociologist who wrote about crime/police/race in England “The result has been a left that has become more attached to …caught in a structure of melancholic….whose structure of ….I have come to think that this sadness is the cause of restriction to one’s personal identity.”
  • We live individual culture but are seeking solidarity while preaching diversity
  • Quoting the book more about liberal units of measure about being an individual with an identity. The context is how identities are formed by Judith Butler. “Institutions, collectives of activity…the basic political unit of liberalism, after all, is the individual.”
  • “Within this framework, Butler argues, the assertion of rights and entitlement can only be made on the basis of a singular identity….” “what we call identity politics is…
  • Comment about how the book is so academic – which also an issue because it makes it inaccessible to certain groups
  • Cultural ideal of impartiality that we have inherited as a result of colonialism
  • The way we think about the state as an arbitrator of justice – we are sort of looking at white supremacy as the baseline of what is fair and neutral. Claiming identity is always in relation to whiteness. Asad separately making the claim that your identity is based on your proximity to the state and your claim to harm
  • In communities where you need to claim your marginality to justify your participation or viability as opposed to caring about things.
  • He was a grad student at UC Stanta Cruz during the occupy movement. Started as a powerful movement, problematic in some ways, harms were happening. Because they were at the university. They work working on tuition hikes for students. A POC caucus was critiquing white students for striking against tuition hikes because it disproportionately affects students of color. So they formed this caucus and kicked white people out and this powerful movement dissolved into nothing.
  • More broadly, is organizing in this way, this rule that we have started to organize as the left… But then I’m having this weird imagination as a white person who’s like “no no trust me” but then it feels like this cult leader that’s saying “even though I know it’s not in your best interest, you should just trust me” and then pulling some manipulative bullshit.
  • In Iowa I was hearing a lot of this “Okay the identity we need to focus on is not male, white and rich.”
  • Think that makes so much sense. I don’t think it’s to disregard identity. People will have very different politicized identities, prescribed or not. We have to find a way to be in the discomfort together or not. That is my starting point for my students.
  • His idea because we can’t dream of anything better, the best we can do is protect against a certain harm. Like the students at UC Santa Cruz, the best thing they could do in that moment was create a POC space where they could be together in the way they wanted.
  • For me what’s agitating, I’m finding myself like I’m trapped. I don’t think entirely identity politics is a trap but yes in some ways. I want to both stay in my white lady lane and do good anti-racist work and help other people around me be/act less racist but then it seems so reductive to focus on that one particular intersection and identity because of the world ending and feeling the urgency of needing to extend that very small scope of activity as a person but also seeing that this is being reproduced in the legs of other organizers around me. Also wanting to not be this person that is like “oh trust me it’s fine.” Trying to figure out what risk I’m willing to take to pose uncomfortable questions but it seems worth the risk to ask them but I don’t know.
  • Situational: when, where and how to ask the questions
  • Broader desire to push leftist discourse and not just in one group but in general
  • Thinking about 2020 election cycle, there is a lot of opportunity to articulate positions that are very clear, that push political thinking; this includes conversations about race
  • What if our response to the crisis is also part of the crisis?
  • If we want to push leftist political discourse we have to elevate the left’s ability to think; to understand that they are thinking inside the box
  • Resistance feeds power; the ways that we resist legitimizes and gives something to push against, brings it into being
  • When one is aware of identity in space, not speaking at an event for example, and people come up afterwards and recognize that you haven’t spoken and ask you why.   Checking your privilege even takes up space.  There is no way to not take up space.
  • What is the right amount of sharing where you get to be the person of privilege in the room of marginalized people, or is just being there always going to take up space?
  • Toxic activism, like the term “rigid radicalism” from Joyful Militancy
  • If you are visibly marginalized in an activist space, power can be often be attributed to that marginalization
  • What are the tools to not bristle when we are called out?
  • Often it is other white people and white passing people who are more likely to call you out in a space
  • Curious how when we have conversations about race in mixed race settings versus in racial caucuses different things come up; fears that white people have about having harmful impact
  • Reclaim Podcast, interview with Rachel Rice and Carmen Spaniola, primarily a critique of Brené Brown’s work
  • Shame in other non-Western cultures is often associated with positive feelings because it promotes cultural cohesion
  • Don’t think that shaming and calling out is bad, I think it is really important to be critical of ourselves if we are the person delivering feedback, also critical of ourselves when receiving feedback; shame can be a really powerful tool collectively; shame doesn’t have to be a bad thing
  • As someone who has experienced gendered violence, the amount of shame I feel about those experiences is fucking bullshit and I want to light shit on fire; this makes me very averse to domination
  • Being involved in accountability processes that are local, seeing that some people don’t give a shit and others do, that shame can work as a tool to make people answer to their behavior; especially in leftist spaces where we don’t call the police; using this as the available option to make people feel shitty
  • Not convinced that wielding that sort of social power of shaming is good; but how do we protect ourselves from tyrants or people who abuse power?
  • What is to be done?  Posing questions about the future, how to plan for circumstances; noticing the white saviorism there
  • Emotions are neither good nor bad; shame’s biological purpose is to conform behavior to what the group wants
  • Shame and identity politics; the feeling that people’s identities are fixed, this is what troubles me about relying on visible identities as a way of creating a hierarchy of power
  • Fixedness of identities is what bothers me about it, that necessarily we can make statements that will always be true of our identities
  • There are pauses in movement building where we need to think really carefully about the identity politics of this action, or this thing
  • Tuition strikes being a problem for people of color means the tuition strikes didn’t happen at all and the problem persists
  • Fixed identities is really interesting. Thinking about documentary on PBS about Ursula LeGuin. It shows her over time and how she’s not attached to even her own ideas – she’s versatile, adapative. In the beginning her books had characters with no gender and at the time it was a super revolutionary idea to have a society of A-gendered people but she was writing with the pronoun of ‘he’ and then she reflects on that and gets feedback and changes it. She’s constantly integrating and allowing her creations to change throughout her life. Part of what feels troubling about identity politics is that it forces you to double down on your identity. Judith Butler argues that you’re stuck because you’re only recognized by the state as a fixed identity.
  • We can think about white supremacy in the public sphere as that problem
  • Serrano’s defense of identity also allows you to put a name to your experience. That you get to name harm to yourself or your friend. And then maybe you can only find your friend when you find that name.
  • I keep having this image of bees as a string and the bee at the top is like “can we get past this identity politics bullshit?” and the bee at the bottom is like “I’m just identitying my queerness where are the other lesbians?
  • You’re walking through the world with fear and at the same time trying to find community. If you have the privilege of someone who is passing then there are questions about whether you belong in the group. I felt this really strongly in groups I was in, a lot of people hide their class in order to be part of this struggle. And then people in the group are like “I don’t want to not include you but my oppression actually means I face different and more intense danger than you.”
  • Cheryl Clarke Essay on Lesbianism as an Act of Resistance
  • I used to have a Lez ring that I would wear back when I had an acrylic set with two short nails 😉 My students asked me about it “so is this because you’re queer.” And I was like “it helps me hold a pencil.” So I think that’s the last frontier. (joking) I knew we were going to get to the bottom of this identity politics thing!
  • I feel like part of the purpose of identity politics is to have that space with the assumption is that one is not in identity-based space all the time. And the problem with that in the Bay is that you are always in an identity-based space. And initially White Noise Collective was created kind of as an identity based space where we could come together as people with (mostly) shared identity and then bring that experience and ideas out into the world of organizing in other spaces.
  • Thinking lately about how the Bay Area Transformative Justice collective teaches these apology labs where you learn skills about how to apologize. And I think about how bad I am at apologizing. I’m actually really good at repairing – like doing it differently. But I’m not great at using the words to apologize and going to someone and saying what I did was harmful. This is rambly but there wasn’t a practice of apologizing shown to me by my father and it mattered to me a lot as a kid that he never apologized. But now as an adult I don’t put in the work of apologizing. I feel like it’s actually really hard to say “I have a strong opinion that has now changed because you made a good point and I am now shifting my position on it.’ Which is setting an example on a political scale to be able to implement publicly.
  • I feel like that’s the ultimate abuse – abusing somebody and then convincing them that you have nothing to apologize for.
  • That’s not to say that you can apologize and not change your behavior. But I’m reflecting that I change the thing without apologizing because I’m embarrassed.
  • Sometimes behaviors take time to change, more time than a relationship can sometimes tolerate. Sometimes you change and the relationship is severed and you’re not able to apologize. There are complicated layers to consent and you don’t get to do the work of assuming that somebody wants to do the repairing with you. Especially if you’re in a place of privilege.
  • Thinking about 12 steps and the 9th step of making amends and needing to ask them if you can make amends before actually doing it. (not having an opinion one way or another about 12 step groups)
  • I wonder if the apology lab includes asking for consent. The White Noise collective is going to turn into a support group for people who can’t get into the apology lab
  • Pulling quotes from Haider’s book pg 101 “White Supremacy is organized by the plurality of…” “As long as racial solidarity among whites is more powerful than class solidarity among races, white supremacy will continue to exist”
  • I want to get to a place where we are transcending – not just reducing our conversations about identity to one particular thing and not forgetting one or the other (class, race, gender, ability) and to really articulate the truth that is we experience a multitude of changing identities and they are not separate from each other.
  • Well racism, heteronormativity, etc. are all tools of classism. Classism came first in my mind. I don’t know if other people believe this too.
  • This feels like a very clear debate amongst Marxists but then that becomes class reductionist. It’s an argument I believe is true on some level. I don’t know the history of Marxist intellectual debate well enough and even though I believe that my good white anti-racist training told me otherwise
  • The folks who have not been harmed by this cannot show up to the classist conversation. So even if class came first, we still have to address racism. If you’re only going to tell a marginalized person of an identity group to get over it in order to be a part of this struggle.
  • Then to not be able to imagine that more is possible we’re fighting against specific identities rather than transformation of power. We’re having internal pain around the acknowledgement of harm. Then the only thing that can be done is fight for gender neutral bathrooms rather than dismantling bathrooms.
  • Right but the world that we create is how we get there so if you’re going to have a meeting and there are no gender neutral bathrooms then I can’t come to your meetings so I can’t join the struggle.
  • Quoting Asad, “The revolutionary project of the European enlightenment (Black revolutionary nationalists) movement was blocked in the united states…”
  • It’s important because if I adopt his position (it’s more important to build a populist politic that can confront capitalism) it seems like race conversations and identity politics are part of that. Right now in Marxist discourse, they’re not. Or what I see of it it doesn’t feel like they are.
  • And it makes the work very slow because it shouldn’t take 40 years to get gender neutral bathrooms or stop forced sterilization.
  • Or those students who are working three jobs and the only thing they can do is protect their tiny slice of comfort.
  • Check outs///Closing thoughts///feelings
  • I feel like something I’m sitting with is this back and forth about class reductionism but…well there’s no way forward. It’s a brain-breaking paradox and it’s making my brain break. How somebody describes science-fiction China Mieville (most science fiction  like basically our world but different) but this is so different. There’s something really ripe about the feeling of coming up against the limits of what my brain can receive as possible. There’s something that has to be like a both/and beyond what my brain can perceive. There’s like a vent-diagram with two paradoxical ideas and the invitation is to imagine the space that overlaps in them. I’m trying to imagine some artistic process that we do on a craft night that is the vent-diagram of this identity politics class/race paradox
  • Well I’m glad I’m not the only one who is like “what do I understand?” I’m compelled by the idea that as we work through this there is power and coalition and movement on the other side. That feels real. The whole identity as a self instead of an identity as a community. That is what the world has given us and that’s costly. Feelings – mostly confusion – that’s not really a feeling is it?
  • Appreciation for the dialogue, felt like a true dialogue, call and response, call and response
  • Mistaken Identity and Joyful Militancy feel very connected, there is a call and response there, how are we going to show up in a completely different way than we have been doing?  How are we going to get over the harm, through the harm, feel the harm and then topple the system?  Joy is not about happiness, it is about expanding our ability.
  • Thinking about the tension or dialogue between being what is the current reality in all things and also imagining what else could happen in private and political life, as always.
  • Appreciative of the opportunity to think this through with other people, feels like a complex nebulous problem that is hard to engage with
  • In a place where I am willing to be wrong and do things wrong, want to be as strategic and thoughtful as possible so that no one is hurt, but I want to be confrontational in some of the more identity based spaces that I am in, confrontational just by bringing this conversation into the room, wanting to figure out how to do that in playful and curious ways that are not shame based but are encouraging of alternative visioning and acting those visions out as much as conceivably happening and just see what happens; because the world is ending, why not just do what you feel like makes sense?
  • The human race on this planet is actually a shifting, was never meant to be permanent; feeling into that kind of impermanence; feeling gratitude for this space, this feels like a brave space; want to be very attentive to how I turn the volume knob up and down on my identity in different spaces, perhaps try in an experimental way to turn lots of different knobs up and down to see what happens; trusting the people I work with who embody fluid identities to be able to hold that
  • The emergence network