Maybe it’s a paradox.
But my point is that a universalist, social democratic agenda (access to education, housing, healthcare…etc) is less vulnerable to divide-and-conquer, racist attacks on such programs, and that, justifiably so, Black folk would benefit the most from the success of such a universalist agenda.
My argument is also that the 1960s upheavals fell short because the movements didn’t connect anti-racism with social democratic policies.
The riots of 1968 marked the end of the revolutionary potential of the 1960s in that it fed into the political rights’ racist appeals to law-and-order, and many white folk focused on safety instead of multiracial economic justice.
That pattern lead to the War on Drugs and mass incarceration and attacks on social programs that both political parties embraced.
All due respect, but in that vein I suggest that a hyper focus on race and on militancy is actually counter-revolutionary, feeding the narratives of the establishment.
Racism is conjoined to the economic system for hundreds of years.
It’s not asking Black folk to latch on to everybody else’s issues.
Instead, it seems impossible to address racism without addressing the flaws of capitalism.
Sorry to repeat but I suggest cases around the world and in the US show that placing some Black folk in positions of political and economic power still leaves disproportionate masses of Black folk marginalized.
I suggest that’s because the economic system has to be addressed.
When it is addressed, millions of whites benefit too, but that process is compatible with anti-racism.
Even amid the racism of the 1930s and the New Deal, elements of that period in the US under FDR boosted the political and economic power of Black folk.
The New Deal era, for all its racist flaws, still involved improvements that helped set the stage for the 1950s and 1960s Black Civil Rights movements.
Part of the duopoly’s accommodation to increasing the power of capital after the uprisings of the 1960s was the Democratic Party framing social justice in terms of identity (LGBTQ, women, Black folk, immigrants…etc) in disconnected ways so as to not challenge the economic structure.
Most activists within those causes followed suit from the 1970s thru the 2010s.
At the same time, Republicans used opposition to abortion, gay rights, secularism…and a defensive, if not paranoid support of white, Christian identity and militarism, anti-feminism, racism…etc to mobilize their voter base, all the while preventing rank-and-file Republicans from focusing on the economic system, as deindustrialization and retail oligopolies eviscerated small towns and rural communities.
A lot of social progress was achieved within that frame on cultural issues such as the status of women and Queer folk, and the power of the concept of diversity. That’s something to celebrate.
But that “Third Way” model (Bill Clinton, Tony Blair) only goes so far and it has lead to the now economically and politically dangerous concentration of wealth.
Many of the Black civil rights organizers of the 1930s thru the 1960s, including Malcolm X, were tied to various unions, labor and socialist movements.
Now it seems similar connections are emerging with folk such as Bowman, AOC, Omar, Sanders, Cornell West, Rev William Barber…etc.
The wokescold approach of self-righteous, greivance-focused identity props up the liberal wing of the corporate duopoly while feeding the fears and resentments of the base of the Fox News type, conservative wing.
Sorry if I’m being repetitive but it’s a process of the two-winged corporate party dividing and conquering the country, as an emergent property, not an elite conspiracy.
I’ll leave it at that for now, as to why Black anti-racism must be combined with universalist, ‘social democratic’ or ‘democratic socialist’ agendas.
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