Let's talk about the white privilege debate after we read this article:

[Comrade Grumpy]

From the Public Autonomy Project, which is about "the ethics and politics of community-based resistance and popular self-organization."

http://publicautonomy.org/2014/01/27/the-rise-of-the-post-new-left-political-vocabulary/

The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary
Posted on 27/01/2014 by stevedarcy
By Stephen D’Arcy

If a handful of time-travelling activists from our own era were somehow transported into a leftist political meeting in 1970, would they even be able to make themselves understood? They might begin to talk, as present-day activists do, about challenging privilege, the importance of allyship, or the need for intersectional analysis. Or they might insist that the meeting itself should be treated as a safe space. But how would the other people at the meeting react? I’m quite sure that our displaced contemporaries would be met with uncomprehending stares.

It’s not so much that the words they use would be unfamiliar. Certainly ‘privilege’ is not a new word, for instance. But these newcomers to the 1970 Left would have a way of talking about politics and political action that would seem strange and off-kilter to the others at the meeting. If one of the time travellers told others at the meeting to “check their privilege,” it’s not that anyone would disagree, exactly. It’s that they wouldn’t understand what was meant, or why it was supposed to be important or relevant.

Reflecting on the chasm of mutual incomprehension that divides today’s Left from the Left of the 1960s and 70s, we should resist any rush to judgment. Instinctively, some people — whether out of nostalgia or out of deeply held political convictions or both — will recoil from the vocabulary of today’s activists. There is no shortage of (usually older) critics who complain about the focus on “privilege” and “calling out” in the contemporary activist scene. But we should not be seduced by the broad-brushed dismissal with which these critics, whose political sensibility was shaped (for better and for worse) by the 70s New Left, reject the politics that pervades today’s activist subcultures. We should remain open at least to the possibility that some aspects of the new vocabulary may offer important insights, even if we retain our reluctance to embrace it wholesale. Conversely, some partisans of the post-New Left will insist that any resistance to the new jargon must be rooted in an attempt to cling to privileges which, allegedly, the new discourse threatens. This, too, reflects a narrow-minded sensibility that renounces the very possibility of learning from engagement with perspectives that contest one’s own basic assumptions.

It is this fundamentalist sensibility that has earned “the Twitter Left” and the “social justice blogging community” a sometimes well-deserved bad reputation, but it shouldn’t be allowed to insinuate itself into the real-world activist Left.We can reverse the scenario, and the picture looks similar. If a group of time-travelling activists from the heyday of the New Left, members perhaps of the Black Panther Party, the Organization for Afro-American Unity, or Students for a Democratic Society, were transported to a political meeting of activists in our own time, they might quickly begin referring to the need to unite “the people” in a common struggle for “liberation,” by constructing “an alliance” based on “solidarity.” In this case, the problem would not be one of understanding, so much as credibility. They would be understood, I imagine, at least in general terms. But would they be taken seriously? The terms in which they express their politics — the people, liberation, alliances — seem like (and indeed, are) a throwback to an earlier era. It seems likely that they would be deemed hopelessly insensitive to the specificity of different struggles against privilege. They would be accused, perhaps, of glossing over key issues of “positionality” and “allyship” by referring not to “folks,” as most contemporary activists would, but to “the people,” as if it were unitary and shared a common set of experiences.

In fact, neither of the two political vocabularies considered here should be deemed to be either above reproach or beneath contempt. Both are ways of articulating the politics of people committed to the struggle for social justice, so they deserve, if not necessarily our endorsement, at least our willingness to listen and, where possible, to learn.

Two questions really do have to be addressed, however, in the face of this terminological fork in the road:

First: why are these vocabularies so different? Does the emergence of the new vocabulary, roughly in the 1990s, reflect a learning process, so that we can think of it as more sophisticated and illuminating than the jargon of the 60s and 70s New Left — the product of a new sensitivity to key issues that were previously overlooked or badly understood? Or does its emergence, with its symptomatic timing in the wake of the Reagan/Thatcher era and the wave of defeats inflicted on the Left in those years, indicate that the new vocabulary is not so much innovation as errancy, straying from radical politics in the direction of a de-fanged adaptation to defeat and political marginality?

Second: why, if at all, does it matter that they are so different? Are these just competing styles of speech and writing, or do they embed within them contrasting sets of assumptions about the nature of the Left, its main targets or aims, the appropriate way to respond to injustice, and the place of the Left in the wider society?

<snip>

There is much more at the link.

I'm going for a walk, but I'll be back. Enjoy!

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. Wow, not a peep. Shameless self-kick, then.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. I think this writer has good advice for both sides of this debate.

He says:

Instinctively, some people — whether out of nostalgia or out of deeply held political convictions or both — will recoil from the vocabulary of today’s activists. There is no shortage of (usually older) critics who complain about the focus on “privilege” and “calling out” in the contemporary activist scene. But we should not be seduced by the broad-brushed dismissal with which these critics, whose political sensibility was shaped (for better and for worse) by the 70s New Left, reject the politics that pervades today’s activist subcultures. We should remain open at least to the possibility that some aspects of the new vocabulary may offer important insights, even if we retain our reluctance to embrace it wholesale.

Conversely, some partisans of the post-New Left will insist that any resistance to the new jargon must be rooted in an attempt to cling to privileges which, allegedly, the new discourse threatens. This, too, reflects a narrow-minded sensibility that renounces the very possibility of learning from engagement with perspectives that contest one’s own basic assumptions. It is this fundamentalist sensibility that has earned “the Twitter Left” and the “social justice blogging community” a sometimes well-deserved bad reputation, but it shouldn’t be allowed to insinuate itself into the real-world activist Left.

[Californeeway]

3. I personally think this nails it on the head

I have come out of my usual lurker status to try to articulate these ideas but I think the author did a much better job than me.

I think at the end of the day, it's about educating people, about convincing them to jettison old prejudices and embrace those that are different from them, whatever language is most effective is the language that should be used to do that.

I am one of the people who has been really turned off by the rigidness and elitism of the activist Left, not because I disagree with their policy stances, but because I see their rigidity as counter-productive to winning new adherents and creating positive change on the issues I care about.

[snagglepuss]

4. The "new vocabulary is not so much innovation as errancy, straying from radical politics

in the direction of a de-fanged adaptation to defeat and political marginality"


BINGO

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. Well, that's kind of how I feel, but then I am an old New Leftie.

I do wonder how much this represents a generational divide.

My sense is all this privilege talk may be fine and dandy for "activist subcultures" to bounce off each other, but is largely self-defeating if you're trying to move beyond that and actually achieve anything in the real world.

[Shandris]

6. But do bear in mind that it is also part and parcel of the university experience now...

...as some poster even mentioned last night. It's literally Sociology 101.

...although appealing to the fact that its in Uni seems somehow wrong to me; after all, grade schools have faculty trying to pass creationist standards for teaching. Does that make them correct also, simply because they're taught in school? I wouldn't think so and would consider that whole section of the argument an appeal to authority, but it is what it is.

I think it's a germane question about the rise of this type of language, but even moreso is what we intend on achieving with it. I don't see an proper endgame/outcome of any kind. If we continue to go by the currently 'accepted' paradigm of institutional racism and cultural racism as a cover for the blanket term 'racism' and leave individual racism as the least important of the three, then so long as a single institution remains that doesn't generate equality, the work will never end because inequality is considered de facto evidence of racism. I consider this to be the -actual- endgame; an attempt at permanent political relevance by creating standards that are literally impossible to ever meet. While I certainly understand the desire to continue to win elections, I'm not willing to do it at the expense of actually making people's lives better. ALL people.

[Comrade Grumpy]

7. Since I think this is a singularly thoughtful piece, and the topic is still hot, I'm kicking this.

I do encourage people to read the whole thing.

Maybe it can help us generate more light than heat.

[BainsBane]

8. That "new left"

includes women and people of color. That is the difference. And that is where the lines of division are. The vocabularies are different because they reflect different experiences. What we have among the deniers is a version of diversity that agrees to allow the participation of subaltern groups as long as they think, speak, and act exactly like white people. If they so much as use different words, all hell breaks out. It's one thing to not like the term white privilege. It's another to accuse people of flamebaiting, trolling, and engaging in sock puppetry in order to delegitimate those discussions and shame those posters into silence.

The idea that the language creates divisions is absurd. The divisions already exist.

I posted this in another thread:

The divide already exists


As 1strongblackman explained in another thread. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4925485

What you don't want is to hear about the view on the other side of that divide.

Moreover, people argue on every issue under the sun, from Snowden to Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, and everything else. Yet you single out the voices of people of color and feminists to denounce.

First you say we all agree on racism. Then you say you don't like to see Democrats divided. These arguments contradict each other. They do not hold up to scrutiny since there are scores of others subjects around which people agree and disagree that you don't object to. This strikes me as a demonstration of entitlement: if it's not about you and what you think is important, it is not legitimate.

Every time someone tells people of color, feminists, and members of other subaltern groups that there concerns are illegitimate or too divisive to be discussed, they only deepen that divide you want to pretend doesn't exist.