Connecting the Dots Between the “Identity Politics” of Black Lives Matter and Class Politics
Connecting the Dots Between the “Identity Politics” of Black Lives Matter and Class Politics
ETHAN COREY
In These Times
“We like to think of class as the empirical, tangible idea behind everything else. You know, there’s race, gender, sexuality, and all the other social differences that we sometimes derisively refer to as ‘identity politics,’ but class is the real thing” said Jelani Cobb, Director of Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut and moderator of “Black Lives Matter/Fight for $15: A New Social Movement,” held October 19 at the CUNY Murphy Institute for Worker Education and co-sponsored by the Sidney Hillman Foundation.
Cobb, who was joined by #BlackLivesMatter co-creator Alicia Garza and Fight4$15 organizing director Kendall Fells, continued, “But if we look at this narrative and the history of labor, we find ‘identity politics’ popping up again and again. My mother was a domestic worker. Under the [1935 Social Security Act], she was ineligible for benefits, a concession to Southern Democrats. For her, these questions were not abstract. Her exploitation as a woman, her exploitation as a black person, and her exploitation as a worker were intricately connected and woven together.”
The question of the relative importance of class versus other markers of identity, such as race, gender or sexuality, has often divided the Left throughout its history, but on this chilly October morning, all three speakers were in agreement: The problems facing black people in America are inseparable from the question of class and exploitation and vice versa.
“What we are fighting around are the contours of black life,” Garza said, attempting to define the broad mission of Black Lives Matter. “We do work around policing and criminal justice, but we also take on development, affordable housing and gentrification, gender justice, trans liberation, economic justice, anti-austerity and privatization, climate justice, education, corporate accountability, and rights, dignity, and respect for gay, lesbian, and bisexual folks, because all of these issues shape the contours of black life. We’re fighting back against anti-Black racism, but we’re also fighting for dignity and equality for all persons.”
“There is space for us to fight along multiple dimension at once. We don’t have to pick one. I don’t have to be a worker today, a queer person tomorrow, a woman tonight. I can be all of those things, all at once, hallelujah,” Garza said. “It’s not about identity politics. It’s about our lives. The very sanctity of our lives is at stake. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
