The man who was mistaken for a racist
Liberalism’s dominant narrative stems from the Civil War.
Resistance to the form of capitalism that won, is it all and only racist or at least reactionary?
I believe there reasons to question this.
Liberals and progressives will mostly not allow this. This made them the intolerant ideologues they still are, and because of this they tend to behave in obnoxious ways that clearly amount to an uncritical enforcement of an ideological agenda (that of the “social justice warriors”).
This can be criticized from the left simply by observing that this regime of ideological enforcement is capitalist. It is.
That is how so much what passes for the left in American is no such thing.
It is corporate liberalism.
But its many adherents will not recognize this.
That includes most of black America.
How is capitalism opposed from the left?
The traditional answer is by a different social subject: the “working class” (and/or other groupings of the poor). That answer has for 50 years seemed inadequate in some ways, and there is some truth in this. (Inadequate means correct in part.)
The left fell apart partly because of this. Until the onset of the neoliberal period, theoretically it was always dominated by Marxist-Leninism on the one hand and attempts to render capitalism more liberal and democratic on the other. The former was eclipsed in this period, the latter succeeded in some ways, and failed in others, leading to the current crisis.
Anti-racism and feminism do not have the centrality structurally that they still have ideologically, which is to say motivationally, particularly in the United States, where the left has been mostly captive of forms of thought that are a legacy of “bourgeois” liberalism.
This presents political leaders on the left with rhetorical needs stemming from these structural constraints. Interpersonally, it renders political speech for people on the left a minefield surely unwelcome to persons disposed to European-style militancy in their thinking, unless they are black or perhaps able to claim some other status of easily recognized social identity associated with ideas of oppression. This situation is an ideological problem and not one of political thought proper. The Marxist left can recognize that, while the liberal-left, which is committed to opposing a multiplicity of forms of social hierarchy and power relations in some kind of alliance, cannot. These liberal-lefts are militant, and intolerant. They do not welcome discussions which attack their positions, as an honestly thinking person will, though political leaders involved in activist work know they must respect them. This is why I am not an activist interested in working with American middle class liberals. I believe I would put myself in danger of bodily harm if I tried.
Though I am course a man of the left.
I merely dissent from most of the American left on minoritarian subjectivities including gender/sexuality and especially race. I refuse to recognize race as an independent variable. I do recognize it as a dependent variable and potential factor in many discussions. I am strongly critical of the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of many black Americans as I have been able to see. In particular, I do not appreciate when one of them (black people who consider that their blackness is a fundamental part of who they are, and “know” that who I am for them can only be a “white” person somehow performing “whiteness,” which is, by definition, a kind of neo-slavery. I deny that do this. I have never feared or despised the potential or actual expression of hatred or violence by black Americans (descendants of slavery) merely because of a prejudice. I only ever was angered when confronted with people who hated me because of what is obviously a prejudice of theirs, projected onto me. Of course, I did grow up expecting people to behave around me according to the norms of decency into which I was socialized. I know that they did also, as do all people. These norms are sometimes different enough to come into conflict. Expression of this is not racism, though justification of it is. I do not justify my cultural values as better, I merely notice the differences.
Does any white person who has been a victim (e.g., assaulted?) by a black person ever even possibly have a legitimate narrative and complaint? The prevailing liberal assumption is: no, because the history of our people means that you did and still do or might oppress us. We therefore are right to hate you. But you must only respect us, or else we will hate you, manifestly, threatening violence, personal or official depending on whether this happens when we are employed in a professional capacity with coercive authority we may exercise, or not, perhaps because the encounter happens in an open public space. We suspect you, always, of not respecting us, especially if we are in a position to do you some violence and get by with it.
For instance, as a security guard. (This has happened to me many times).
I say these black men and women are victims of a system that oppresses them as enforcers and resentful poor people who find appealing reductive and hate-filled explanations of their career and life frustrations. I know I must understand this. This could be called (this sounds ugly but seems to me accurate enough) the or a white person’s burden. The liberal form of this is that we recognize, out of guilty disavowal or the noble assumption of professional or citizenly responsibility, that you are oppressed and we must take special measures on your behalf.
This may be true enough, as I think it is, in part.
This does not change the fact that every liberal or leftist who subscribes to this noble truth in accordance with the truths of the noble path of which it forms a part (I am being only partly ironic) is indeed saying that they acknowledge that being a liberal, Marxist, whatever, involves this “white man’s burden.” Those “Marxists” who are anti-racist liberals (above all?) Always urge this on me in no uncertain terms.
Once I tried to work with some fellow tenants who were almost frozen to death in winter by a callous landlord, also a cop, and a man who was pretty keen to assert his authority and make it clear you had better show respect for the economic, political, and official power of violence he represented, supposedly because he was black. I came to hate this man, especially after he let the electricity be turned off and then lied about it. We took him to court. But my fellow tenants were university-educated liberals, some of them black, and one in particular could not accept my virtual hatred of this man. For the record, his race was if anything an accidental factor in my despising him, making it easier to do so only because he wielded his racial oppression as a privilege and means of exercising coercive, threatening, power. I am reminded that those who victimize others are often victims of something themselves. The same nice liberal neighbor scorned me as racist for saying that I was often afraid of walking home at night, and she said, if someone attacks you violently and you don’t like it, you are blaming the victim. Bullshit.
Most black Americans are liberals and so you cannot criticize or even disagree with them. In this they are like most Americans. Their culture is American, and largely Anglo-American and Protestant. What passes for left culture in America is mostly a culture of resentment. You should not hate people just for resenting something, but it can make encounters fraught with danger if they blame you. In fact, I don’t blame the victim in that way. I don’t hate muggers, for example, though I will be angry if someone hits me. Last time this happened a black liberal dental assistant was outraged that I was angry about having my teeth punched out by a black man (in my mostly black neighborhood) who had told me he hated me as his oppressor because I look like a rich white corporate executive who must be Jewish like Bill Gates (who is not Jewish). See, most anti-racist discourse is a fraud.
A fraud sold to black Americans by their own bourgeoisie to defend the corporate state, partly by encouraging a phony politics of hatred.
I do not defend segregation. It is a cause of much evil. It is not caused by the people who buy or rent where they do, their doing this is an effect and not an evil at all. Segregation would be ended by ending the funding of schools by local property tax. I am also for integration, which I reproach most of the black capitalist leadership for having renounced long ago in favor of their own self-interest.
Black identity politics is a scourge. That is because is it a mistake. Just like Jewish identity politics and every other kind.
I am a man of the left.
I don’t sound like it?
A professor of mine said the best thing is to be “wrong in interesting ways.”
That works in the world of ideas, not media-driven “political” speech in a society that is effectively fascist.
I am the ally of their cause, because a comrade, that they cannot recognize because identity politics, which is murderous, leading to American gun-industry and neoliberalism-fed crime and internationally genocides.
I am the unrecognizable friend who seems to you an enemy.
I guess I ought to learn genteel manners, maybe that’s part of the noblesse oblige burden also.
You of course spurn as nonsense any such thing.
Yes, I rant and this apology is defensive. Most of my memories of encountering black Americans are of encounters with hatred and violence. Not mine, yours.
What do I propose to do about this? Nothing. I write, in public I try to be a pleasant man with a poker face.
I’m also a victim of some of the same things that oppress you. Yes, I know that I can avoid it often by dressing nice and acting my “race.” That is also sad, but of course I live with the way things are, the situations I am faced with, like everyone else.
Do not hate me. I wish that were commanded. I don’t say by me. Even better, I wish the possibility did not appear.
You should not ask much of me other than what we all owe each other. The courtesy that is proper to a society with minimal but good government.
If you have an analysis of the effects of structural racism in a society such as ours and think that my own attitudes and experiences are interesting among these effects, which I obviously agree with, since you must not hate people like me but are interested in serious thought, I wish you well in getting that analysis discussed.
My position is that the left thinks in terms of social structures, forms, and functions, and not morally at all. Social oppression of any kind is not really a moral problem at all. Political action and social change are independent of moralizing. Moralizing is what liberals do, because they do not understand the political. They think it is about the justice or injustice of the actions of persons, mostly elites and bosses, whom they want not merely to act responsibly, as they should, but ask that they rule wisely and suppose that is done by having the right personal ethics and morals. But capitalism, which is the problem today, is not a person and so not a moral or ethical subject at all. Yes, that is a problem. When moral judgment is being invoked, expect not only blame but the police, and possibly the cycle of crime and policing, violently stupid rebellions wrongly targeting persons and violent state action targeting the rebels who did so. Get out of identity politics, out of blame, and start thinking politically. Liberal-left politics is false, a media spectacle that is a lot of sound and fury signifying much and achieving nothing. The imaginary thinking involved leads to a fascism to which the liberal-left did much to contribute and is totally unequipped to effectively resist or oppose. Cultural nationalism is a murderous dead end and little more than that.
Slavery was personal in a way that the modern urban industrial and above all financial capitalism that triumphed is not. Black Americans were formed by slavery. The results are often ugly for anyone reminded of this. Many black people I have encountered will not let me forget this, and they also usually favor coercive governmental practices without question so long as they can see themselves as beneficiaries and not victims of them, and are very conservative on that score. Of course they can always object that white people have a more freestyle ethical sensibility because of relative privilege. Sure, and what practical conclusion do you draw from that? How about: I am going to treat you like you are my slave, because as a black man or woman who knows they’re working for the Man I will tolerate not the least hint of non-compliance, falsely ascribing my demand for your unquestioned obedience to the demands of the company whose enforcer I am, to my personal need for respect for my identity sanctified by the true history of its near sacrifice in an historical episode I was taught to blame you for. If you are on the receiving end of this treatment, you will not fail to recognize it, unless you are self-deluded liberal trying to please your good conscience in denial.
Does this ugly narrative justify the reactions of white racists who are among the most stupidly ugly people on this planet? Of course not. American liberals are well-meaning and stupid, while American “conservatives” now are open marketers of a thuggery reminiscent of the middle ages so admired in the American popular imaginary when not of the most barbarous attitudes of fascists during the last European war. I am not denying that the Democratic Party liberals are far the lesser evil, only that they are not a good. I should get over my anger about race. Like so many things, it always comes back to me, which chagrins me now. I was always a white radical. That may be incongruous, it is not itself either impossible or merely wrong. I don’t see the world as liberals do, they literally cannot distinguish the left from the right. Nothing is more vital politically today. I realize maybe the important task of government is to solve practical economic problems. In that case their thinking is further along than mine and I will stick to writing about the cultural history of an earlier time, the personal nightmare of mine from which I should welcome a fuller awakening, if I did not fear that the worst excesses of the Vietnam era are being repeated in far more deadly ways, as of course they are. Pasolini the “Marxist Catholic” filmmaker in his Gospel according to St. Matthew has his Christ quote pointedly the line that he brings not peace but a sword. I fight only with words. My government doesn’t like that either, so I suppose I need courage. I have made clear my fringe position; please grant at least that it is sound and sane, having reasons that might recommend it. They may not absolve me, but what of that? I would worry about that if I had the conscience of a liberal.