Cedric Johnson: The Wages of Roediger — Why Three Decades of Whiteness Studies Has Not Produced the Left We Need (NonSite, 2019)

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[–]anfd[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It's a balancing act. Different groups of people may be in a different social position, so it's probably not a good idea to go ahead with stuff that pretends everyone is the same (which mostly tends to reflect what's good for whoever is dominant in that organisation/movement). Yet a shared line and effective politics does require streamlining, which may leave some interests out. Whether that justifies a split to organise separately has to be considered on a case by case basis. And in any case you can march separately but still strike together, which is probably the way to build a larger movement anyway if there's no dominant organisations already in existence (which seems to be the case in the US at the moment).

[–]Tarsius 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I tend to agree. It obviously usually depends on the circumstances and some groups may never get heard if they don't have their own spaces within the movement, where they can engage with groupspecific problems.

I don't want to pretend to be very knowledgable about the US concerning their organisational structure. I am generally quite worried that the left seems to be losing blue collar workers and rural areas to the right and even far right all over the west and it is my impression that this is even worse in the US than in Germany (where I live). I think that part of the reason for that is, that we actively push those people away with a heavy focus on identity politics and often don't even try to help them even though their conditions are increasingly destitute.