People With Power Don’t Actually Care About Class or Identity

Hello. I’ve written long-form essays on what identity and class are in context of our current political climate. This makes the assumption you’ve read both and attempts to figure out just why this fight has been encouraged for so long. If you haven’t, I’d ask that you read them both before reading this.

This is not to play the blame game. Anyone I name in this article, I do not credit with the brunt of the problem. They may have been an avatar of it at the time, but most likely have the country’s interests at heart — at least most of the time.

I hope this proves useful to you.

-Peter

A lot of the reason regular people (that is, anyone without a huge load of money or privilege) have had such a problem is that the American Left is just not concerned about their actual struggles. To put it plainly, the American Left has devolved into “liberals v. progressives,” which is… crap.

Many who regularly talk about class make a really incorrect assertion: that “identity politics has taken over.” Indeed, something has taken over, but I hardly believe it to be identity politics. I wrote an essay hoping to clarify what identity politics is (for both myself and others), so let’s apply that to whatever it is that has taken over the American Left. Does what you’re watching Democrats do really seem like identity politics? To me, it doesn’t. What has been going on in the Democratic Party does not resemble the Civil Rights Movement — the most prominent display of identity politics to ever happen — in a way any casual observer could easily quantify.

I want to stress that this is not the fault of Hillary Clinton, but she managed to provide a couple of great examples of this while on the campaign trail, where she talked about black folks a lot. She even made a really good speech in Harlem about the plight of black folks. She spoke of civil rights, talked about police brutality, and highlighted statistics proving the disproportionate effects Black America feels. In the abstract, she was there for black folks.

But black people have been told repeatedly that they are a priority — and that things are getting better for them — when a great deal of the time, they aren’t.

On February 24th, 2016, a community organizer and BLM activist by the name of Ashley Williams, a young black woman identifying as queer, attended a private Hillary Clinton fundraiser. The event was not free; Williams had raised the $500 necessary to purchase entry, though. By doing this, she was neither a trespasser or an interloper. Instead, she was someone who had handed $500 over to Hillary Clinton’s campaign — ensuring access.

Williams held up a sign that quoted Mrs. Clinton speaking in the 1990s on the subject of troubled youth, back in a time when that meant black kids: “WE HAVE TO BRING THEM TO HEEL.”

This was one of the more concerning parts of a larger quote from Hillary Clinton as she was promoting a crime bill that provably led to more black folks being incarcerated than at any point in America’s history — a point Michelle Alexander has detailed and backed up repeatedly in various writings, including her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. This is no small feat considering the history of the United States of America. It started with Nixon’s divisive, racist strategies and became big business in 1983 with the privatization of federal prisons and the creation of profit incentives regarding incarceration — and it continues to this day with anyone willing to take campaign donations and lobbyist money from private prison corporations.

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton were beneficiaries all the way up until it was pointed out in 2015, when Hillary Clinton began denying campaign donors from the private prison industry after being pressured to do so. That’s right, two-thousand and fifteen.

Here’s what she said in the 1990s while working to sell the crime bill that lined these prison corporations’ pockets with money at the expense of black people:

They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended that way, but first we have bring them to heel.

— Hillary Clinton

This rhetoric was meant to conjure visions of gang wars in Los Angeles and then remind you that although they look like people, they supposedly aren’t. They’re animals — highly evolved killing machines with no human soul. This was at a time when the narrative was centered around how good police all were for protecting the innocent, not how bad many are for repeatedly killing unarmed black folks.

Attendees of the $500-a-head Clinton campaign fundraiser were aghast at Ashley Williams’s display of dissent. That anyone would have the nerve to bring up this kind of thing — especially when Hillary and these rich donors only want to help them! They believe in diversity! Keeping Whirlpool and Benton Harbor in mind, it makes sense to roll your eyes at least a bit here.

Voices in the background shouted things like “you’re trespassing!” and “excuse us, that’s inappropriate!” Clinton herself begins to act more aggressively, clearly noticing all this money in the room is getting pretty upset. She starts saying things like “Do you want to hear the facts or do you just want to talk?” as she walked closer, leaning in, adopting imposing body language. Her bodyguards clearly get the hint and remove the activist to quiet these concerns.

As she was walked out of the house, Clinton piped up with “okay, now back to the issues,” much to the delight of the crowd. They replied with approval to what had just happened. A chorus of rich, white, exasperated people saying “THANK YOU” and “YES!” ensued, with Hillary repeating “the issues that I think really matter.”

Does this sound like identity politics to you — either as the controversial definition that it may not actually fit or as a category of political concern? It very well could be for rich, white people, but certainly nothing like what was detailed in post-election articles like The New York Times’ The End of Identity Liberalism. If the Republicans have been engaging in the identity politics of poor, white people (and there’s a credible argument that they are) — Democrats have been doing it for rich, white people.

The politics of “I give you money to protect my interests instead of Republicans because I feel good about Democrats that make a show about caring for the poor, underprivileged, and marginalized and are also willing to protect my interests.”

If the politics of identity had “taken over” for the last few decades don’t you think people of marginalized identities would have been afforded a little bit more actual legislative progress? Things like the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, legislation that attempted to ensure voting was not affected by racial discrimination, probably would not have been possible. There’s other means of disenfranchisement that benefits various powerful individuals and entities.

Don’t you think there would be a little more talk of specifics? Don’t you think we’d see something more than “when Donald Trump says Muslims should be banned, he’s wrong?” Isn’t that kind of… obvious?

If we’re looking at identity and class as a binary, then claiming that identity isn’t getting the kind of attention a lot of people concerned primarily with the politics of class say it is must mean I think class is getting that attention, right? Remember: everything is a horse race.

One could easily make the case that the American Left is too often catering to the upper-middle class (and up). One could also make the case they don’t want to talk about the working class, because their needs are at odds with the affluent and comfortable — and very much at odds with the drivers of industry. One would be right.

The Democrats, supposedly the party of the American Left, have a pretty serious class problem. One that is so serious, some dipshit billionaire (whom no one ever should have believed cares about the working class) was able to get a large number of these people on his side by simply saying “working class.” He certainly has done nothing to prove any kind of concern for them — in fact the opposite.

It would be lovely if people of all ideologies adopted at least some kind of stance on class — preferably one that favors those in the worst positions so people aren’t repeatedly totally screwed over by a tiny class of people that owns most of the world. That being said, I hardly expect Republicans to suddenly think regulating things is good. The GOP has spent a longer period of time than I have been alive repeatedly proving that it wants nothing to do with us commoners.

Liberals haven’t done much beyond that — especially in the last 20 years. At liberalism’s heart, bleeding as it may be, is an ideology grounded in the free market. It’s built on the idea of markets, marketability, choice, “access,” consumption, and “economic freedom.” The problem is, economic freedom means basically “the opposite of regulation.” The “free” in “free market” doesn’t mean “freedom,” it means “deregulation.” Free markets are ones that supposedly self-regulate, though I’d argue that self-regulation of any entity larger than an individual is impossible.

Actually, you know… individuals too. I just ate a whole bag of Oreo’s.

People make the assumption that since liberalism has brought about more social change and tolerance, that it’s automatically progressive. Now, please do not take this as an attack, but liberalism is very consensus-based.

Why could that possibly be a problem? Consensus is important, isn’t it? Scientific consensus is important so all consensus is automatically also important. Right? Then why do people say “well, the consensus is…” just before they explain why you can’t do something?

Let’s talk about marriage equality — a human right that slots pretty neatly into the concept of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It finally happened country-wide when the majority of people thought gay folks should be able to marry. The idea gained the market share in “The Marketplace of Ideas,” a metaphorical (read: pretend) market used to frame the idea of discourse as a monetary exchange (which, again, changes our behavior and response). It did not happen when gay folks were human. They’ve always been human.

If I asked the average liberal if that stuff was at the center of their ideology, they’d most likely laugh at me — or at least say “no.” But would you do me a favor? Look up liberalism. Look up classical liberalism and then social liberalism. Look up neoliberalism. Find every version of the word you can and try to find a comprehensive, accepted definition that doesn’t include the concept of a “free market.”

You won’t.

There’s an inherent goodness I admire when one says “I’m not a conservative; I’m a liberal!” While “liberal” isn’t the opposite of conservative, I find the sentiment very pure. Even if the ideology itself enables a lot of problems one might think to blame squarely on conservatives, the sentiment behind the language is almost always a good one.

It’s because of this purity of intention that I don’t think liberals, specifically, are the problem with liberalism. I think many — perhaps even a majority — would pretty quickly drop the free market as a central tenant of out of their own ideology should they be convinced it were actually there. Many probably haven’t considered the idea they are supporting a free market solution to both economic and social issues. It’s not exactly discussed by liberal leaders that often, you know.

There are many essays and articles out there about how meritocracy is bullshit. Some of them are written by feminists, some by disabled people, some by communists. It’s remarkable the kind of argument these folks can have over their beliefs when they all think the same thing. If a progressive asks a liberal about the free market, most will look at you like a fool and maybe bring up libertarians, objectivists, or maybe “techbros.” They may make a joke and the two may share a laugh. Yet the guiding principles of liberalism do actually incorporate a free market situation in all solutions.

Liberals often reject these ideas when presented with social ideas that mirror them, and even move to talk about responsibly regulated economic situations — genuine ones. Which would land them squarely in a place where talking about class is part of the norm.

So what’s the problem? If you ask me, the conflict of “class v. identity” is one created by people who wish to take neither of these categories of political concern seriously.

People with a goal like that might shift the focus of the internal workings of their party away from helping everyday people — a phrase I say with the express intention of including all marginalized people in addition to whomever you think this term refers to. They do this while addressing more and more specific demographics in the way Trump addressed white men: with great-sounding lies.

The propagators of this argument have something to benefit from masses of people having this argument. They are lifestyle marketers in t-shirts that say “ACTIVIST!” They’re people running blogs that center on gossip about the White House rather than actual policy. They write long threads on Twitter about how someone is terrible rather than how to interpret the political climate. They aren’t telling you how to beat what they see as unjust.

They’re benefiting.

I will name no names, and I probably consider some people to be this that you’d disagree with. You’d probably consider some people this that I would disagree with. Who the individuals are just flat out doesn’t matter, though.

What matters is you actively try not to be this. Understand that both class and identity are valid categories of political concern and are not a binary. They certainly aren’t even the only categories of political concern and there is no zero-sum game between them.

You can’t make other people examine themselves in this way and it isn’t up to you to. You can look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself some questions, though.

Are you making this into a competition? Or are you helping people?