CRT_is_Marxism.md 53 KB
Intersectionality
Famous Credited Origin
1989 Kimberly Crenshaw - Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex (?)
- Argues that industries like general motors are able discriminate against black women, because they hire black men for the garage and white women for the office
- Race-based discrimination is not revealed, in spite of its prevalence, same for Sex-based discrimination
- Discrimination loop-hole, which might actually deserve some scrutiny
Additional factors that black women face:
- All stereotypes of being black
- all stereotypes of being a woman
- additional stereotypes of being a black woman
- Can't know how they're specifically being discriminated
This is the birth place of intersectionality - You know
Marcuse
Spoke of the need to seek liberation through the use of the ghetto population
Black Feminism
Feminist coopted offshoot of black liberationism Accused feminists of being "White" feminists:
- Racially tone-deaf / racist
- Black liberation movement is masculinists
Pre-existing liberation movements always go after big picture, which marginalizes those with multiple oppressed identities
Self-reflexively turn back against the movements in which they are embedded in order to get them to pay attention to a minority-within-a-minority movement.
Master-Slave Dialectic
The people in the slave position within the slave-dialectic have to use tools outside of what the master considers acceptable in order to dismantle an oppressive system. Nietzsche: Geneology of Morals (subversion tactics)
Hegel wasn't thinking of himself as a revolutionary, was trying to be a philosophical student of history. Didn't want to agitate, believed they would naturally occur. Marx wanted to create revolutions.
Awakening the class consciousness - lower class should break free of the chains of the existing system.
Critical Theory
Mark Horkheimer Critical Theory is Critical Marxism Marx didn't understand that the terms of the ideal society cannot be articulated within the terms of the existing society. Adorno put it:
- There is no way to cast a positive image of the Utopia. You have to get outside it completely.
Awaken a Critical Consciousness that makes you understand that the existing society is brainwashing you into your own oppression. Through realizing this, you realize the alternatives (Utopian possibilities that have )
Combahee River Collective Statement 1977
First major collective of the black feminist movement. Audry Lord was a prominent member. First convened in 1974. Put out their manifesto in 1977 Precedes everything else by at least a decade. Kimberle Crenshaw woudl have been very much away of this statement and the thought occurrence Rise of Identity Marxism Lead to Intersectionality. Right in the middle was this statement.
Collectivists
Voluntary community where everyone has strict codes they uphold and work together in favour of the collective over the individual. Collective of Black Feminists doing political work. Actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual adn class oppression. Their task is the development of an integrated analysis and practice based on the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.
Theory and Praxis are inseparable: Practice in Theory from marxist.org: Practice differs from activity in general because practice is inseparable from theory, which gives its means and end.
Practice and Theory
Activity includes unthinking is inclusive of its mental theoretical or ideological aspects. Ideological or mental aspects can be abstracted from practice only relatively The contrast between theory and practice is always only a conditional and relative one. Practice is active rather than being a passive observation, and it is directed towards changing something. Practice differs from activity in general because practice is inseparable from theory (which gives its means and end). Activity includes unthinking reflexes. Practice is only enacted through theory, and theory is formulated based on practice. Whenever separated, they fall into a distorted one-sidedness. Theory and practice can only fully develop in connection with one another.
- Human activity is always purposeful, but in early stages before the development o fthe division of labour, there was no separation between Theory and Practice
- Goal of reunification of theory and practice. Return to a perfect unison.
- Marxist thought in general seeks a wedding of theory and practice
Combahee Collective understand this - they are Marxists. Their choice of words is deliberate. Neo-marxists taking up Identity Politics to understand the multiple forms of oppression so that these issues can be approached in a Marxist way. Identity Factors - integrated analysis systems of oppressions are interlocking.
Intersectionality, from its birthplace, is in fact a Marxist practice.
"Intersectionality is not so much a theory as it is a practice" - Crenshaw
Not a totalizing theory of identity, it is a practice. Telling you she is a Marxist.
Identity Politics
1950s - 65 / 68 Luther King murder Civil Rights movement Then in 1977 the Combahee River Collective naming Identity Politics in the context of being Marxist Intersectionalists.
Dialectical thought engine of Leftist thought - is Dialectical. Pause upon this. Thesis - antithesis - Synthesis. The different oppressions are in contradiction to one another. Race-based, sex-based, class-based. There are tensions between them. Is it racism or poverty causing problems for a particular community? This forms a contradiction. The problem is poverty? No it's race. It's sexism? No it's racism. Synthesis of oppressions to create a synthetic hyper-oppression that everyone can shoe themselves into. It starts with class, then race, sex, heterosexual aspects, fat status, ability status, mental health. Integrating into this synthetic blob of identity-based oppression. The biggest, most egregious example of this is the AAPI
AAPI
Meaningful politics of identity that's made up of the many voices of millions rather than the individual voices of a few, because this produces coalition politics. One of the most racist conglomerations. Asian-American Native-Hawaiian Pacific Islander. Slant-eyed people? Yellow skin people? Super racist.
These are distinct groups, but Asian-American brings in a huge vast array of people, and in some cases even in Indians. You slam them together with pacific islanders and native hawaiians and create a giant coalition of people who are not one culture, based on: similar skin tones and similar eye shape. That's it. Fucking racist as hell.
Synthesis of oppressions to create synthetic identity coalitions that can be used for "meaningful politics of identity". This is a marxist front to use these identity categoies and the people within them that they can agitate to do work for them o they can have a revoultion.
"This synthesis of these oppressions creates the condition of our lives"
Harkening into the structural determinism argument. The matrix of domination (Patricia Hill Collins) are woven together and this neo-marxist kaleidoscopic mishmash ensues. These conditions are material and cultural and psychic conditions that are morally determinant for them. It makes them who they are - they couldn't possibly be anything else. They couldn't have individual thoughts, because they have all of these identity categories and the oppression that comes with them imposed on them from the outside, which can't be avoided.
Marxian class-conflict analysis. No longer using economic class as the basis, but instead this synthesized cobbling together of economic class plus other identity factors which eclipse in importance the economic class. This is very visible today, when you look at INtersectional Activism and the rich white women that are involved with int.
"As black women, we see black feminism as the logical pollitical movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of colour face."
That was just the first paragraph. This is the birthplace of intersectionality - it's obvious - you can hear the Marxian and Hegelian undertones. THe synthetic religion of the left, and the purpose to create a meaningful politics of identity that can create identity coalitions that are synthetic. Not fake, but synthetic - an unreal thing. Cobbled together for the purpose of doing this. Maybe you dont' believe that this is Marxist, but we'll get there - don't worry.
They go on to say:
"We discuss 4 major topics in the paper that follows, 1. the Genesis of contemporary black feminism, 2. that we believe it is the specific province of our politics 3. The problems in organizing black feminists and 4. Black feminist issues and practice."
"1. The genesis of contemporary black feminism: Before looking at the recent development of black feminism, we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of afro-American women's continuous life and death struggle for survival and liberation.'
THe same hypoerbole we see in the black lives matter movement, which is basically this in 2021 version - 2013 to 2021. You hear it right there. Continuous life and death struggle for survival and liberation. The communists think you're not really surviving unless you're in a communist Utopia. Liberation is the key - this is the Marcusian neo-marxist essay on liberation agenda being foisted into the black liberation and feminist movements and then being cobbled together into this synthetic thing calle dBlack Feminism that spawned intersectionality.
"Black women's extremely negative relationship to the american political system (of white MAle Rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes (Kimberly Crenshaw just ripped this stuff off)."
Angela Davis
Crazy radical involved in kidnapping at shotgun point a federal judge, and openly support the Koolaid Jim Jones who was actually a communist - she gave statement by radio in complete solidarity with JIm Jones, when he was in Guyana. She was the black feminist protege of Herbert Marcuse, who was her PhD doctoral thesis, and whom she said radicalized her for the first of two iterations of her full radicalization - the rest of it happening when she visited Palestine. She is still active today, supported Biden even.
Ibram Kendi wrote in Stamped from the Beginning - the definitive history of racism? From Kendi? Absurdly long book +500 pages - 100 of those pages are dedicated to Angela Davis. She is one of 5 characters that Kendi sets aside as the definitive history of racism. CRT Intersectionality agenda rooted in Marcuse.
"As Angela Davis points out, in Reflections on the Black Women's role in the communiy of slaves, black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white-male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have alway sbeen black women activists, some known like Harriet Tubman, Francis Z W Harper, Ida B Wells Barnett, Mary Church Terell. And thousands upon thousands unknown who have had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus o their political struggles unique. Contemporary black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy and work by our mothers and sisters."
So, you can see them trying to tie themselves into this very long history. When you start talking about Harriet Tubman, you're actually looking back into the situation of slavery still happening, definitely still a more patriachal society, as though those conditions are a meaningful reflection of what was going on in 1977 when this was written.
"A black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the american women's movement, beginning in the late 1960s"
We'd call it second wave feminism, though intersectional thought, because of things like black feminism, doesn't like what they call the linear wave model. The first wave, the second wave, etc now maybe the fourth wave. They don't like that. They like it to be more complicated so they have a place for themselves.
"Black other third world and working women have been involved with the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation (Marcuse?). In 1973, Black feminists primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate black feminist group. This became the national black feminist organization (NBFO). Black Feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s/70s. Many of us were active in those movements - civil rights, black nationalism, the black panthers - and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their ideologies, their goals and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was experience and disillusionment with these liberation movements, as well as the experience on the periphery of the white male left that led to the need to deveop a politics that was antiracist, unlike those of white women and anti sexist, unlike those of black and white men."
Fast forward to 1991, Kimberle crenshaw's Mapping the Margins, and you hear the same thing. Ripoff!
"There's also undeniable a personal genesis for black feminism that is the politicsl realization that comes from the seemignly personal experiences of individual black womens' lives. Black Feminists and many more black women who do not definet hemselves as feminist have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day to day existence. As children we realized that we were different from boys, and we were treated differently. For example, we were told in the same breath to be quiet, both for th sake of being ladylike, and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people. As we became older we became aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men, however we had no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent to us - what we knew was really happening."
Written in 1977 by adults, so let's assume they're actually, in most cases about 20 or older. We go backwards to their childhood, born around 1955 to 1960 - if they're that age when writing this. So they were, as children, being told to be quiet, still in segregation. Still under Jim Crow. So to make this less objectionable in the eyes of white people, where that was a relevant thing. They're speaking up was necessary for the civil rights and all of us who are sane and reasonable today accept that that was a necessity, but you can see how the conditions that were there formed a situation in their heads that has gone on many years later, when that's not necessarily the same situation, to cause them to be angry and act in particular ways that maybe no longer apply in the decade following teh civil rights movement, and its success. We had no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent - we had no vocabulary to explain our oppression - that's not true, the civil rights movement did a good job of doing that. MArxism came in and coopted ahd gave them (and this is how so many get radicalized into this) a vocabulary that exaggerates and agitates them to take up a very radical politics when all they were really looking for was a way of articulating certain things that they felt, and then that double-meaning game that the Marxists play is very influential and tends to coopt and radicalize people.
"Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly feminism. The political analysis and practice that we women used to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us and still does not allow most black women to look more deeply into our own experiences and from that sharing and growing consciousness to build a politics that will change ourlives and inevitably end our oppression. Our development must also be tied to the contemporary economic an political position of black people. The post-war generation of Black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options previously closed completed to black people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom fo the American capitalistic economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education, in employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.
Hating and benefitting from Capitalism
Black people are finally able to make a way in, and so our economic position at this point was still at the bottom of the bottom of the "American Capitalistm Economy". Marxist term gets thrown in as an extra nugget to locate the problem, not on the basis of reality, because capitalism would ensure that these people, in 1977, would be able to own and make use of their own property to build their own brand and build themselves to a position of success, but they're blaming capitalism for their problem because they embraced Marxist nonsense. Seduced. They say only a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools. And how? seduced and alienated through this language -> tokenism. They admitted they didn't have this ability before civil rights, before WWII, they had no opportunity to stand up. In a true white supremacist systematically racist society, they would be told to remain quiet. They're indighting the thing that allows them to get "certain" tools - they don't have full access to society - as a result of Tokenism in education and employment. "Tokenism". That's a term of alienation and agitation. The only reason that black women are being hired in 1977 is for Tokenistic purposes. Whereas, you know, it's nothing about merit - it's so funny because if you read Shelby Steele's White Guilt you can see how this is the dynamic the Marxists were exploiting - twisting people like University Professors, etc. Shelby's reveals this in the beginning of White Guilt - he was involved in - but no, it's tokenism. They're twiting people to help them, rather than working toward building their capitalist foundation, because they hate capitalism and hav eto blame something outside of themselves, they say people are tokenistic. This is why, in 1982, Derrick Bell (considered the father of CRT) can write "Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The permanence of racism". Black faces are the faces at the bottom of the well - Black people are still at the lowest point in American society, because they're held down by a racist society. But, then, certain tokenistic people, like Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Arsenio Hall, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson - all of these are just tokens. This is a language of alienation and agitation.
"A combined antiracist and antisexist position drew us together initially, and as we developed politically, we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and economic oppression under capitalism" (They became more intersectional and took up marxism).
"2. What we believe. Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable..."
They always have to put these stupid obvious statements, so that if you challenge them, they'll accuse you of challenging that. The shared belief that black women are inherently valuable. This is already messed up. To say that black women are inherently valuable? Nobody is inherently valuable. Nobody is special. What they're saying is that black women get to have inherently special status and should be treated as such because they are black and because they are women. Standpoint epistemology - but double meaning here in that all human lives share something in common, if we were religious we'd say they are image-bearers of God, if we were just humanists we would say that all human life is valuable and that everybody has something to potentially contribute. They're playing off this double meaning, and they always do this.
So that if you then on to say "Well I reject the Combahee Collective and what their agenda is", and they'll say "Well, we started with the belief that black women are inherenetly valuable - what problem do you have with that?".
Meanwhile, inherently valuable has two meanings - one of which is the one that everyone agrees with. A basic statement of human rights that applies to all people. All lives matter? The other one is - no, they're particularly special. They have inherent value in that they bring this intersectional perspective to the table.
Navel-Gazing
"... that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's" (grammar?) "may because of our need as human persons for autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic (Marxian tip of the hand, because now they're going to say it's nuanced and complicated), but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever considered our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously for the ending of that oppression." We're extra special, but nobody actually cares about us. We're doubly oppressed, so everyone who cares about oppression has to care more about us. Moral extortion at the heart of intersectionality. Moral racketeering. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attributed to black women, for example, Mammy, Matriarch, Sapphire, Whore, Bulldagger" (5 of the 6 that Patricia Hill Collins talks about in Black Feminist Thought - in 1990 - so original) "let alone cataloguing the cruel often murderous treatment we receive, indicates how little value has been placed on our lives during 4 centuries of bondage in the western hemisphere. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolved from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters, and our community, which allows us to continue our struggle and work."
"This focusing upon our own oppression..."
Narcissistic navel-gazing at the heart of Intersectionality. The point isn't to focus on their own issues - but to morally extort other groups, first white feminists or feminists more broadly, Black liberations, then eventually everybody else into doing their work for them.
"This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics." Whoomp, there it is. The first mention of Identity Politics in the context that is meant today.
"We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come radically out of our own identity. As opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression, in the case of black women, this is a particular repugnant, dangerous and threatening and tehrefore revolutionary concept - because it is obvious, in looking at the political movements that preceded us, that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood and walking 10 paces behind to be recognized as human, levely human is enough."
Would be wonderful if that's what it was about, but it's not. The fundamental assumption: why is "All Lives Matter" not a better statement? Why was it a bannable offence, or a moral infraction of the highest order to say "All lives matter". You're taking the focus off of black. You're taking the focus off the identity category. Black women want to be put into queen hood. They don't want to be walking 10 paces behind, but their specific justification given was that because black lives are at the lowest level, if you raise them up to them up to an equal level, then you'll be sure that everyone else will be at an equal level too. There's no actual tradeoff there, no zero-sum to their obviously zero-sum or negative-sum identity politics.
Moral Extortion
This is a core lie in that it is a very useful thing for them to say, because it makes them morally virtually invincible, but it's not reflected in what they actually do. They just complain that no one is doing their work for them, so everyone else is racist and sexist. They will morally extort people (moral racketeering) into doing exactly what they just said they reject: being put on a pedestal, etc. To be recognized as levely human is enough, but their measure of levely human is that everyone else has to focus on them to get them up there, because they believe they're held below everyone else and that this has been imposed on them. All the writing for the next 40 years essentially takes this for granted.
"We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in black womens' lives as are the politics of class and race. We also find it difficult to separate race from class, from sex oppression, because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression, which is neither solely racial, not solely sexual: for example, the history of rape of black women by black men is a weapon of politicsl repression."
"Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive black men and do not advocate the fractionalism that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact race which white women, of course, o not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with black men against racism, while we also struggle with black men about sexism."
Intersectionality with its moral extortion racket against white women. White women are so privileged that they can be against black men, but because we have a race issue attached, we still have to be in solidarity with black men, and we have to work together, so we have a better form/approach of identity politics. White women rae actually terrible and racist.
"We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political economic systems of capitalism and imperialism, as well as patriarchy."
So, they're Marxist feminists.
Marxism
"We are Socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create those resources. We are not convinced, however, that a Socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and antiracist revolution will guarantee our liberation."
The birth of the Identity Marxism. Marcuse called for it, 10 years before this (roughly), and here it is. They're explicitly Marxist (because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who create the products). that is Marxist socialism. That's not Universal Healthcare, public services, etc. That is Marxist Socialism because work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and not the bosses. Material resources equally distributed. That's absolutely Marxist Socialism/Marxism. So they're that, but it's not good enough, because they're going to invent Identity Marxism.
"We have arrived at the necessity for developing and understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black Women who are generally marginal in the labour force, while at this particular time some of us are particularly viewed as doubly-desirable tokens at white collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working and economic lives."
Material determinism taken into the context of racial and sexual determinism. Race-Marxists, Marxist Feminists, Marxist Marxists, and now they need to fuse Identity Politics as they define it into Marxism. Identity Marxism happening right here.
"Although we are in essential agreement with Marx's Theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black Women (no pedestal). A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is the political (what a dumb idea. Maybe the worst of the 20th century)."
The personal is political? How do you create a narcissistic, navel-gazing identity politics religion out of Marxism? That's how. The personal is political.
"In our consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond white womens' revelations, because we are deaing with the implications of race and class, as well as sex."
Consciousness-raising was a feminist project as well, and the feminist project mirrored the Marxist project to say that there is an upper class and a lower class, a stratified society, and that the upper class oppresses the lower class, and so the revolution of the societyis necessary. Liberal feminists often ended up thinking that they were just trying to get a level playing field, but the goal was actually that they wanted to have some sort of a revolution, and the Marxist Feminists actually knew this, so they raised the Feminist Consciousness - tried to convince women that they were oppressed and that they needed to overthrow society and raise a feminist consciousness. But there's a raise a class consciousness, and riase a Critical consciousness. Class consciousness is Marxist and the Critical Consciousness is the neo-marxist idea that the entire society is brainwashing you into believing that you're not really oppressed - they're trying to dig into that and they're using idntity factors as cultural artifacts to do it and that's the evolution of NeoMarxism into Identity Marxism that we have to deal with now today.
Standpoint
"Even our black women style of talking and testifying in black language about what wre have experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political. We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters has ever been looked at before."
Lived experience, experiential nature of our oppression -> justification for whwa was standpoint epistemology throughout the 80s and became intersectional / positionality thinking in the present paradigm starting from the 1990s.
"No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of black womens' lives. An example of this kind of this kind of relevation, conceptualization occurred at a meeting as we discussed the ways in which our early intellectual interests had been attacked by our peers, particularly by black males."
Turns out black males are also not keen on feminism.
"We discovered that all of us, because we were Smart had als been considered ugly. ie Smart-ugly. Smart-ugly crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our "social lives". The sanctions in the black and white communities against black-women thinkers is comparatively much higher than for white women, particularly ones from the educated, middle and upper classes. As we have already stated, we reject teh stance of Lesbian separatism, because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us, it leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly black men, women and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been showed socialized to be in a society, what they support, how they act and how they oppress, but we do not have the misguided notion, that is their maleness, per se, that is their biological maleness that makes them what they are. As black women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. We must also question whether lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but teh sexual sources of womens' oppression, negating the facts of class and race."
"3. Problems in organizing black feminists"
"During our years together as a black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat - joy, victory and failure. We have found that it is very difficult to organize around black feminist issues. Difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are black feminists. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly since the white women (maybe it's the identity politics, people don't like it? People want don't want to alienate everybody else around them all the time based o issues like race and sex?). We have tried to think about the reasons for diffficulties particularly since teh white women's movement and growing in many directions (really? A bigger tent movement is strong, and a smaller-tent movement is fractionizing and weak?). In this section we will discuss some of th egeneral reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk about teh stages in organizing our own collective. The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who do possess any one of these types of privilege have."
Privilege
Invocation in the 70s of privilege. Very clearly and very early. They don't have racial, sexual, heterosexual or heterosexual or class privilege to rely upon. Privilege is the extension of having access to bourgeois society.
"Being in the upper level of society. We have none of those things, nor do we have minimal access to resources and power that groups who do have privileges of these kinds have."
If they were straight instead of lesbians, if they were white instead of black, if they were male instead of female, if they were rich instead of poor, they might have access to privilege and they might have a more successful movement, but they don't have that, and obviously because they want to be black lesbian feminist socialists marxists activists they seriously are alienating everyone else from them.
Activists are seriously alienating everyone else from them. They'try trying to create a politic that's going to twist veeryone else to do their work for them, and to join in with them. What they invoke to get people to do it is to claim that they are in the most oppressed nature, thus anyone who cares about oppression must care about them the most, without putting them on a pedestal (of course). The psychological toll/trauma-based language comes down to the "we're tired" psychological toll of whatever, already in 1977. The mechanism by which you have to recognize their oppression: we experience tremendous psychological pain and toll. It takes a toll on us and wears us down, we're multiply oppressed, you don't even understand how bad it is for us, you have to be in solidarity with us. Victimhood culture to the power of however many identity factors => moral extortion racket. Psychological language to do a moral racketeering routine on compassionate/left liberals and leftists who rae coopted into doing their work for them.
"The toll of being a black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness in doing political work can never be under-estimated."
Backwards of theory - whining - it should be easier to achieve when you have more oppression, because it should be easier to see your oppression. But they are saying is it's not because therea re too many forces against you. This is nonsense whining.
Language of harm, trauma and victimhood
"As an early groupmember once said "We are all damaged people merely by virtue of being black women". We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change teh condition of all black women. In a black feminist search for sisterhood Michelle Wallace arrives at this conclusion. We exist as women who are black who are feminists each stranded for the movement, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle, because being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done - we would have to fight the world."
Typical wound-collecting trick you see from a lot of activists of this leftist victimhood-oriented stripe. They are annoying. Lesbian activists, black activists, feminist activist, marxist activist. They annoy everybody - their whole thing is to alienate, to whine, to bitch and complain and blame somebody else for their problems. WHen someone shuns them for being negative Nancy and joy-destroying pains in the asses, they think it's because they're black women or lesbians, but it's not. It's because they're fucking annoying, and when people shun them they collect the wound and say "it's a factor of identity". It's a workhorse technique. They go out and agitate and bother people, using an annoying analysis which is typically perceived as having something wrong with it, and they understsand that there's a moral extortion racket going on, so they say "No, I don't think so, I'm not going to lend to your super annoying form of activism", to which the activists respond with "oh it's because we're poor black lesbian feminists, isn't it?" It's wound-collecting. And it's super common, and is the workhorse at the heart of Intersectionality. When they say "positionality must be continuously engaged" they say that it means you must acknowledge who you are, so what you know/can know can be understood in terms of oppression, but what it really means is that you are acknowledging that you're participating in this moral extortion racket in exactly this way.
I used to joke about the prospect of woke Christians, because I would say "could you imagine anything more annoying than woke Christian? Evangelists are bad enough, without trying to do. A street preacher who is preaching woke stuff with jesus behind. Imagine that person sayin g"you just don't like me because I advocate for racial justice, and I'm a Christian, and Christians have always been persecuted" - it's wound-collecting. No, you're actually just pissing people off with your crap, and nobody wants to listen to it. It has nothing to do with you, it has to do with the fact that you're repeating crap noone wants to listen to.
So conflating politics and identity - the personal is political - leads someone to make this confusion and then convince people that this confusion makes sense. It's an extortion racket.
"Wallace is pessimistic but realistic (wound-collecting) in her assessment of black feminist position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation most of us face".
Yes, because you alienate everyone. From you rhetoric, you tell Lesbian separatists they're wrong. You tell white feminists are wrong. Black liberation guys are sexist. Normal liberals don't want Marxism. Why do you think you're isolated? It's not being you're a black feminist - it's because you're annoying. Adopt a politics that's based in reality instead of alienating everybody, but you can't do that because it'd be blaming the victim. Self-sealed, wound-collecting crybaby ideology. The only thing one can do is understand that intersectionlity, in this regard, amounts to moral racketeering.
"We might use our position at the bottom to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If black women were free it would mean that everyone else would have to be free."
That's the stupid, incorrect, assumption. Soundness of argument? False. Premises of this argument do not follow. If black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free, since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression (Race Communism and Identity Communism). That's the fundamental logical failure at the bottom of black feminism, which causes them to engage in this moral extortion racket called Intersectionality. The same thing we just dealt with again RE not being able to say All Lives Matter - which should be considered a higher and more viable truth than Black Lives Matter, because when Black Lives Matter all Lives Will Matter automatically - because they're the faces at the bottom of the well. It's the exact same garbage logic that they used with all Lives Matter being Bad vs Black Lives Matter being Good. Don't put them on a pedestal, except.. Do. Because it's a moral extortion racket.
Intersectionality takes that moral extortion racket and it turns each of the movements (feminism) inward on themselves based on another trait. They create that "divide and conquer/polarisation" dynamic everywhere they go. Extort what's left of the movement, which is dying of its own internal contradictions, and fighting around polarisation. They turn what's left of the movement for their own purposes. You could be part of the Black Liberation of movement, but it's actually sexist unless you're a Black Feminist First. This is the manoeuver that they do again and again.
"Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of black people, because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions about our existence, that is that sex shoudl be a determinant to power relationships."
Pamphlet they quote as an example: "We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of the house. He is the leader of the house-nation because his knowledge of the world is broader, hsi awareness greater, his understanding fuller, and his application of this information wiser. After all ... it is only reasonable that the man be the head of the house because he is able to defend and protect the development of his home ... WOmen cannot do the same things as men, they are made by nature to function differently, equality of men and women is smoething that cannot happen, even in the abstract world. Men are not equal to other men, that is ability, experience, understanding. The value of men and women can eb seen as the value of Gold and Silver. They are not equal btu they both have great value. We must realize that men and women are a completement to each other, because there is no house family without a man and his life. Both are essential to the development of any life."
Here they will tear that apart. Sure there are grains of sexism worth considering, but they will really tear this apart, because of what's at the end. If you look at any of the data-driven analysis in the entire world right now, what is it all saying about the number one determining variable. Education, employment, etc. It is whether there is a stable, 2-parent led household in a decent neighbourhood. 70-80% of black children in the US are born in a household that doesn't have a father present. Here we have black nationalists saying "Men and women are a complement to each other", in the early 1970s. Because there is no house or family without a man and his wife, both are essential to the development of any life. That turns out to eb perfectly true and correct, despite what some of the other statements have been. It's key, and what we see now is the absolute destruction of that, to the absolute decimation of successful black outcomes. And who did it? The Combahee River collective, the Black Feminists et al stepped in and threw a wrecking ball into this key, fundamental statement to the structure of building a functional community and society. All this stuff before it, different etc set it aside and realize that men and women are a complement to one another.
They have a massive problem with this. And here we are 44 years later, and they milk the differences in outcomes (black attainment, employment, criminality, incarceration, drug use, murder rate, huge ugly problems). The intellectual inheritors of this steaming pile of intersectional garbage making the same argument tha that their forebearers destroyed the idea of family. They want tuse their feminism to upset a core belief, that they claim is within Black Nationalism, or Black Liberation, is a sexist problem that needs to be problematized. So for all of its problems, that it migh already.
Nationalist and Liberationist are always kind of socialist and working in concert with one another, but the Liberationist are always worse. Same parallel with guoa ming tong in China. Chinese National party was a socialist part, etc And then the CCP intercepted and subverted it from within by accusing it of being Han supremacist and trying to force Han chineseness on everyone. Nationalism was going to demand a Chinese identity. Liberationists are the Marxists whoc ome in and colonize the Socialist/Nationalist parties. We have a core belief here that in the early 1970s from a Black Nationalist pamphlet that the black success depends on remembering that there is going to be a stable family unit of Man Wife and Children, which turns out to be the number one dtermining variable for Black succss;Now here we are, 40 years later, and they're complaining issues of Black attainment and systemic racism. Who create dit, bitches? You did. Why are you so isolated, why does nobody lke you, why are the black liberation and nationalists movements excluding you? Because you're trying to break up families.
"The material conditions of most black women would hardly lead them to upset both economic and sexual arragnements that seem to represent some stability in their life. Many black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday restrictions of their lives cannot risk struggling against them both"
Most black women accept this patriarchal oppression, because they want stability in their life. Remember Marcuse - the point of the analysis is that the economic situation of the working class can be improved and they can be stabilized, so destabilization is key to his revolutionary political agenda. Black women rae forced to accept some patriarchy so they can have stability. The Black feminist agenda, as the marxists that they are, is to create instability instead. Agitate to become committed to a movement that leads to instability. How do you create instability and use that instability to create a revolutionary movement, by outsourcing the blame onto the society itself, instead of the people causing it. To to be clear, since we're talking about criminality - it's decminating communities in the wake of BLM, which turned out to not be that great for black lives, overall - this is why you're seing the bail reform, the release of criminals, decimation of prosecuting crime like shoplifting and theft - all of this huge rise in criminality is a Marxist strategy. It's tied into things here where you destabilize a community so people will be more likely to pull off a revolution. This is exactly the same thing in yet another domain, but because it was more insidious and quiet, they were more successful in pulling off.
Many programs of the great society were the things that incentivized single motherhood, for example (welfare as it was construed) specifically targetting, primarily (not intentionally racially, but sometimes) black inner city families - most of what Critical Race Theory evolved to do was to defend and to reinvigorate and increase those great society entitlements that were instituted by president Johnson and amplify them, whereas they were starting to get walked back in the 1970s, and Critical Race Theory said no we need to amplify those entitlements, but those entitlements were the destruction of the very people that they were trying to help, and those broken lives and broken circumstances and broken neighbourhoods become the justification that we live in a systematically racist society. They're creating their own problem and then using the problem to justify their continued action, and you can see this written into this collective statement that is the foundation of intersectionality. So you can damn well bet that intersectionality is a program of creating problems that it's later going to milk over and over again, to drive for more intersectionality. This is the standard communist trick. Intersectionality is a gigantic communist ploy that operates off of a gigantic moral extortion racket to enable a rampant and out of control victimhood culture that concentrates through this distorted view of psychological and psychic harm, and trauma, that they attach to systemic oppression, which is an explicitly Neo-Marxist idea.
"The reaction of black men to feminism has been notoriously negative (because they know it will destroy the family structure, which they know is the only way out of the oppression structure coming out of segregation. They need stable famlies to raise up a generation of winners who are going to go and make successes of their lives, and feminism (black feminism in particular) was going to absolutely wreck that in their communities. And Black men damn well knew it. So their reaction has been notoriously negative). They are, of course, they say, even more threatened than black women by the possibility that black feminists might organize around our own needs. They realize that they might lose valuable and hard-working allies in their struggles, or that they might also be forced to change their habitually sexist ways of interacting with and oppression black women. Accusations that black feminism divides the black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous black women's movement."
Intersectionality is a catastrophe, and the people who were dealing with its emergence knew it was, even with their own racial identity politics being its own problem.
"Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the 3 year existence of our group, and every black woman who came out of a strongly-felt need for some level fo possibility that did not previously exist in her life. We first started meeting in 1974 after the NBFO first regional conference. We did not have a strategy for organizing, or even a focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of months, we began to meet again lagte in the year and began to do an intense variety of consciousness raising. The overwhelming feeling that we had was that afer years we had finally felt each other. Although we were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their involvement in lesbian politics, sterilization abuse, and human rights work. The third-world womens' international womens' day activities and support activities for trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelyn, joan little, and Inez Garcia. During our first summer when membership had dropped off considerably, those of us remaining wante dto open a refuse for battered women in a black community. We also decided to become an independent collective, since we had serious disagreements with NBFO's bourgeois feminist stance, and their lack of a clear political focus."
Accusing the National Black Feminist Organization of being bourgeois. Typical marxist concentration of commitment to a subgroup. Divide and conquer. This is what intersectionality exists to do.
"We were also contacted by socialist feminists with whom we had worked on abortion rights who wanted to encourage us to attend National Socialists Conference. Despie the narrowness of the ideology promoted at that particular conference, we became more aware of the need for us to understand our own economic situation, and make our own economic analysis (so they became more intense Marxists). In teh fall, when some members returned, we expereinced several months of disagreements internally conceptualized as a lesbian/straight split, and a result of class and political differences."
A fun time to be there. Divide and conquer internally of them, so they come out ideologically consistent as this identity Marxism, which is what will emerge.
"Those of us still meeting determined the need to do political work and go beyond consciousness raising."
Theory and praxis have to be wedded - becomign marxist.
"Some women who didn't want to do political work stopped attending of their own accord, so we looked for a focus. We decided with the addition of new members to become a study group. We shared outreadings of black feminism and began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a black feminist publication. Interpersonal issues etc etc. Planning to gather black feminist writing, essential to demonstrate reality of our politics to other black women, believe we can do this through writing and distributing our work. Individual black feminists are in isolation all across the country, do political work in coalition with other groups, etc."
Last two paragraphs are just ugh. But that's their nasty, turbulent history. Ready to issue this statement after all this.
"Black feminist issues and projects: During our tim together we have identified and worked on many issues of particular relevance to black women. The inculsiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any sitaution which impinges on the lives of women, third world, and working people. (Sounds like Marcuse). We rae committed to working on struggles in which race sex and class are simultaneous factors in oppression. (Marxist). We might become involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs third world women, or picket a hospital that is cutting down on already inadequate healthcare to a third world community, or set up a rape crisis centre in a black neighbourhood."
Working their way into legitimate causes. Something that's always happening, and not always for bad reason. A lot of things that are necessary good projects, for reasons that are the correct reasons, and when they do them they bring their shit ideology inside which creates a disaster and concentrates the thing. Unintentional entryism. They want to help, they get involved, that's legitimate, and once they're in, ebcauase they're moral zealots with their ideology, they twist everything and normalize them to make them comform to their beliefs. Making messes out of communities.