From: jlgulick@cats.ucsc.edu
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 00:38:31 -0800
Message-Id: <199401150838.AAA18258@am.ucsc.edu>
To: psn@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: re: identity politics
Cc: jlgulick@cats.ucsc.edu
Status: RO
Do people buy the claim (to use a neo-classical metaphor) that there is
something peculiar about the late capitalist personality structure (what
this something is exactly I don't know, perhaps the tendency to adopt
narcissistic definitions of the self via image-based media culture) which
compels subjects to identify themselves politically based on ASCRIPTIVE
(as opposed to "relational," of which class is such a significant example)
characteristics? 

This is not to deny the continuing relevance of civil rights struggles,
given the persistence of both a) "discrimination" on the part of powerful
individuals, b) institutional inequities of race, gender, etc. wedded but
not reducible to processes of class domination.

However, what I am talking about is the chronic tendency in "grass-roots"
or "community" politics in the U.S. to wage struggle around inequities in
_distributional_ outcomes, which are typically skewed in racial terms. The
environmental justice movement is a prime example. To boil it down, identities
are erected in relation to equal access to decent means of consumption (housing
in non-polluted neighborhoods is a preeminent example here), as opposed to
popular participation in institutions (planning agencies, corporations which
make investments), not to speak of attacking the wage relation which, in
conjunction w/racism, so sharply defines access to means of consumption.

Forms of mobilization that center around how much or what quality of goods
certain ethnic communities typically get (be it state services or television
programming) too often devolve into exclusively race-based explanations 
and race-based solutions to more complicated social problems. A particularly
noxious concept in my opinion is the loose usage of the expression "community"
-- as in African-American, Latino, even "white" community. What is the material
basis for the usage of the term other than the persistence of white-skin
privilege in the U.S.? Does living in the same neighborhood, and experiencing
some common forms of deprivation, even if one never sees one's neighbors, much
less particpates in the same institutions (churches, schools, civic or political
organizations) really entitle the usage of the term "community"?

If there is such a thing as a global division of labor which differentially
structures the access of social fragments to material goods and a quality life,
does this not comprise a sound material basis for a definition of community
as does a homogenous ethnic community ghettoized into a distinct geographical
terrain ?