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No Justice and No Peace: A Critique of Current Social Change Politics (4 of 8)
For more than five years, there's been a lot of talk about addressing privilege in “progressive organizations.” With the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and the messianic language used to discuss it as the most important moment for social justice, came a simultaneous chorus of critique, perhaps best summed up by Elizabeth Martinez's essay “Where was the color in Seattle?” While many people no doubt reacted to these criticisms with earnest attempts to confront their own issues, many others jumped onto the bandwagon of anti-oppression in order to deflect the critique of their organizing methods, rather than truly deal with the ways they were reenacting oppressive behaviors. Soon, anti-oppression trainings became the “in” thing to do. One example of this is the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) which has had anti-racism and other anti-oppression workshops for the past several years, yet continues to organize and conduct outreach in the same way. The result is continuing to create a space of mostly white, middle and upper class, participants, and such changes as recruiting more people of color and other marginalized presenters recreate dynamics of the “oppressed” educating the “oppressor.”
Calling yourself anti-racist and being able to talk about white skin privilege has become trendy in the anti-globalization and later anti-war circles of the US and Canada. This movement to address privilege ends up being very narcissistic.
We are not saying that anti-oppression work is not important, but the focus on feelings and experiences of people with privilege once again puts them at the center, marginalizing those who are already “oppressed.” And although usually there is a disclaimer against increasing guilt, that emotion figures prominently in these discussions, which only contributes to the dynamic of privileged people being politically active out of guilt, rather than out of a true sense of solidarity or willingness to lose their own privilege. There's also a lack of attempts to personalize the anti-oppression work – someone may go to these anti-oppression trainings and discussions, but at the end of the day, almost all of their personal interactions with friends in social circles, where they live, are homogenous, like themselves. The point is not that straight folks should go “find some gay friends,” but to question what people consider as “natural” about their social environment. In fact, that environment is created, and such “anti-oppression” concepts should be intrinsic to that creation. We are also mindful that, although sometimes having white people teach each other about racism is helpful, anti-oppression work too often forces “the oppressed” to neglect themselves and their own needs in order to focus on others who need to be checked for their privilege or educated about anti-oppression issues.
Lastly, there is this idea that once someone pronounces themselves “anti-racist” then they assume that they are an ally of people without their privileges, immune from critique. Even if they take criticism in a positive guilt-free manner, they too often neglect to see that they are part of a whole racist system. An example of this comes from our experience at the protests against the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC. A critical mass bike ride of several hundred, and its large police escort, ended at a church where an immigrant workers' rally was being held. As the rally ended, many immigrant workers and their families were unable to leave the church for fear of being detained by the police now on the streets outside. Even though many of the bike riders would no doubt consider themselves allies to the immigrant workers that were there, the fact that they didn't consider how their actions would impact that specific group of people made their “solidarity” dangerous. These people need to look at how they benefit from the system, whether they want to or not, and then start to understand how to dismantle it.
