"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick" ~19th-century Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin used in his 1873 work Statism and Anarchy to critique Marxism
I'm sure you mean well, but I always get frustrated by this poster (E: as in the propaganda poster, not op poster lol).
Class reductionism, in the same way that "I don't see colour" does, ignores the very real material impacts of racism (and other systems of oppression) in addition to the impacts of class, and the fact that it also tries to frame white power and "Black power" as equal and equivalent, when they reaaaaaly aren't, is really telling.
Do we as a global working class need to unite against capitalists? Absolutely!
Can that ever happen if parts of the movement ignore and dismiss intersectionality and only focuses on abolishing one form of oppression, but not the others? Never.
Not only because left unaddressed those systems will remain, but because telling marginalised people to wait their turn, or for a "more convenient season" as MLK put it, is telling them loud and clear that their lives and freedom aren't a priority.
Intersectionality ftw.
Depends a bit on how each sees the image? Uniting in a more general way would mean less friction to resolve other problems by having less internal fights.
Yes, I think the point they're getting at is that people will use the concept of uniting regardless of race as an excuse to ignore the voices of people of color. Especially because that's a go-to argument for white people to cop out of racial conversations that make them uncomfortable. I'm tempted to believe there's some of that sentiment in the lurkers of this thread, given what's getting down voted.
I think the downvotes are there because the poster is not saying "stop with the minority oppression discourse already." It's saying "the minority oppression is fueled by those at the top who want to see you divided. Address that first."
But then, that's my interpretation.
Say, you have two holes in a sinking boat, from which water is coming in. And one is bigger than the other. You have resources to fix one at a time. Which one do you fix first?
I think your metaphor is a little more apt than you think: The complaint is that because white people are uncomfortable with talking about race, they will insist that fixing the big hole will somehow also fix the smaller hole, and therefore there's no reason to acknowledge the small hole.
I see it as white people saying "you know what.... in the end, the enemy is actually that guy at the top. Let's help each other address that. Everyone wins!" So in a way, I agree with the message regardless of motive. If white people's motive is to avoid the race conversation, welp, in the end once the bigger issue is resolved, then black people will have less noise to help them (white people) see their (black people) predicament.
This mindset requires a silver bullet solution to class problems before the conversation about race can start. The practical effect of this is that ideas that would make the world piecemeal better for people of color (any people of color, not just blacks) are deemed not worthy of consideration.
Similarly, because we're talking about this argument being used to silence non-white voices, that means that there is an assumption that any pro worker solution to class problems that is dreamt up must be inherently better for people of color. Without listening to anyone who might tell you otherwise. It gets very White Man's Burden-y.
Basically, there're two ways to interpret the idea that race problems are class problems:
The former excludes voices, and you should be mindful that it furthers the divide that those in power want. The latter is inclusive, and allows for multiple fronts against "The guy at the top"
Man, I'm a person of color, and I'm all for inclusivity. But I'm also a practical dude and I prefer effective solutions rather than making ideology get in the way of solving issues.
If ideology means a longer term game, that doesn't help the black person unfairly stuck in death row, or shot by the police, or fired without justification or falsely accused of rape today.
We wouldn’t have the racial divide thing, and more recently homophobia and transphobia, if those at the top weren’t using these things to divide us.
I dont think so anyway. Not to the extent we do.
Black Power is generally used not for the idea of the supremacy of any 'Black race', but to express solidarity against a racist system and emphasizing the strength and achievements of Black folk, considering the efforts of said racist system to denigrate and deny them.
White Power, on the other hand, is very much used for the idea of the superiority of a 'White race'.
