Monday, December 8, 2014

Intersections of race and ideology in antiracist, anticapitalist Seattle

The Stranger recently ran this article by Eli Sanders about the heterogeneity of protesters and ideologies at Justice for Mike Brown events in Seattle.  The Black Out Black Friday march included a mix of perspectives, with some folks wanting to talk specifically about policing, and others more broadly interested in abolish the state altogether (and thus police, too). There's some interesting stuff here w/r/t race and ideology, which I think can be encapsulated in one quote:

Four days later, at a protest timed to coincide with Black Friday, a man calling for police body cameras—a technological intervention, not a popular revolution—said he'd been arguing with some of the anarchists earlier in the march. "For me and my little brothers, it's life or death," he said. "I have little nephews, too. I said, 'For you, maybe it's ideological, high-minded stuff. But for me, it's death.' A cop could shoot me and go home and have dinner. His career would be fine, but my life is done."


It's worth noting that the ideological divide is not strictly racial (for example, the photo the Stranger ran with that article is of a Black man holding a sign for the Revolutionary Communist Party), and in fact the Stranger doesn't really address race in the article (or, really, in other articles... Seattle's a pretty white city).  But this idea of "distance from necessity" is one that's important.  For some people -- meaning, generally, people who aren't white, middle-or-higher class, educated men -- anticapitalism might be a nice goal, but it's not really all that viable when you have more pressing concerns, like not getting choked out/shot, or making sure you can get to work on time to keep your job.  This is something that us white anticapitalists might do a better job of keeping in mind.

It reminds me of some of my first conversations with real, in the flesh anarcho-commies. This was back at the beginning of grad school, when some friends I made turned out to be volunteers at the local anarchist collective bookstore/coffeeshop/open mic stage. All the volunteer staffers, and almost all of the regulars, were white, mostly young people affiliated with the local university.  This maybe isn't too far out of line with local demographics (a pretty white college town), but still, the only person of color there was a biracial white/Mexican guy who could pass for white.  It took me a while to notice this, and I don't think the fact that these folks weren't more racially diverse is necessarily a product of them being unwelcoming to PoC students, but maybe rather the fact that such "ideological, high-minded stuff" is only appealing when you don't actually face that much systemic pressure in your day-to-day...

I think most anarchcommunist types would call themselves antiracist, but are anticapitalist ideologies actually (incidentally) racist after all?


No comments:

Post a Comment