Class Politics

Redstar again. Thanks for the intro, Weboy!  Further info: I'm a PhD student in urban studies and planning at MIT, a disaster recovery consultant in the U.S. Gulf Coast, and an election coverage addict.  I joined a group of faculty and students yesterday to discuss urban policy and election '08, but the conversation quickly moved to how the sexism and racism memes this campaign season conceal a deeper class politics at work. 

I raised the issue of what the different divisions among Clinton and Obama constituents revealed about the future of the Democratic party.  Prof. Phil Thompson, a political scientist, planner, and insider in labor and African-American politics, and I agreed that the charges of sexism and racism belie a much deeper class politics at work, as NYC Weboy and others have pointed out consistently during this campaign.  However, we've tended to overemphasize the elitism coming from Obama supporters, or his campaign (e.g., the alienation of working-class whites, and the image of Obama as an elite, white, Northerner.)  versus the material class divides that underpin the current broad brush primary constituencies. 

The feminist critique from women of color of mainstream, middle-class white feminism is instructive here.  Feminists of color take issue with what appears to be a very narrow, middle-class agenda among white, mainstream feminists emphasizing reproductive freedom and equality with men.  While both these issues are critical, and have material implications, I always hear in the FOC critiques a demand for a more explicit class-based feminist analysis that includes advocacy for secure, affordable housing, quality care for children and families, and sustainable, dignified, well-paying jobs, among other things that women of color disproportionately lack.  Black feminist writings make the obvious point that if black women (and women of color, more generally) are free from oppression and domination, then all other women - and marginalized groups in the U.S. - will be too. 

Our patriarchal capitalist system depends on maintaining racialized, gendered, geographic class divisions among different pools of workers. For many, many men across the economic spectrum, Clinton reflects their discomfort with women pursuing rewarding, high-status leadership and power rightfully belonging to men.  We can theorize that for older, white women who comprise a majority of Clinton supporters, resistance to Obama comes in part from the perceived displacement of a better qualified older white woman by a younger, less qualified man with the wind of the political, mostly male elite at his back.  Among working-class whites, lack of Obama support could be seen as a measure of anti-elitism, and the misguided notion that non-white - and especially black - Americans benefit unfairly from affirmative action access to higher education, good jobs, and leadership opportunities, and therefore take these jobs from "deserving" (white) Americans.  That Obama was raised mainly by white family members but is now "benefiting" from an identity as a black man and thus winning the votes of African-Americans and his college-educated peers (especially men) overlooks the insidiousness of the "one drop" rule in the U.S. and that our white-black color line seriously constrains all our personal decisions about where we work, where we lay our hats, and with whom we live and love.   

For African-American voters, the aforementioned perception of older, white women voters is reconfigured to see the white, political elite relying on white privilege to block a qualified black candidate from an office.  I have no idea what to make of this election and its accompanying debates for non-white, non-African-American people of color and immigrants who don't easily fit into or subscribe to our dominant, historical, binary black-white frame.  And I didn't even get to the heterosexism involved here (Weboy??). 

When viewing this election through the lens of a classist, patriarchal system built by and for upper-class, white, WASP men, I find the notions of wishing Al Gore would step in and solve this pesky, nasty problem of minorities fighting for political power very troubling.  I find it refreshing that despite their millionaire status now, neither Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come from political dynasty families in the patrilineal sense.  (That Sen. Clinton's own qualifications gain exposure from the political position of her husband is qualitatively different than the traditional case sons inheriting the mantle of political families.)  I hope that our political debates expand beyond accusations of racism and sexism to reflect the class-based divisions beneath these claims.  I suppose I miss Edwards' presence in this respect, but he never brought up issues of race and gender to accompany his classist, anti-corporatist rhetoric.  For me, that was his greatest weakness.  Our current candidates, and their respective supporters, would do well to reappropriate his message to reflect our gendered and racialized class realities. 

Comments

[weboy]

I agree with you about Clinton/Obama and the "dynasty" question... but it's been fascinating to me how "women achieving success trhrough marriage" has come into question (even, and especially, from other women). As if no one seems to realize that the history of congressional service in the last 50 years has been a long thread of women who are married to/children of political families - from Kathleen Sibelius to Nancy Pelosi to Elizabeth Dole. Never mind the Kennedy women. Yet, Hillary Clinton gets treated as if the idea of pursuing your goals as part of a team marriage is somehow suspect. I suppose we'll have to wait and see what happens when Michelle Obama decides to go into politics more fully. It's great that we have folks like Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to offer new, indpendent paths to power. But we don't judge men with familial connections nearly the way we do women.... and that would be... er, I know there's a word for it... :)