In No Politics but Class Politics, Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed show how an identity politics that obscures class politics and ignores economic inequality only makes the many miseries around us worse.
I like a lot of Reed;s stuff, but holy shit all he does at this point is talk about idpol. There could’ve been a defense that he is biased but making a not totally wrong point about the cynical use of minorities by liberal discourse, but no its been YEARS of the exactly same complaint over and over. Can’t devil’s adovcate that anymore.
His predictions on Obama as far back at 96 are great and his works are interesting as a part of history. Not when he is bitching about cancel culture, but having a body of work from a black leftist covering Jackson’s campaigns, the start of Obama, occupy, Obama as president etc. But circa 2016 he went nuts and doubled down. He still has the occasional prescient point https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/22/remembering-operation-bagration-when-red-army-decapitated-nazi-front
I think his take on Jackson for instance is wrong, but interesting to see as the frustration of a section of the american left and African American politics at that time. Honestly analysis of the Rainbow Coalition is a topic I love cause you have a shitload of left wing journals at the time and remnants of the new left and its splinters. makes for weird but interesting reading
I like a lot of Reed;s stuff, but holy shit all he does at this point is talk about idpol. There could’ve been a defense that he is biased but making a not totally wrong point about the cynical use of minorities by liberal discourse, but no its been YEARS of the exactly same complaint over and over. Can’t devil’s adovcate that anymore.
His predictions on Obama as far back at 96 are great and his works are interesting as a part of history. Not when he is bitching about cancel culture, but having a body of work from a black leftist covering Jackson’s campaigns, the start of Obama, occupy, Obama as president etc. But circa 2016 he went nuts and doubled down. He still has the occasional prescient point https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/22/remembering-operation-bagration-when-red-army-decapitated-nazi-front
I think his take on Jackson for instance is wrong, but interesting to see as the frustration of a section of the american left and African American politics at that time. Honestly analysis of the Rainbow Coalition is a topic I love cause you have a shitload of left wing journals at the time and remnants of the new left and its splinters. makes for weird but interesting reading