Adolph Reed on the Pitfalls of Racism and White Supremacy (As Analytical Tools)
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- Recently longtime activist scholar Adolph Reed wrote How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence in which he discusses his views regarding the shortcomings of prevailing analytical approaches within a broader Black Lives Matter movement.
I've read a bunch of Professor Reed's work. His scholarship on racism and classism is complex and doesn't lend itself to sloganeering as I understand it. I keep thinking he's saying something definitive, but then read or hear him say something that adds shades of gray to my understanding. It's clear that he never denies racism and knows a great deal about it - pointing out how fomenting racism prevalent in the working class and labor movements has been used to sow division and weaken organized labor. The work of Barbara J. Fields and Karen E. Fields presented in their book "Racecraft" seems to dovetail with his thinking.
His thinking on solutions to injustices of both race and class is much more straightforward. He believes no progress can be made without forming broad coalitions based on common interest, and that people need to "develop standing" or earn trust by listening to and understanding each other and advocating for specific policies that will address the different injustices they face.
I keep learning about leaders of the civil rights movement who took this approach: Fred Hampton, Bayard Rustin, MLK, Malcolm X in some of his later speeches. I'd imagine there's others and that Professor Reed could speak to that. I recently learned about the Young Patriot's Organization (YPO), a group of white Appalachian socialists and anti-racists in Chicago in the 1960's and 70's that teamed up with Hampton and the Black Panthers, and were part of a broader "Rainbow Coalition" Hampton was helping organize (not related to Jesse Jackson's group). The YPO protested police brutality and housing discrimination, and advocated for jobs programs and/or UBI back in the 60's! Maybe many people have learned about this history IDK, but I'm not that young and I'm only just learning about this. I think the fact that Hampton was murdered by police at such a young age, MLK was killed while organizing (mostly but not exclusively Black) sanitation workers makes me think the kind of coalition-building Reed advocates for is a genuine threat to entrenched forces in a way that much of current activism is not. But it also seems the performative and substance-free anti-racist posturing politicians and corporations are making today are not fooling the youth.
Hampton and King were very skilled at organizing and coalition-building. It makes sense that modern activists are trying to build movements that are less hierarchical and thus less easily targeted, challenging as that may be.
Thanks for a thought-provoking interview.
Reed Jr. keeps getting proven right by time. Much respect for this visionary!
Prescient, this discussion in 2020.
Adolph Reed Jr used to get on my nerves bc he’s so hard to understand. Over the years I’ve decided he’s hard to understand bc there’s no class analysis anymore within the Black community. But having watched many of his interviews and lectures, read his book Class Notes, I’ve come around as a leftist and strongly support his political contributions. He’s just his own worst spokesman.
I disagree. I think he speaks with great clarity.
i hear exactly what you're saying...and I think its true (and speaks to the comment below before it was even made); we're mostly blind to the way what we're taught to understand and how we're taught to understand it obscures our ability to hear criticism or even deconstructions of those things.
As soon as explicit institutional racism ended in the mid 20th century, classism began. William F Buckley said in the 60s that he agreed that racism exists, but the problem of poor blacks is not that they are oppressed, but that they don’t work as hard as other minorities to succeed. And that message has been taken up by both conservatives and neoliberals to this day. Explicit racism morphed into explicit classism. So that’s why disparity politics is limiting, because it de-emphasizes the class warfare being waged against all poor and working class people. Politicians use disparity politics to offer things like federal funding for HBCUs, when the more effective policy for both blacks, as well as for all the poor and working class, is free college for all. Social democratic politics can be both coalition building and transformative for black people
Well said
Explicit classism that disproportionately targets poor black and brown citizens clearly has a racial dimension. See Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow"
Benin Bryant Michelle Alexander is a socialist. I’m pretty sure neoliberal solutions for systemic racism don’t satisfy her in the slightest
@@davidvartanian And I think she'd be right. However, as someone who often argues against identity politics, I find she has the most cogent and persuasive argument for why "race", as we understand it, can't be ignored. After all, the Drug War, as Alexander explains, was waged entirely with "race-neutral" language in "the age of colorblindness". I always like listening to Reed because of his nuance, it's not that he says race doesn't matter, it's that to exclude all else and solely focus on race is a mistake.
How hard can you work with a boot on your neck!
Love Profressor Reed. Thanks for posting.
You are today's Gil Noble! Your content is better then anything on CNN. most underrated channel on UA-cam. You should be right up there with democracy NOW and the real news network. Killin the game brother!
Co-sign
Alicia Garza endorsed Warren. Lol. It helps to have an Adolph Reed to understand whats really going on at a theoretical and rigorous level, but moves like that and they unpeel themselves lol.
a wonderful and educational discussion. Jared, I enjoyed reading your writing on BAR. Thanks for allowing Professor Reed to develop his ideas.
Who names their kid “Adolph”? I mean that babes been kinda ruined, don’t ya think? Having said that, this gentleman is very thoughtful and well worth listening to.
The name is not important just like race is not important. What is inside the person is most important, the content of your character. Form v substance.
Property ownership and access to capital are an ongoing problem.
Like a mfka. I often say that we have to refocus our attention on a rigorous analysis on property rights. For example, I think that in terms of racism and white supremacy (racial disparity) that rereading Cheryl Harris's "Whiteness as Property" can do the work of thickening up our analytics with regards to racism and white supremacy. Yeah, I agree with many who commented about Reed and his thought. This brother Elder teaches us how to think, or approach the work of thinking through a thing. He also teaches us that we cannot quickly accept things initially and take time and sniff out the bullshit. He teaches us that this is easier (still rigorous and laborious) when we don't forget that Capitalism is the Cultural order out of which we live our lives.
I start every a.reed talk with an over/under on how many "rights" in the segment😂
In the beginning, Prof. Reed's argument comes out a lot clearer and with more empathy than he did in the article, still I wish he had conceded in that article, the racist underpinnings that caused, and continue to do so, the disparities in wealth acquisition which would make black people be disproportionately higher the victims of the criminal justice system (according to his analysis on which income groups suffer the most).
Matthew Justin, people need to step out of their feelings and get an understanding. Rejecting an argument because it doesn't make you feel good is inane.
Matthew, again, people need to get out their feelings and deal with things in some type of rational way. I read his article and did not find it arrogant, I found it informative and challenging of my own worldview. People have to try ro learn how to operate in some degree of maturity to have their worldviews challenged in order to learn. Basically what you're acting like is tea party people or trumpsters who always want to get offended at things as opposed to trying to listen and understand. I understand that many people, many of my people, African Americans are committed to the idea of "race trumps all things," I think that racism and gender equality issues are important, as well as lgbtq issues. But at the end of the day one of the primary reasons that Trump won this election is because we've allowed identity politics to define the narrative and that has had a effect of the democratic party missing the overall social economic and social political issues affecting everybody regardless of their gender, race or sexual orientation. We can keep staying in our feelings and we can keep losing. Or we can try to step back and be mature about our World Views and not go cry because someone is challenging them.
"Basically what you're acting like is tea party people or trumpsters who always want to get offended at things as opposed to trying to listen and understand."
@Richard, are you an idiot?
It's very simple: You get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.
"People have to try..."
People don't have to do shit. Either you accept people as they are and attempt to reach them or you just insist on being a straw Vulcan and continue to fail, insisting that you're the only logical one in the room.
Matthew, I'm not an idiot but you are obviously a lowest-common-denominator thinker who is unable to see outside of your tiny sliver of the universe. I'm done having this discussion with you because you are obviously committed to misunderstanding, because you want to act like a petulant child and be in your feelings, and I don't reason with toddlers, so when you grow up and understand that every time someone says something to you it is not going to make you feel good and you might still need to hear it, then I have nothing else to say. I understand your silly sophomoric analysis of catching bees with honey as opposed to vinegar, which shows that you are intellectually fraudulent and academically lazy in somehow seeing the article that Dr. Reed wrote as somehow being vinegar. I have learned a long time ago that you have to leave the immature where they are at until they gained maturity. I hope you gain that maturity soon. If people are unwilling to elevate their minds to apprehend truths that are uncomfortable to them, then they are the ones who are going to lose.
Richard he's probably a SJW troll or BLM troll. Millennials who spent a little time in a library or sociology class and think they know everything. Besides they're protecting their career aspirations. They don't understand that it doesn't follow that issues caused by race necessarily have a racial solution. But if they're offended fuck'm, they don't have a right to not be offended LOL. And no one is obligated to serve up honey. Facts don't give a damn about your feels.
On point. Watch Patrice Culisse on the Daily Show. The levels of amateurism is mind boggling
Adolph comes across as "youngheads don't know about this" when the topic of Black Lives Matter is broached, which is making it difficult to take his arguments seriously because it leaves me feeling that he's trying to apply old, out of touch ideas to an ever evolving problem. Which also brings up my biggest point of contention when it comes to the idea of "Racism as a tool of the Elites", because it ignores a critical aspect of Racism and White Supremacy, the need for mythology and a "moral" core/framework to justify the actions taken. As long as the myths and legends are there purporting racial inferiority in general and black wickedness/inhumanity in specific, whether it be pseudo-anecdotal or pseudo-scientific, the system will continue. Because what's the best way to teach Racism but with myth and folktale to scare and inspire and give a framework for how the world is supposed to work.
Either way, listening to Adolph Reed speak helped me to finally figure out my own viewpoint. So, I'm grateful for that.
Well said. While many have pointed out the coalition-based programs/policies/leaders, they say it as though the race problem got easier, when an argument can be made that it's gotten more complicated. I'd argue that Black identity politics has traditionally been the "catalyst" for the broad-based policies that come after (look up that term to see what I mean), which is done quite deliberately. My criticism is similar to yours in that racism is a unique problem that will continue to create a divide even with the rising of the tides (particularly as it relates to Black people). Even MLK (who has been referenced quite a bit) hit a crossroads in that he realized that civil rights weren't so civil to Black people (which was the emotional drive for King (and others) in the first place). King's fear of "integrating into a burning house" is just one example of this. His criticism of America's most powerful form of identity politics (White supremacy) caused him to refocus his efforts, which can be heard in his "We are coming to Washington to get our check" speech. Sadly, he didn't live long enough to make the push, nor was he able to witness the rise of the southern strategy, which is the "Avengers assemble" to right-wing politics to this day (and the reason why the left is having such a tough time with them). I don't think it just the right who is weaponizing id-pol against the left, but also the left's inability to understand the specific needs of their most energetic constituents (Black voters). The right overlooks their base too, but White supremacy is their identity politics at the core.
The left has a different set of obstacles, and need to appeal to both specific as well as broad-based politics, which I think some are beginning to realize. That's their Achilles heel at the current moment, tho.
@@jwats4952 I apologize, but from what I've seen in these past 12 years, I do not believe there is a "left" party in this country of any means or major significance. Though the introduction of actual working class politicians and the relative success of Bernie Sanders and The Squad to introduce working class issues into the public conscious, because of the inherent difficulties in getting into politics (money and connections), the majority of the people who have regular access to the political stage are the well-to-do and people who are backed by the well-to-do. Politicians who's policies skew center-right/neo-liberal and go rightward or are dictated/directed by the backers who's policies are center-right/neo-liberal and move rightward. If the "left" is struggling with anything, it's with the idea that the framework they've accepted as truth (White Supremacy and Class are dictated by moral "truths" and that Racism is a naturally occurring ethical phenomena that reinforces those divides and ideas and "truths") can be and is being challenged by people who do not accept their framework and have life experiences that are both outside of the accepted framework and are, quite frankly, far more powerful and tangible.
Which is why I believe that this question to be the crux of all of this. The question that Martin Luther King started to see before he was assassinated.
Money or self esteem? Would a white person choose to be rich or have black people be inferior to them?
I think that when that question is finally breached, then we'll truly see some progress.
But King came to odds with the establishment, LBJ in particular and not to mention other CR leaders with political aspirations in his later years because he broadened his focus. Especially with regard to the industrial military complex and imperialist wars, something for example that seems to be missing from the left today.
@@herculeslianos3828 Broadening one's horizons does not mean losing perspective on and of other things. The military/industrial complex and imperialist wars being waged are not a separate issue born of their own agendas. They were birthed from the same mentalities and myths and need for sense of self that allow for and morally excuse the elites and their proxies so that they can commit their injustices and horrors.
There is a quote from Harry Belafonte about Dr. King worrying that we're intergrading into a burning building. But I don't believe his answer is an "either/or" proposition that favors one thing over another because his answer to Belafonte's question of "what do we do" is to become firemen. To not stand by while the building burns. The challenges facing us do not come from a single source which can be felled like a video game character at the final challenge. It's multifaceted, connected deeply and intrinsically across all social and economic divides, and must be faced at all ends if we are to create lasting change. There is no "greater than."
Which changes an old thought of mine. I used to believe that the question of whether a white man would choose money or self-esteem had not been answered. It has, and the answer is "yes." And now the children and acolytes of Whiteness and White Supremacy are flailing in the dark, desperately trying to achieve both and are burning the building down in their desperate attempts to "have it all." And it's up to us to deny them their greed and their need to feel special and their lust for power and place.
Something like that.
@@coreybass3231 sounds like you don't actually understand what he's saying
Race and class are terms that are too simplistic in understanding the complexity of the problems that exist in America. These are text book terms for elementary students. The capitalists who race bait and class bait don’t fully understand the complexities. But they profit from it and use it anyway.
Over 300 million people with dreams and histories that go back before 1776. Before 1619. There is no simple answer and when people try to give one they are being disingenuous or they are scheming.
I appreciate this talk with A. Reed!
My Thesis:
No self reflection is a huge problem.
Social Darwinism ideas 💡 of the survival of the fittest, which was a flaw because it’s survival of the most adaptable. The ones who genes are able to survive the best. Blue eyes is actually a mutation and doesn’t absorb all the light spectrum as brown eyes 👁. Hair is another topic, so is skin color. Lastly your genes are your genes, meaning if I become a masters degree holder at 25, and have a child, then get my PHD and have another child. The second child isn’t smarter because, all of a sudden I became smarter. Google Lamarckian inheritance.
A lot more things are social rather than involving DNA 🧬. A person who technically have the most active genes is best suited for adaptation. People who have mutated genes are not.
Social Darwinism philosophy spread to economics and Adam Smith characterized Laissez-faire economics and people in an advantageous position went bonkers for it.
The libertarian doctrine is perhaps at some level worst than communism because it renders government useless theoretically, thank God it was never applied fully.
Libertarian Fascism is what most Americans engage in to acquire wealth. It is a type of Libertarianism that denies Libertarian values to the rest of humanity. I remember the Libertarian Trump that said he wouldn’t concede the election. Backed by Cigarette 🚬 Companies, Gun Manufacturers, Dirty Coal Industry, Koch Industries, and etc the fascist corporate tentacles 🦑is stripping the world ‘s Libertarian rights.
Bourgeois Democracy is what those who acquire that wealth engage in to suppress the vote 🗳 and make sure social programs like the New Deal which never benefited Blacks and almost got FDR taken out in a coup, will never get implemented again. It has been a gradual erosion of rights and appointing fascist judges and government positions to suppress the proletariat votes.
The proletariat is us who want change and understand that Affirmative Action was White and the Irish Became White by making blacks characterized as vagrants and contagions of wealth. To be a contagion 😷 of wealth creates a impression you don’t deserve wealth and what little you have should be taken away from you. The philosophy of making the poor poorer.
They hate a successful Denmark Vessey style people uprising. They hate a smart Frederick Douglass type brother. They hate blacks that thinks collectively, instead individually. We have so much symmetry with poor whites, but since Bacons Rebellion, it has not been in the rich interest to show whites, you have more in common. It is sad that blacks have low confidence. It’s sad that blacks hate themselves or all the negative stereotypes and history that characterizes them as only slaves and not humans who fought to be there best. The self hate is so real and deep that blacks join conservative groups to be stroked intellectually for being smart.
The bailout king Obama is a corporate fascist sellout that hurt many black families. But anyone could tell, with his tip toe approach to calling out the rich, who mostly happens to be whites.
The stereotype of low IQ, low competency, lazy, and poor morality makes us the easiest targets of there eugenics agendas. Blue Dog Dems are the worst Libertarian Fascist. They give you false hope and keep the status quo.
We are waking up and intellectually will be self sufficient people.
The Corporate
look at whats been brought to the table? anythkng good ..no
Dr. Reed seems to speak in a nebulous? His claims of ideologies having no substance really doesn't make a lot of sense?
just beacseu you dont understand doesnt mean it doesnt make sesne
@@fadesola2002 thumbs down