Clara Jane Hendrickson | Transforming white atonement

Praxis | Coates’ Criticism of Sanders is based on a flawed discourse

By Clara Jane Hendrickson 02/07/16 11:01pm

Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates recently criticized Bernie Sanders’ class-first policies in a piece in The Atlantic. When asked if he supported reparations for slavery, Sanders was hesitant. He cautioned that the pursuit of reparations would prove both politically unfeasible and divisive. Sanders suggested, instead, that efforts to ameliorate the economic effects of racism in America should focus on pursuing policies that emphasize public investment.

Coates’ entire argument against the presidential candidate centers on identifying the hypocrisy of Sanders’ radicalism. “Why [is Sanders’] political imagination so active against plutocracy, but so limited against white supremacy?” Coates asks.

It is right to challenge Sanders’ class-first approach to policy-making, given the history of such policies failing to address the needs of many black citizens. For example, the New Deal’s Social Security Act did not extend benefits to sharecroppers, domestic laborers and many other black workers. However, this does not indicate that race-first politics provides the answer.

In his lucid criticism of Coates, Cedric Johnson, UIC professor, poignantly contends that reparations assume that the rich black businessman and the single mother who depends on the Section 8 voucher program share more political interests than two members of the same class background. Given that our current economic system tolerates so much economic inequality, it seems an odd exercise to simply make it more racially inclusive.

Of course, a race-first approach also has ramifications for the kind of white coalition that forms around such demands. Johnson contends that white anti-racists have often mistaken guilt for solidarity, “replacing politics with public therapy.”

It doesn’t help that the dialogue around race and privilege often fails to produce nuance and political substance. In his New York Times piece “Dear White America,” black philosophy professor George Yancy challenges, “White America, are you prepared to be at war with yourself, your white identity, your white power, your white privilege?” In this piece, Yancy asks all white people to accept that they are racist by virtue of benefitting from racism. This is a perspective we can accept as true, but it is a troublesome one. It’s a good thing that I, as a white woman, am not harassed on the street by police. It is wrong that my safety means that so many are not extended the same privileges. Our progressive rhetoric should reflect this.

When privilege becomes a terrifying thing that we must run away from, we forget that the problem lies in how terrifying it is to live without it. When we regard privilege as something to scorn rather than extend, we become blind to the common interests shared despite difference. Having read feminists and anti-racism activist Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” about 15 times before the age of 16, I have found that white self-awareness only goes so far. Of course white privilege discourse is an important part of the national conversation about anti-racism, but I’m not willing to argue that calling attention to the fact that Band-Aids will always match my skin color is part of the kind of political work that will reduce the number of black men we incarcerate each year.

Writers like Coates play an important role for marginalized communities by giving voice to lived experience. However, given both Coates’ literary and political ambitions, it begs the question of accountability. Is it useful for Coates’ writing to be poetic without being programmatic? Or is his call for reparations actually harmful to those mobilizing around such demands?

A consideration of identity is important, especially in social change efforts that require interracial organizing. But, we must always ask ourselves, for what purpose? Are we at war with white privilege, or are we at war with a system of economic inequality that hurts white and black alike? I’m afraid it has become easier for the white ally to display self-disgust than to create unity where the ground has historically proven infertile.

To fight against the differences that have been imposed upon them in the pursuit of bourgeois interests, black and white workers must recognize their common interests. Coates provides catharsis, which may be personally important, but it will prove politically irrelevant if unable to embed itself into the larger project of social mobility.

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