When identity becomes a prison, there can be no liberational politics
b'\\u201cThere is no doubt that racism is real and has negative consequences for people\\u2019s lives,\\u201d Adolph Reed Jr. and Tour\\xe9 F. Reed note in the abstract to their article \\u201cThe Evolution of \\u2018Race\\u2019 and Racial Justice under Neoliberalism.\\u201d \\u201cThis is why we have consistently argued for the continued value of anti-discrimination policies. But race reductionism\\u2019s insistence on uncoupling disparities from political economy lends itself to individualist reforms (anti-racism training and swelling the ranks of black capitalists) as responses to structural ailments. We must reject race-reductionist analyses and refuse to accommodate charges that a left focused first and foremost on critique of and challenge to capitalist political economy as such, with its corrosive human consequences, is unacceptably \\u2018class reductionist.\\u2019\\u201d
What is race reductionism and how does it close off possibilities for liberational politics? How is it that we\\u2019ve come to have such a restrictive understanding of race, culture, identity, and \\u201cauthenticity\\u201d today? How have the political, economic, and ideological changes to society that comprise what we call neoliberalism created a situation where discussions of race and racism are divorced from analyses of class and \\u201ccapitalist political economy\\u201d?
As part of a new collaboration between The Real News Network and the podcast THIS IS REVOLUTION, co-hosts Jason Myles and Pascal Robert speak with scholar and activist Adolph Reed Jr. about the genealogy of American conceptions of race and racism, and about the folly of fighting neoliberalism on neoliberalism\\u2019s own terms. Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, a longtime activist, scholar, and commentator, and the author of numerous books, including: Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene; Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era; and The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics.
Read the transcript of this interview: https://therealnews.com/when-identity-becomes-a-prison-there-can-be-no-liberational-politics
Pre-Production/Studio: Jason Myles
Post Production: Cameron Granadino
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