Tag: class

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The Rise of the Right Isn’t All Just About Class

You know how everybody and her sister are saying that Trumpism (not to mention Palinism and Buchananism, etc.), white nationalism, and the rise of authoritarian movements on the right is all about class? They want us to believe that the racism of the right is just a ruse, that their real agenda is a class agenda, and responding to it as racism is just hollow liberalism.

Don’t listen. They don’t have their eyes on the long game.

Right wing movements have powerful class implications. We should be concerned about those class implications. In fact, politics should be understood as the … Read more “The Rise of the Right Isn’t All Just About Class”

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Book Review: To Barbara Kingsolver and Julie Otsuka After Reading You

As a nerdy gay boy growing up in a rural, working class town in the 60’s, novels were my escape route. Consider the wonder of a kid destined for a life as a laborer upon first encountering Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown children’s stories. Encyclopedia Brown is the hero because he’s a thinker! It opened a window on the world in a wall I didn’t even know existed.

Today, I still read, and Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite literary figures. Not only is she a very good writer, she’s also the founder of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for … Read more “Book Review: To Barbara Kingsolver and Julie Otsuka After Reading You”

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Race v. Class

One of the perennial debates among liberals is the one over which is the more powerful organizer of social and economic inequity – race or class. To those who believe that class is fundamental, racism may be important as a moral issue, but is only strategically significant because it gets in the way of working class unity across race.

Those folks, well-intentioned though they may be, are wrong. They’re wrong because they’ve bought into an interpretation of history that overlooks the structural dimensions of racism, and the roots of American capitalism in slavery and native genocide. Here’s what I mean.… Read more “Race v. Class”