Will Shetterly's Blog, page 86

On Hillary Clinton, superdelegates, and how the Democrats shafted McGovern in '72

We're seeing the white and the black bourgeoisie coming out in strength to prop up Hillary Clinton. One thing is very clear from the people supporting her with words and money: Hillary Clinton is the face of the party establishment. Don't expect any Clinton feminists to agree, but they should realize this is a sign of feminist success: Hillary Clinton is now The Man. The Democrats created

Dear anti-racists, please stop appropriating the Black Panthers

Liberal anti-racists, like many people, are more interested in symbols than substance, so they're fond of pictures of the Black Panthers but fail to see the Panthers wouldn't be so fond of them. A few quotes fromInterview with Huey P. Newton (1968), co-founder of the Panthers (italics mine): There are two kinds of nationalism, revolutionary nationalism and reactionary nationalism. Revolutionary

Diversity is realism, but diversity that ignores class is fantasy

Yesterday, Kate Elliott tweeted, Diversity is realism. I agree entirely; there's a reason the feministsf wiki said my “work features strong women characters and people of color”. It has nothing to do with ideology—I just write about the kinds of people I know. But as anyone who has been paying attention to class in the US knows, many of the people who talk about diversity are only interested in

Sanders feminists versus Clinton feminists: illustrating the main schools of contemporary feminism

I'm watching the fight between Sanders feminists and Clinton feminists with fascination. If you're an identitarian feminist, or what Christina Hoff Sommers calls a gender feminist, you probably think this is presumptuous of a man. If you're an egalitarian feminist, or what Christina Hoff Sommers calls an equity feminist, you probably don't give a damn. Clinton feminists can be divided into two

How identitarianism erases the class war in the Democratic Party (and in general)

Pundits love to talk about the differences between Sanders and Clinton supporters in terms of age, race, and gender, but Corey Robin clarifies the uniting difference inOn Electability: Not only did the voters in 2008 cast their ballot for a black man—something many right-thinking people were sure was not possible in the United States (remember the Bradley Effect?)—but now, to an increasing and

On the uselessness and arrogance of "stupid"

I left this comment atHeads Up: People are not stupid, and they don’t suck | The Dream Café: Like many words used by elitists, “stupid” is ultimately meaningless. Does it mean ignorant? Does it mean mentally deficient? It seems to mean “Shut up. I know best.”

Cornel West and Cedric Johnson on Ta-Nehisi Coates

FromDr. Cornel West - In Defense of James Baldwin: Coates is a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power. Baldwin’s painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements. He reveled in the examples of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Fannie LouHamerand Angela Davis. Coates’s fear-driven self-absorption leads to

How race reductionists minimize poverty

The point ofWho Benefits From the Safety Net - The New York Timesis in its opening paragraphs: A new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities underscores that the poor are no longer the primary beneficiaries of the government safety net. Terms like entitlements, government benefits and safety net often conjure images of tax dollars sliding from the hands of the wealthy into

Defining "superhero" and why Fantomah isn't quite one

Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine: Number 1847: “Crime doesn’t seem to pay.”reprints a Fantomah story. She's been called the first superheroine, and while she's among the characters I'd like to write someday, I don't count her as a superhero. She's like the Spectre, a supernatural being whose powers are so great that her stories tend to boil down to "Baddie does badness, then main character

Adolph Reed Jr. recognizes Ta-Nehisi Coates as neoliberalism's newest Booker

Adolph Reed on Sanders, Coates and Reparationsis a short and very readable interview that's essentially an updating of his classic essay,"What Are the Drums Saying, Booker?: The Curious Role of the Black Public Intellectual" (pdf). The important thing to remember about Booker T. Washington is he wasn't an Uncle Tom in the sense of being someone only white people liked. He was someone both the