A powerful indictment of the ways elites have co-opted radical critiques of racial capitalism to serve their own ends.
“Identity
politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail
to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online
and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance
to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist
Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political
viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the
explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity
politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks
around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.
But the
trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics
itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical
tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò
identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its
political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of
elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the
service of their own interests.
Táíwò’s crucial intervention both
elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of
“class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a
constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the
possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle
for a better world.
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