I see several red flags here. This line of argument slouches toward the oft posted dogmatic leftist lecture to us inferiors about how yet again we fail. The moral admonishment that class issues good and issues of identity bad. Most often by white male armchair theorists who've never had to fight to be recognized for who they are. Nor, fo…
I see several red flags here. This line of argument slouches toward the oft posted dogmatic leftist lecture to us inferiors about how yet again we fail. The moral admonishment that class issues good and issues of identity bad. Most often by white male armchair theorists who've never had to fight to be recognized for who they are. Nor, for that matter, ever held a tool in their lives.
I was a blue collar rank and file labor union activist for close to 30 years. Trained in the late '60s by people who'd been '30s union organizers (CIO.) Plus I fit both sets of suspect letters: BIPOC and LGBTQ. By long experience and through realizing we live in a post Einstein world of relativity and uncertainty, I see that the old Aristotelian either/or, the law of the excluded middle, no longer holds. Thus no need for dichotomies in the name of some assumed greater good. Why not both/and?
Seems to me Parenti's argument is an unwarranted conflation of the struggle for recognition with the self-congratulatory "diversity" of the administrative and professional elites. Like the Ivy Ds where race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation are no problem. As long as you have the right academic credentials to fit with their 'meritocracy.' The type of arrogance so thoroughly examined in Halberstam's //The Best and the Brightest.// This conflation leads to a dangerous ceding the meaning of "woke" (derived from AAVE/Black experience) to right wing derision. As if being kindly, having respect for your own cultural traditions and of others, or enjoying the wild diversities of life were by any definition bad, bad, bad.
Of course we workers appreciate expertise. Just not to the extent of outside professionals brought in to run our organization. As if we're too stupid to manage ourselves. Fannie Lou Hamer knew better. So did Studs Terkel. So did Delores Huerta. So did Eugene V. Debs. So did my logger grandfather, the Wobbly (IWW.) To hell with self-appointed vanguards.
The motto of the I.W.W. was: "An Injury To One Is An Injury To All." ALL! Not just our class, our ethnicity, our skills, our spirituality, or any other exclusive, erroneous, imposed homogeneity.
I see several red flags here. This line of argument slouches toward the oft posted dogmatic leftist lecture to us inferiors about how yet again we fail. The moral admonishment that class issues good and issues of identity bad. Most often by white male armchair theorists who've never had to fight to be recognized for who they are. Nor, for that matter, ever held a tool in their lives.
I was a blue collar rank and file labor union activist for close to 30 years. Trained in the late '60s by people who'd been '30s union organizers (CIO.) Plus I fit both sets of suspect letters: BIPOC and LGBTQ. By long experience and through realizing we live in a post Einstein world of relativity and uncertainty, I see that the old Aristotelian either/or, the law of the excluded middle, no longer holds. Thus no need for dichotomies in the name of some assumed greater good. Why not both/and?
Seems to me Parenti's argument is an unwarranted conflation of the struggle for recognition with the self-congratulatory "diversity" of the administrative and professional elites. Like the Ivy Ds where race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation are no problem. As long as you have the right academic credentials to fit with their 'meritocracy.' The type of arrogance so thoroughly examined in Halberstam's //The Best and the Brightest.// This conflation leads to a dangerous ceding the meaning of "woke" (derived from AAVE/Black experience) to right wing derision. As if being kindly, having respect for your own cultural traditions and of others, or enjoying the wild diversities of life were by any definition bad, bad, bad.
Of course we workers appreciate expertise. Just not to the extent of outside professionals brought in to run our organization. As if we're too stupid to manage ourselves. Fannie Lou Hamer knew better. So did Studs Terkel. So did Delores Huerta. So did Eugene V. Debs. So did my logger grandfather, the Wobbly (IWW.) To hell with self-appointed vanguards.
The motto of the I.W.W. was: "An Injury To One Is An Injury To All." ALL! Not just our class, our ethnicity, our skills, our spirituality, or any other exclusive, erroneous, imposed homogeneity.