@hector

THE CASTE SYSTEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Because of its internal complexity and single-minded focus on oppression, intersectionality is riddled with divisions and subcategories, which exist in competition with—or even in unrepentant contradiction to—each other. Some people in the United States therefore argue that gay white men39 and nonblack people of color—generally assessed as marginalized groups—need to recognize their privilege and antiblackness.40 This can lead to the insistence that lighter-skinned black people recognize their privilege over darker-skinned black people.41 Straight black men have been described as the “white people of black people.”42 It is also not uncommon to hear arguments that trans men, while still oppressed by attitudes towards their trans status, need to recognize that they have ascended to male privilege43 and amplify the voices of trans women, who are seen as doubly oppressed, by being both trans and women. Gay men and lesbians might well find themselves not considered oppressed at all, particularly if they are not attracted to trans men or trans women, respectively, which is considered a form of transphobia and misgendering.44 Asians and Jews may find themselves stripped of marginalized status due to the comparative economic success of their demographics, their participation in “whiteness,” or other factors.45 Queerness needs to be decolonized—meaning made more racially diverse—and its conceptual origins in white figures like Judith Butler need to be interrogated.46


In the real world, attempting to “respect” all marginalized identities at once, as unique voices with the inherent, unquestionable wisdom connected to their cultural groups, can produce conflict and contradiction. We saw examples of this when the lifelong human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was accused of racism for criticizing black rap musicians who sang about murdering gay people.47 It appeared again in the confusion and conflict about whom to support when ethnic minority beauticians essentially misgendered a person claiming to be a trans woman by declining to wax around her testicles on the grounds that their religion and customs prohibited contact with male genitalia.48


All this “sophistication” keeps intersectionalists busy, internally argumentative, and divided, but it is all done in the service of uniting the various Theoretically oppressed groups into a single meta-group, “oppressed” or “other,” under an overarching metanarrative of Social Justice, which seeks to establish a caste system based on Theorized states of oppression. Social Justice in the contemporary sense is therefore markedly different from the activism for universal human rights that characterized the civil rights movements.49 These liberal, egalitarian approaches sought and seek to equalize opportunities by criminalizing discrimination, remedying disenfranchisement, and defeating bigotry by making prejudice on the grounds of immutable characteristics socially unacceptable. They thus provide an achievable goal for the well-meaning liberal individual: treat people equally regardless of their identity. The Social Justice approach regards this as, at best, naivety about the reality of a deeply prejudiced society, and, at worst, a willful refusal to acknowledge that we live in that kind of society. Consequently, the only way to be a virtuous person under Social Justice is to assume that these power imbalances and prejudices exist everywhere at all times, masked by the egalitarian false-promises of liberalism, and assiduously seek them out, using the right kind of Theoretical analysis. For Collins and Bilge,


Social justice may be intersectionality’s most contentious core idea, but it is one that expands the circle of intersectionality to include people who use intersectionality as an analytic tool for social justice. Working for social justice is not a requirement for intersectionality. Yet people who are engaged in using intersectionality as an analytic tool and people who see social justice as central rather than as peripheral to their lives are often one and the same. These people are typically critical of, rather than accepting of, the status quo.50


This is echoed by Rebecca Lind, who defines intersectionality as “a multifaceted perspective acknowledging the richness of the multiple, socially-constructed identities that combine to create each of us as a unique individual.”51 However, by this method, the “unique individual” is not really understood as an individual at all. As noted, the number of axes of social division under intersectionality can be almost infinite—but they cannot be reduced to the individual. Theory insists that only by understanding the various groups and the social constructions around those groups can one truly understand society, people, and their experiences. This conceptual shift facilitates group identity and thus identity politics, which are often radical.


Because of intersectionality’s sheer versatility as a tool, it appeals to those involved in many different forms of engagement, ranging from legal activism and academic analysis to affirmative action and educational theory.52 Mainstream activism has also eagerly embraced intersectionality—especially its concept of privilege, an idea that is vigorously insisted upon, often to the point of bullying and browbeating. (From “Cynical Theories”)


39.Adam Fitzgerald, “Opinion: Time for Cis-Gender White Men to Recognise Their Privilege,” news.trust.org, May 2, 2019, news.trust.org/item/20190502130719-tpcky/.
40.Jezzika Chung, “How Asian Immigrants Learn Anti-Blackness from White Culture, and How to Stop It,” Huffington Post, September 7, 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/how-asian-americans-can-stop-contributing-to-anti-blackness_b_599f0757e4b0cb7715bfd3d4.
41.Kristel Tracey, “We Need to Talk about Light-skinned Privilege,” Media Diversified, February 07, 2019, mediadiversified.org/2018/04/26/we-need-to-talk-about-light-skinned-privilege/.
42.Damon Young, “Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People,” Root, September 19, 2017, verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/straight-black-men-are-the-white-people-of-black-people-1814157214.
43.Miriam J. Abelson, “Dangerous Privilege: Trans Men, Masculinities, and Changing Perceptions of Safety,” Sociological Forum 29, no. 3 (2014).
44.Sara C., “When You Say ‘I Would Never Date A Trans Person,’ It’s Transphobic. Here’s Why,” Medium, November 11, 2018, medium.com/@QSE/when-you-say-i-would-never-date-a-trans-person-its-transphobic-here-s-why-aa6fdcf59aca.
45.Iris Kuo, “The ‘Whitening’ of Asian Americans,” Atlantic, September 13, 2018, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/the-whitening-of-asian-americans/563336/; Paul Lungen, “Check Your Jewish Privilege,” Canadian Jewish News, December 21, 2018, www.cjnews.com/living-jewish/check-your-jewish-privilege.
46.Zachary Small, “Joseph Pierce on Why Academics Must Decolonize Queerness,” Hyperallergic, August 10, 2019, hyperallergic.com/512789/joseph-pierce-on-why-academics-must-decolonize-queerness/.
47.Peter Tatchell, “Tag: Stop Murder Music,” Peter Tatchell Foundation, May 13, 2016, www.petertatchellfoundation.org/tag/stop-murder-music/.
48.Arwa Mahdawi, “It’s Not a Hate Crime for a Woman to Feel Uncomfortable Waxing Male Genitalia,” Guardian, July 27, 2019, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/27/male-genitalia-week-in-patriarchy-women.
49.Pluckrose and Lindsay, “Identity Politics Does Not Continue the Work of the Civil Rights Movements.”
50.Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 30.
51.Rebecca Ann Lind, “A Note From the Guest Editor,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 54 (2010): 3.
52.Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall identify three overlapping “sets of engagements”: “the first consisting of applications of an intersectional framework or investigations of intersectional dynamics, the second consisting of discursive debates about the scope and content of intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological paradigm, and the third consisting of political interventions employing an intersectional lens.” Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38, no. 4 (2013): 785.