One of the drawbacks of social science is the tendency to let terms of art fall into jargon. "Intersectionality" has become exactly that in the popular mind, but it shouldn't be. It's a beautiful intellectual framework that lets us analyze situations and challenges us to look outside ourselves. Let's explore what "intersectional politics" might look like in the 21st century.
Intersectionality is a deceptively simple concept that touches on the most sensitive aspects of our culture. In its essence, intersectionality points out that social roles like race, class, and gender, are mutually constructive and multiplicative in their effects. What this means practically is that every individual is in a system of privilege relationships, with individual positions shifting depending on the role in question.
Think of society like a series of Jenga games. Each block is holding up other blocks, and is held up in turn by other blocks. The only blocks that aren't trapped in this tension are the blocks at the very top, just resting on the stack. Each individual social role is its own Jenga stack, and the blocks are arranged differently each time, so any given person is likely to be at the bottom of one stack, the middle of another, the top of another, and so on. This analysis could be applied to any social situation, but the law of diminishing returns applies the smaller the sample becomes.
The people that find this the hardest to grasp are, not coincidentally, those who usually top the Jenga stack. We know from psychology that the human brain tends to magnify threats and hold on to advantages without regard for truth or justice, and also from psychology we know that perception is part of reality, as our mental states affect our physical well-being. Thus the external reality of privilege does not erase the internal perception of suffering, which has external effects.
This is the Gordian knot at the heart of identity politics, and it fuels the politics of white grievance that gave us Trump, because disaffected whites don’t see privilege in their lives. We cannot be angry at these people because they don't have our perspective. But we must be concerned at the direction that disaffection takes.
Skilled provocateurs on the right have manipulated this population for years, knowing that people love a persecution narrative and crave moral sanction. They also know that most people don't sit around all day interrogating the philosophical underpinnings of their lives. Thus these disaffected whites are vulnerable to this partisan manipulation This was the strategy of Nixon and came to full flower in the Reagan era.
But these decades of racial hatred and organized bigotry haven't helped these people, and they know they haven't been helped, though they don't really know why. This lack of knowledge leads to a doubling-down of the very political and social strategies that led to their initial diminution.
We must offer a counternarrative, a politics of unity that addresses the cultural and spiritual malaise of the country and actually works for the economic good of the people, rather than spouting bromides as rentier capitalists and the politics they've created take the bread and water from children's mouths. We have to work with every community and move into the 21st century as a united front.
The challenges we face are greater than national boundaries, and they're greater than racial and ethnic divides. Growing these coalitions and tackling the big issues requires a strong foundation. Building the house on sand doesn't get us anywhere, and that's what the progressive movement has been doing these past forty years. It must stop now, with a clear moral argument for true intersectional politics.
What this looks like is going to differ from locality to locality, but its essence must be the same. We must gather community stakeholders together to accurately assess what we need to do, and what our capacities are to do it. We cannot focus solely on politics; we have to address the needs of the people in our communities right now. This may entail government action, it may entail private philanthropy, or most likely a combination of both. We must develop the capacity to route this aid to those that need it the most.
To me the first and most obvious goal is to increase our representation in local government, followed by the states. Once we take back state legislatures, we can work to undo the institutionalized bigotry the Right has been pushing through since 2010. The simplest way to ensure success is for us to take our progressive movement to the statehouses and the county commissions and every other level of government. If we cede control of the government, with its outsize power and influence, we will hamstring ourselves as we try to stanch the bleeding rather than proactively work to create a more equitable country. The unfortunate truth is all of our efforts can be undone by a hostile minority government, as we are seeing happen right now.
Our organization is proud to be a part of creating this new politics, as we strive to put the old divisions behind us and look for common ground with every person in our communities. We cannot afford to dilute our efforts in the face of renewed vigor by those on the Right who would roll back everything we have gained and make it exponentially harder to fix their damage when they inevitably lose power. Make no mistake, they are playing a long game. Well, so are we.