Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Coercive Deference and Double Bind Politics on the Left (a response to the 2016 election)

2017; Duke University Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/08879982-3815705

2164-0041

Peter Gabel,

Political Philosophy and Ethics

I share with I’m sure virtually all of Tikkun’s readers a feeling of pain and horror at the acts of racial and ethnic violence that have occurred since the election of Donald Trump. And I of course agree that the rhetoric of Trump’s campaign has had the effect of stirring up and legitimizing the expression of these racist and xenophobic impulses in terrible and alarming ways. But it does not help our efforts to respond to and counter these realities to simply denounce the Trump campaign or Trump supporters as “being” racist or xenophobic as if their violent and cruel behavior were just an expression of their evil essence or brainwashed minds. Instead, we must look deeply into the impacted conditions of their psychological, spiritual, and economic lives to see what in their experience has led them to burst out by the millions in response to Trump’s message.Many white working-class communities feel robbed of much of their sense of worth and recognition by the impact of the global economy on the conditions of their life and on their culture. They see elites (millionaires, billionaires, tech wizards, bi-coastal cultural sophisticates) benefiting from an economy that their prior economic communities have been eviscerated by (in the rust-belt states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, for example, all of whom voted in large numbers for Trump). And they feel this marginalization and cast-asideness not just because of its material or economic aspect, but also, and in some ways more importantly, because of its denigration of their own sense of worthiness, recognition, and sense of communal belonging and value. In this latter sense, they feel spiritual suffering and the loss of human solidarity and love.Instead of responding to this with compassion and concern, many in the liberal world have unconsciously communicated to this community that the world is, or would be, fine if these whites had exercised their “equality of opportunity” to pursue their god-given right to fulfill their dreams through successfully competing in the marketplace—except for minorities, women, the LGBTQ community, disabled people, and other designated groups who must be given “special benefits” due to past discrimination so that they can gain the same “equality of opportunity” that the so-called white community already has. This liberal attitude reflected in the mainstream of the Democratic Party not only denies the spiritual pain of the white working class, but it also implicitly blames the white working-class for failing to succeed themselves and for somehow contributing to the oppression of African-Americans, women, and all the other groups whom the liberal world (correctly) wants to extend more rights and more benefits to.Thus, many in the liberal world in effect flaunt their own success as elites, implicitly blame the working class for their own failures, and then hold them responsible as “whites” for the oppression of other oppressed groups, requiring them to deny their own sense of marginalization and spiritual pain, their own invisibility, and to defer to the orthodoxy that it is the other oppressed groups who are deserving of concern and recognition. And even more, these white working-class communities are not allowed to comment upon this whole process because that would be racist, or sexist, or otherwise not politically correct for them to do. Understandably, this makes these white working-class communities feel they are simultaneously in pain and silenced from commenting on their pain, an untenable and explosive hurt that Trump perfectly spoke to in his campaign.What we saw in the election results, furthermore, was that this dynamic was not limited to the white working-class, but also to white college-educated men and women who voted for Trump in large numbers, in spite of his derogatory comments about women. While these “whites” don’t face the identical socio-economic conditions of the white working-class, they also suffer the spiritual pain of not being affirmed in a loving and valuing way within our alienated culture, and they also are expected to direct all their concern to designated oppressed others and deny the pain of their own spiritual isolation. And they too are not allowed to comment upon this because they are supposed to be guilty about the pain of others rather than crying out themselves.This is the coercive deference and the double-bind that has undermined the Left’s appeal for the last forty or so years since the Left abandoned a universalist view of human liberation in favor of an exclusive focus on the extension of liberal rights to previously discriminated-against groups, and on an identity politics based on the past and continuing injuries to each victimized identity group for which a designated oppressor group (i.e. “whites”) are responsible.The solution to this is a new spiritual politics that sees all of us as suffering in an alienated, socially-separated, individualistic social world that fails to affirm all of us as worthy of love, respect, and recognition, and that seeks to build an economy and a culture that carries forward that loving affirmation to all human beings. Of course, this must include compassion for and solidarity with the historical and continuing particular suffering inflicted on African-Americans, women, the LGBTQ community, and others who have been harmed, demeaned, and unrecognized, but it must also extend a loving solidarity to the “whites,” that is, to all of us as universal beings with particular histories and circumstances who long for a world based on love, care, and the embrace of truly being supported and valued.Bernie Sanders did a great job of showing such a politics is possible right now, even though he focused only on economic issues as carriers of spiritual care and concern rather than on a fuller, truly spiritual-progressive program that would have addressed a broader array of spiritual and communal needs. Until we move our politics in this universalist healing direction, others like Donald Trump will continue to succeed with messages that speak to “white” people’s pain in distorted ways with likely harmful consequences.