Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey, friends, this is Dick Flax. I'm joined, as usual, with Daraka Larimo hall.
And we're doing our another episode of Talking Strategy, Making History.
And we're both, like many people, concerned and preoccupied right at the moment with issues having to do with the interrelationship between race, class, identity politics, DEI debates and controversies.
And we thought we have some possible ways of framing things that might be helpful as people try to work through these issues.
There are really two perhaps, streams here. One is dei.
Diversity, equity, inclusion as a program that was instituted by numbers of corporations, universities, other institutions.
There's a whole profession of DEI advisors and consultants and therapists, you might say, on the one hand, and at the same time, of course, as we all see, the GOP and Trump in particular, have been using DEI as a weapon against the Democratic Party, against liberals, against any ideas about social justice, really. And shockingly to me, the attack on DEI by Trump has led immediately a number of, not only corporations. That's not too surprising that they, many of them, want to comply with his critique and do away with these programs. But I'm seeing this happening in higher education and maybe other places.
So we need to, we would like to, I think, between us, see how we each feel about all of that and figure out how to maybe frame a response. But that shades right into the second issue, which is if the Democratic Party needs to win back working class voters, especially white male working class voters, how does it frame these issues? The issue of race, of class, and what are the. What. That debate is, of course, pretty heated now, not only in the leadership of the Democratic Party, but even within the more articulate parts of the left, so maybe more. So is that a decent way to frame what we want to talk about? Dirac?
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it. Yeah, I think you captured it. Do you want to give, do you want to. Yeah.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Well, let's start with the.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Give a go.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So I understand from my own limited experience with what amounts to DEI kind of therapeutic treatment of organizations that I've been part of how, what, what kinds of objections really can be made to this whole development? And I would summarize it by saying my objection starts with the observation that the typical DEI practice in institutional efforts to oppose racism is to work on people's attitudes and sort of psychology around issues of prejudice, stereotyping, implicit bias, microaggression, and making that the central issue of race and oppression, rather than, as I would put it more fundamentally, structural sources of inequality and white supremacy, which is not the same as Racist stereotyping, White supremacy is an ideology that I think is needs to be combated in a thorough way that has infected American history and American life in ways that we now are seeing have so many really evil ramifications. That's not quite the same as what I think these anti racist programs are doing. So on the one hand, there's reason to question the way in which this DEI formulation has been put into practice institutionally and the whole profession of DEI nicks out there and the books that similarly reflect this perspective. But that's not what I think the Trump Musk campaign is all about. They are using DEI as a weapon to just to set back history really maybe more than 100 years because Trump's so nostalgic for McKinley, which he would like to repeal the entire 20th century.
And Elon Musk, we are learning more about him.
Not only was he raised in South Africa, but by a family that moved out of South Africa to avoid the post apartheid society.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: They were that and moved there, attracted.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: To it, attracted to it to the first place. And so his. And he has been, you know, it's not just the salutes he's given. He's giving lots of money and lots of support to proto Nazi parties in Europe as well as, and having an agenda here that seems to be really oriented to wiping out, you know, the entire movement for equality in the society and using the DEI as a weapon. And I, I would also put on our agenda here the. I'm very disturbed by the caving in some colleges and universities, for example, as well as corporations to this without, you know, not even any significant pressure. It's like they, they immediately. I just saw that Google on its calendar apparently has erased all references to Black History Month, Women's History Month.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: They dewokified the calendar.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: We dewokify it to the point where all of those observances are no longer there.
Who told them they had to do this and why did they do that? That's pretty scary.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: It's the vibes shift.
Yeah, well, so I mean this is part of what people are talking about, that there's been a culture shift to the right and that institutions and individuals are sort of preemptively censoring or you know. Yeah. Capitulating without even being asked in order to anticipate, you know, being on the cultural cutting edge. So, you know, I agree that it's. This is certainly not just about a debate or it isn't at all a debate about, you know, what is the best way to talk about racial divisions or Gender inequality or sexual freedom in the, you know, in a workplace setting or an academic setting or anything like that. Like, that's not what the Republicans really care about. And DEI is, you know, just one in a long string of sort of purportedly left wing terms of art that the conservatives use redefine more much more broadly, but use it as a, as, you know, not just a weapon but as like a framing, a framework to yeah, as you say, like roll back all of the things that they don't like. And you know, this is why you're seeing all these reports of people getting sort of caught up in it, like Republican women in the military, you know, seeing that, you know, any kind of language deference to their existence is being wiped away by fiat and by, you know, by order of, of the administration like that. They're like, wait, I didn't sign up for this. I, this isn't what I thought attacking DI was going to be. And that's why I, I think it's really dangerous that there are some people on the left making noises like, well, we didn't like DI anyway because it wasn't a structural critique and it's just how corporations whitewash themselves or whatever. So good riddance. Because it's not like they're doing a surgical strike on the things about DEI rhetoric that we don't like. They're gonna, they're taking out, you know, this is like the critical race theory woke political correctness, communism. I mean it's been called a lot of things over the years and it's not like, you know, the, in the, this was. The problem with right wing anti communism is that it's not, it wasn't like they were simply defending the United States from one strain of, of, of the left that might be a security problem. Right. The project was to wipe it all out and that's what they're doing. So the last thing I would say in terms of what's crazy about this is that they've, if you read these memos and the directives that are being given to federal agencies to fire people and eliminate divisions or eliminate like you know, whole programs and subdivisions, it's dei, Critical race theory, Marxism, equality.
They're stringing together this whole like vomitus word salad string in order to tie all of those things together in people's minds and you know, as a message and it really is, I'm sorry, it's just straight up fascist because it's inventing a world in which there are people who are disloyal to the country.
Have a hidden secret agenda that's actually like racist and bad to white people and all of these things. And they're spread throughout the government and society and have to be, you know, rooted out and the body politic cleansed.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: It's.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really, really scary.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: So. But the reason it resonates with ordinary people who are not fascist minded is not simply because there's, because of white supremacy or patriarchal attitudes, although that's certainly part of the reason for its resonance. But it's, you know, just a few weeks ago there were some on air interviews with Latino voters who were literally saying that they hate Latinx. They hate.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Okay, but Dick, that is a, that's just a canned setup, like rage bait thing. That is not real politics. Like nobody, it's, it's true that people don't. In the Latin Latinx community, that term doesn't resonate and people think of themselves as Mexican American or Cuban American, etc. But much more people will use the word Chicano to describe themselves than currently use the word Latinx. It's very academic and yeah, left culture oriented, but nobody is being required to use that. And people. And the Latino vote shifting to Trump wasn't because they hear people using that term. And that's like, that's just people trying to push an agenda. This bleeds into your second question. They're trying to push a narrative and an agenda that the Democratic Party is too radical and too left wing and too progressive, whatever, on issues of identity and too focused on it. And that's why people voted for Donald Trump, who talks about nothing but identity politics.
It's a trap, I think. Sorry to interrupt, but.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: No, no, no, I, I'm trying to ponder how I actually feel about it because I think that what, what's being picked up on and resented is the perceived and perhaps and sometimes real perceptions are based on reality of lefty oriented activists or who, who are focused on what seemed to be not only symbolic stuff that has no real value that anyone can understand for their making their lives better, but in a way a kind of intellectual superiority or almost snobbery being displayed by saying, well, we know what to say and you don't. We, we, we know how to think about these things and you don't. You are behind, you're backward, you are resistant to change.
It's, it's a habit of thought, which I think might, you know, if I wanted to psychologize it a little, it might be that it's particularly a habit of thought among young people who have just discovered a lot of radical perspectives, want to embrace them, want to prove and signal their, their engagement now in left wing politics and do it through these means which are turn out to be not very good for organizing most, you know, a majority of people. Am I making any sense? I mean, I think that, and so that's an internal, you might say discussion which I think should be happening on college campuses among student activists.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: But I, but I would separate it out. Like I, of course the way political persuasion and political conversation can always improve and get better. And the way that you talk to someone in a seminar on campus or a, you know, in an activist group, like, is not going to be a good way of talking to persuade a voter at the door who's one who's like debating whether to vote for Trump or Harris and you know, lives in Nevada and you know, it like works at the casino or whatever. Like, but, but I don't know anybody in their right mind that thinks that that's true. And so what, what always gets me about this discussion is I don't understand how people think it operationalizes or like what you're supposed to do about this. That yes, there's a big cultural divide between leftist college students and non college educated mechanics in Wichita. You know, like, sure, of course there is. Like why wouldn't there be?
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Only that, that very marked disparity. It's, there are generational disparities even.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Among liberals and leftists. There's that come into play. And you know, I guess the only thing what I was sort of hinting at as a way of dealing with it is to really not accept that there should be space. And the college campus is probably the main space where these issues of style and of approach to the larger world of a political discussion are really examined. People like, that's, you know, in a way what we're doing on this podcast, when we talk about, when we say we're talking strategy, we're trying to get people to think strategically about the political. And that means, and the college campus is one of those places where strategic thinking doesn't seem to always be uppermost in people's mind because there is this need which I, I think is an important one especially for young people to define who they are, which is not exactly a strategic question, you know what I'm saying? It's a question of what kind of person are you becoming? And so the language issues that we're talking about, you know, bear on that. And I guess what I'm saying is if, if you're teaching actively, so you may be able to contribute to a process. If I were teaching, I would be trying to do this where you don't just accept these modes of action, modes of speech and modes of self presentation as absolutely true and valid, but raise questions about what are the limits of these kinds of activity. And you know, like the, the big complaint of people, people my age, lefty people my age, has to do with the pronoun issue. And it's, you know, when, when older people are talking about these things, I'm seeing there's a tremendous amount of annoyance with focus on pronouns. And why shouldn't that be a subject of discussion rather than simply saying, oh, we've now got to be very pronoun conscious or, or you know, and I actually think that over time those kind of discussions do happen, but now we seem to be in more of an emergency in which this being so weaponized against.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: But that's what I'm saying is like it's being the weaponization of it. It's okay for one, it doesn't go away if we stopped using pronouns. And the use of like saying your pronouns is an attempt to make spaces more comfortable for trans people. And right now Donald Trump is pushing policies, unilaterally pushing policies that is going to make life far more dangerous for trans people. And, and it's as a result, people are going to die.
And, but how do you do that? How do you build up the political momentum to do that? Well, you have a whole bunch of people, including people on the left, who have this general sense that trans rights has gone too far because, because they get asked to say their pronouns in meetings. And so I, I, to me, I don't, on that particular issue, I don't have very much sympathy at all because there's a direct connection between creating awareness that, you know, you can't take people's gender for granted everywhere you go and, you know, deliberately excluding trans people from civil society or denying them health care.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: And so I just, it's, I guess the, what they are doing by lumping all these things together and creating this whole narrative that now we're internalizing that oh, maybe we are too woke is to like make America and us doubt the values that led to DEI and people adopting, you know, the use of pronouns, even if they aren't trans or don't know people are trans. And those are good things. Those are things that we should, the values of wanting to make the world more, accept, accessible to different kinds of people, more humane and, you know, not so centered on humiliating people that are different. Those are all really good things. And you know, after never talking about it, we just started to talk about gender in a way that included trans and, you know, non gender conforming people. Like, we just been doing it for a few years and now like on, on, while there's a, a rollback of their rights, they've managed to make the left think about throwing trans people under the bus.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Okay, so what. I guess I, I guess there's three things that I would like to not counter what you're saying, but kind of fill out that what you just said. One, I don't think, judging from the situation, there has not been an adequate effort to explain to the general population what the, the transgender story as such. And there needs to be more patient and effort to build an eloquent and meaningful set of arguments and understandings, not just assume. Now we've discovered that this is an important part of the human story. Anyone who doesn't understand it is stupid or reactionary. Let's not draw those lines quite that way. Let's be more. This is what I'm sort of suggesting. Let's be more attentive to how to, how to educate people. Because there are aspects to the transgender story as it's unfolding that, that are disturbing even to. Well, I'm, I feel disturbed when I hear that an eight year old adopted son of one of my cousins or daughter, I'm sorry, of one of my cousins has decided that she's really a boy. And you know, there's a lot of, I think, efforts to try to understand that, but it's not a simple, straightforward situation of gender dysphoria as I understand it. So it gets. These things are disturbing and it's not. And to feel disturbed shouldn't be considered a sign of your moral backwardness, I would think.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: But, but sometimes it is, right?
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Sometimes it is. But so importantly than that, I think is, is the generally the need for there to be space within the left identified or movement identified subcultures on, you know, among college students and faculty, maybe even more than students, that free discussion is okay, that people should be able to voice their questions without being labeled. See, there's something intellectually wrong with labeling people as racist or sexist because every, the, the propensities that we call racist or sexist are present in everybody. They're not just. Yeah, but, right, sure. And we understand that. So to, to, to make people feel that they cannot say certain things without being condemned, you know, how is part, you know, something that I think could be, could be addressed much, much better. More, more, you know, more free spiritedly you might say.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: But I still, I guess I re, I, I think that all of that has been going on and it's, you know, there's organizations that have, that popped up after the Black Lives Matter uprisings, you know, to provide spaces for white people to learn more about racism in America. There's any number of resources available and out there and educators and activists that are very happy to talk people through their concerns and confusions and, and misconceptions about trans people.
And could there be more and should there be more? Yeah, absolutely. I think any trans person or activist or trans adjacent person out there would be the first one to say like, yeah, we, we should have enough resources to go and have these convincing, good, wholesome conversations with as many people as possible. But there's also a responsibility for left identified people to, you know, when, when there's like new people show up in the family, so to speak, like, do some reading on their own about it and, and you know, and, and be welcoming and so forth. But the, I think the, the, the overarching point is that the right is very smart to target trans people for all of the reasons that we're talking about because their acceptance in society is tenuous and that's who they will always pick, you know, is our people that, that polite society is like little uncomfortable with and the, and who are easily identified as like not us is like someone else is like the other. And so for all those reasons, like we have to stick to our values. And which maybe if it's okay to segue into your sort of second question, which is that I think the path, that's the, the path not traveled by center left and left parties is just to stick to our values across the board. So how do we get back white working class voters? I think the only ethical way to do that so that you're not hurting, you're not doing harm to some other part of our constituency is to court them with economic policy that is in their interests and highlighting that and communicating that. Kamala Harris did not communicate a coherent argument about the economy and what she was going to do to improve the economy for working people. Had she done that, it wouldn't matter what she said about bathrooms or whatever else.
Some portion of the population just isn't going to care and will vote for the cruelty because that's the point and we're not going to get them back. But certainly what keeps happening is that parties decide that they're either going to be culturally progressive or economically progressive. And they won't do it at the same, both at the same time. And it's always because there's some group of voters that they're chasing that they've lost. Right. That they're trying to get back by flip flopping back and forth. And just everyone has refused to say, you know, I'm for the right to repair your tractor and I'm for renegotiating trade rules to keep jobs in the United States and I'm for trans rights.
And I, you know, let's just do that.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: So do you. And so why is not so you, you're, you're implying by what you're saying that we haven't got to this point where that kind of thinking is understood broadly in, within the, I mean, there's.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: People, you know, you've got people, you've, the left of the Democratic Party right now is embodying what I'm saying. You know, I mean, although Bernie has been shaking my faith in his intersectionality lately, he generally has been someone who's left across the board on all the range of issues. So is an Elizabeth Warren, so is aoc, you know, so is, you know, so are the all of the good, the real members of the Progressive Caucus, the ones who aren't just sort of like slumming it there, but there are in fact a lot of people in Democratic politics who embody what I'm talking about. But the leadership and even parts of the pundit class and increasingly voices on the left can't seem to do it. It's gotta be one or the other. Like, we have to not just give white male working class people or Latino men or black men, like more of a positive incentive to vote for the Democrats. We also have to like make it safe for them by appealing to their bigotries and prejudices.
And whether that's softening something we say or just like swapping out our policy and trans issues is one of those issues it's happening on, but immigration is the other one and it's just shitty and it's not necessary.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: I think I'd like to, yeah, I, I, I think we should just talk, talk a little about immigration before we, you know, during this, this episode. I just want to make a couple other comments. I mean, what you're saying is, you know, I completely agree with, the only reservation I have is whether I, I think there's more work needs to be done on. I hate to use the word messaging because that trivializes on the way Our value, values and perspectives on these questions are, are framed, are, are presented, are justified and argued for. There's too much.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: I, I agree with that.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and AOC is better at this than a lot of other people, but she hasn't been tested in a constituency, in an electoral framework that really would be more alien to her, so to speak. But just one observation that to me is significant.
Gay rights and marriage, same sex marriage and marriage equality all don't ask, don't tell. It's only 30 years ago that the Clinton administration was shoving all those issues under, under the rug on the same kind of grounds as now being dealt with transgender issues. That these are issues that will cost us the election. We can't touch these issues and so forth. It's a, it's quite amazing. And maybe there's people who've been writing about this, how quickly there's been this cultural shift in favor of gay rights, in favor of marriage equality, in favor of gays in the military. All the things that were supposed to be too hot to handle by, by the Democratic Party and by liberals. No longer. You know, you can't, you can't really expect to win in many parts of the country electorally unless you embrace these things, these issues.
And one reason for that I think is. Makes it different from the transgender type of issue, which is that everybody, it turns out, has gay members of their family, have gay friends.
Gay people are integral to the daily experience of large numbers of people. And so I think that contributed a lot to the speed at which this change came about. And maybe also, you know, older people who were more resistant died off basically.
And the younger generation.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: But why is that different than the trans issue?
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Because there are fewer, you know, there's not that same.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Sorry, we keep saying the trans issue. I don't even know what that means exactly.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: But transition.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: It's not like the trans question.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: The trans.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: What does that have to do with trans rights or, or anything?
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: How's it different? How is it different? Sorry was my question.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Well, I'm not sure even what people's attitudes on. I'm not even, you know, now that I'm, now that raise it that way. I don't even know exactly what, you know, the, the trans rights issue that the right wing has taken up has been do do the who uses what bathrooms which is absurd. And whether men biological, so called biological men. That's how they, that's their terminology should play in women's sports. And making those big issues just seems outlandish.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: Well, but that's, this is. By what do you mean making those big issues? Who's making those big issues?
[00:33:03] Speaker A: The right wing.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's brilliant, you see, because those are all issues in which there's broad sympathy or questions or discomfort in the population. While meanwhile, what are they also doing? They're, you know, they're taking away gender affirming care for all minors and, and everyone in the military. And it's next is going to be everyone who works for the government and then anybody that they can get their hands on. They're trying to ban trans people from existing. That is their goal. And so they're utilizing the, you know, reticence to stand up for trans people as a way and they front load these kinds of stories. Right. Or these, these kinds of questions.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: Well, well, what you just said, I have not really heard on the radio, so to speak. I have not heard people drawing that point out that the, these issues about bathrooms is not really what is the agenda of those who are making use of that issue. Something far more inhumane and frightening is what they really are after. Something much more archaic, culturally archaic is what they're talking. Yeah.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: And, and, and gay marriage will be next or same sex marriage will. They're, they're not going to be done.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Well, that's, but that's where they will hit, hit a wall because that's already now accepted and, and part of people's lives all over the country.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: Oh yeah, they're, they're, but they hopefully they hit a wall. They're audacious. That's kind of the point. They don't accept that there are walls or you know, they have a big horizon, which we don't. The Democratic Party, I should say, as a whole doesn't have.
We have a very small achievable, don't promise too much kind of horizon. And they're like, well, we're going to make America like it was when your grandparents were little. And they're working hard to do that.
As you say, bringing back tariffs, I mean that's really retro.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: So in a way there's something a little helpful you just said. It seems to me that between the generational, inevitable generational change that has to happen where younger people, more and more younger people who have different attitudes, there's really a big difference. And they generationally, in the attitudes on these questions will, will be coming to the fore, the younger people coming to the fore, older people will be leaving everything, exiting the state. So that the, the full implication of what the right, of what the Christian Nationalists and the right wing evangelicals and all that. What they're after the same thing with, for example, the abortion issue.
Their positions are so fanatically extreme and so anti democratic in so many ways that that's kind of a hopeful thing, is that once the more people see that, the more. So the great slogan that Trump won on, I think one of the great slogans was this or this ad in which she, you know, the ad was she is for they and them. Trump is for you.
So that's saying something a little different, which is the implication there is people like Kamala care about these trivial, symbolic, marginal things, not about the needs of ordinary people.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah, but see, I think that's like, it's not that it's trivial and marginal because Trump and Trump's supporters and the message is that trans people are dangerous. It's they, them. It's not for you, it's for another group. It's for these, of these weirdos over here that, that they've been doing a very effective job of vilifying. So while in liberal circles, in the New York Times, Right, The New York Times is just sort of stroking its chin and being like, shouldn't we slow down a bit and think about the implications of trans people existing? And shouldn't we just ask questions and all of these just like gratuitous, you know, smuggled bigotries that they do. But, you know, but they're not like, hey, we should eliminate all trans people. And. Whereas that's the right wing's goal and that's what he's. Trump is signaling when he says that the problem is they, them.
So I, Yeah, I, well, the beauty.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: The beauty of that ad and of that kind of, that kind of sloganeering is that it means a number of different things to different people.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Exactly, absolutely.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: That's what makes it so brilliantly evil as, as a, you know, as a way of. And, and you know, that is the s. That is a fascist technique to.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: And, and I should say, I think your point is evergreen. It is always true that we need to improve our communication across about all of the things that we care about. And we're always evolving, you know, our communication styles. The other thing I want to make sure that I, you know, very much grant you in this conversation is that there are a ton of pathologies on the left and like leftier than thou radicalisms and vocabulary, fetishism and one upmanship and everything. Like. That's absolutely true. The left can be a toxic cesspool and nobody knows that better than me. I've been, you know, doused with the toxicity more than once.
So that's fine. We should have that, continue to have that conversation.
My point is that it's not like the toxic left people have been out talking to working class people and being rude to them and now they're turned off and going and voting Republican. That it's, you know, this is a manipulation of people. It's a creation of a narrative that they've been pumping through systematically through Fox News and OAN and so forth. The critical race theory stuff, you know, the Moms for Liberty stuff that like all of these things have been honing an attitude out there that, that, that there's some leftist project that has, quote, gone too far and right. And, and, and we just know we haven't. It's just not true. And we shouldn't indulge in that fantasy, that right wing fantasy that like, America's too woke or if people don't use the right pronouns, they'll be shunned from society or it's just all nonsense. None of it's true.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: A lot of talk on, on by left wing pundits that make it seem that when the right wing has an argument, it must be believed by most people.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: It's not true. And so, so that leads me that shades into the, the, the other sort of theme that we were going to try to cover today is the, is the idea that the problem of building a majority electoral coalition that is St.
Win is critical part of what we're all about. And these issues relate to that. Now, the, the.
No. So you already articulated that we need policies that show working class people. And by working class, we mean a very broad category of people. We're talking not only, not only about Rust Belt industrial workers, we're talking about school teachers, we're talking about public employees. We're talking about people in many different roles, but they. People who work for a living, who depend on their wages for and for survival, who don't have the wealth.
And it's not only, I would say, programs, which I think the programs are all ready on the shelf to be taken down. And it's absolutely true that Kamala, when we think back on what she was saying and not saying, somebody pointed out she never raised the minimum wage, even as something that, you know, that would have been a most obvious thing to advocate and put the Republicans on the defensive about had she simply said we're going to raise the wages of Americans and made That a central issue. And I think that they, their, their consultant types were saying, no, that's not going to appeal to the Republicans who we, who we need.
But anyway, so there's another piece to the, to the class oriented framework, which is, which is, to, which is a populist piece which is to, to prove to people that you actually are serious about fighting the power of the billionaire class, as Bernie calls it, of the corporate elite, to not just occasionally make comments about it, but to actually. Because many people I think deep down believe, yes, the country's run by the very rich, but what can you do about it? That's precisely the problem. People will say they own it and we don't have the power to overcome them. And politicians always are bending the knee to those people.
So that's part of the strategic necessity of clarifying program, not clarifying, articulating a program that not only appeals to people because of what you're, you're saying they can, they have a right to, but also appealing to people and saying, we're actually going to fight against those who would oppose these programs. We're going to actually expose their, you know, expose them and challenge their power. We're going to tax the rich because taxing the rich is part of what has to happen in order to bring about better childcare and housing opportunities and all the rest of that. And so that's just a comment. Now there's this left wing view that, that's not new, but goes back to the 70s and 80s. There's a, there's a kind of left intellectual view that says the reason the Democrats don't do this is because of quote, unquote, identity politics.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: And I think that's always been a mistake. And I want to start and get your reaction to a couple of these historical points. First of all, it's ridiculous to talk about identity politics versus politics. American politics is filled with ethnic identity power centers and machines, urban machines filled with the use of ethnic and other identity and you know, and, and gender and race and, you know, not that that's just like part of what the American political story is. Now there's been a history, I think, of socialists and other people on the left entering into those ethnic frameworks with a class oriented attitude and a class oriented argument. And you know, my wife Mickey and I were very imbued with this within the Jewish world.
One of the most obvious identity politics moves that was made in the late 19th and early 20th century was to revive the Yiddish language in the United States as a language to be used to print news, to publish newspapers and pamphlets and novels and poetry in Yiddish. And the most of the people who did that were socialists. Now how could socialists do such a seemingly narrow thing as to try to keep a language alive that in a country that had a very different language. And it does seem strange, but it was a conscious and successful strategy to get the Jewish working class to listen to socialist perspectives. The papers they were reading were socialist newspapers written in Yiddish, but speaking about the working class, not just the Jewish working class. Speaking about the working class class, speaking about our need to ally with the working class. And in many cases in the early part of the 20th century, in places like New York, you had huge rallies and turnouts by Jewish workers for on behalf of working class causes that were other than Jewish, so to speak, precisely because there were socialists active within this, within very much within this cultural world that was defined by Jewish identity. And that I don't think was a unique case if you, you know, there were organizations developed by, you know, like the work, the Socialist Party, but then the Communist Party that were multi ethnic with deliberate ethnic divisions that were, well.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: That was inherited by, from the iww.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: Exactly. So the notion that there's some kind of opposition inevitable between fostering one's distinctive identity and a universal understanding of a multicultural working class as the goal that we all have, that, that, that's, yeah.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: You know, I, I, I mean I hear you loud and clear because I think I was expressing on a party political platform level this inability to, you know, just stay left on all issues and always like trading off groups of who's gonna like take the bullet that that cycle or that era.
And I think that's somehow related intellectually to the, this, you know, always wanting to decide whether something is about race or about class or you know, it's, are we going to focus on race? Are we going to focus on class? And it's strange because, you know, as you say going back more than a hundred years, there are all these clear examples, some failed, some successful, some wacky, some weird, you know, just like so many different examples of people recognizing that their constituents are more than one thing at the same time. And so having different discussions and organizations and movements and spaces and so forth that sort of highlight or appeal to different parts of their identity is, makes sense. And, and, and yeah, I don't know, it's all the way up to, as recently as the, as the 90s, there was like a huge, you know, fight battle about race, class and gender all through the academy and through the left and everything. And I feel like we, we, we, we survived it and nothing new is going to be said. And you know, we, we know that it's all of those things all the time. And so I, the, so I'm worried, I'm worried on a political level that that dichotomous thinking is gonna, is gonna wreak havoc. And specifically there's like this really creepy, I think, disturbing detente going on where there are writers and researchers and you know, advocates who are, you know, hardcore class centric leftists, you know, furious at the Democratic party for abandoning the working class and producing all these op EDS and so forth about, you know, how the Democrats need to get back to the working class. And then you've got like Roy Texira and his, on his blog, the liberal patriot. Like that guy is just fucking off the rails. Like he's, he's like, we should be bad on trans issues. Like fuck trans people. So we get the white working class back and screw immigrants and, and he's like, you can watch him. He's like. Because he, he does his podcast and he does, you know, there's video and it's like you, it's, you're just like watching in real time a guy unravel everything. He used to be, you know, and the, so he had on like a, you know, gender critical feminist, a turf basically to talk about how the trans movement has gone too far, blah, blah. And he's like, yeah, I mean it's just crazy. These people and the Democrats and they're gonna lose and blah, blah. So anyway, those two, they've been like talking a lot and, and exchanging, you know, quoting one another and exchanging platitudes. Now keep in mind, it's like the Texiera crowd, the centrist, the Democratic. Centrist, Democratic Party centrists who want to abandon woke, the economic policies that they want to go for are also not great. They're not very progressive. Like he's, you know, they're, they're Clintonites. They're like, we'll get the working class back with tax cuts and small business and blah blah. Now these leftists are like, drop the, the WOKE stuff and let's, but let's like be, you know, nationalize the banks and full employment and you know, all this left populist stuff. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm exaggerating maybe a little bit, but they don't agree about economic policy. All they agree on is fuck the wokies, like, get rid of that like weak feminist identity politics. Stuff that is untrustworthy. And like, the leftists will call them neoliberals and Teixera will call them like defeat liberals or whatever. But see, but that's an unholy alliance that I'm actually afraid will get some traction. But of course it'll be the centrist version that like triumphs in the. Because it's a losing game anyway. That's, that's my, that's my sectarian rant for the, for the episode.
[00:52:47] Speaker A: So, so I was, I was going to say that one answer to that is an exact. The kind of example that I gave with respect to the Yiddish socialist tradition. But that's a pretty esoteric one. I mean, if you think just people need to come to grips with this. The most sophisticated block of voters in the American working class and in fact population is the African American voters. African American voters.
There's plenty of identity, cultural identity voiced and practiced and celebrated. But African American voters are quite ready to vote for people of other colors. They're quite ready to vote strategically. They're quite African American leadership is now present in many progressive organizations not rooted simply in the black community. In other words, that's one example of a subculture based on racial identity, but which has flourished as such and at the same time has been a radicalizing and politically sophisticating educational framework for thousands and thousands of of people. The same can be said for, you know, probably other, other major subcultures within the, within the working class that, I mean, if you took. And then also let's, let's talk about the gay sub. Gay. Gay activism. Gay activism is a thing in itself and you know, it's an identity politics. And yet again, look at the leadership of many kinds of progressive causes and movements. Many of the leaders are gay coming out of the same gay subculture. And that's nothing new either.
So I say all that because just empirically, the argument of the kind of people that you were criticizing before just doesn't hold water. It is not the case that being true to your particular oppressed identity and trying to maintain and build that as a, as a cultural framework doesn't necessarily at all contradict being a politically sophisticated, strategically oriented, radical person with a broader social vision and a broader class understanding. But, and I think that what I'm saying does, isn't often said. I don't think maybe I'm wrong, but I, I think that's not been made clear to people. You're so right about in academia, the counter position, say class and race makes people not see what is in fact, part of our regular experience that these things are not.
Yeah.
[00:55:57] Speaker B: I mean, and to be fair, like, it's also in academia where there's tremendous great writing and research about those.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: That synthesis and these moments and, you know, all of the examples that you gave, whether it's the African American freedom struggle and how much it's been influential in so many other movements around the world or the, you know, the, the. The question of labor organizing in the Jewish diaspora. And as Jews, I mean, all these things have been really brilliantly excavated and written about. But the pro. Probably the lessons overlooked and forgotten because here we are talking about how we should run more white men as candidates as a way to get back into power because the white men are. Are sad and, and feel left out. And I, it's just remarkable to me that we're having this stupid conversation.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: Well, I, you know, I do think there is a white male or male problem in terms of having to do with traditional definitions of masculine power, masculine dominance, crumbling. What. What is supposed to replace that? And again, so I'm saying like an honest recognition. A lot of boys and men are pretty. Are troubled about who they are in. In the world that's. And, and, and led to want to resist or mock or, you know, separate themselves from the multicultural, egalitarian society that we would like to construct.
You know, why can't we, why can't we address that with empathy and not say you have to then promote people because we don't need affirmative action for white men.
[00:57:50] Speaker B: How about. Let's put a pin in that and have a. We could do a whole episode on the man problem. The man question, because I think it is a good question. You raised some interesting points, but I think we should probably wrap up.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: So let's spend two minutes on the immigration matter. I guess what I feel is, again, a failure. Is there a progressive or left liberal immigration perspective that can be the source of policy? What is the perspective?
[00:58:25] Speaker B: Well, I think the perspective was the set of demands that, you know, came together in the May 1st movement a few years back, you know, when there was a Democrat in the White House. And so the movement was aimed towards reform and legal changes that improved the status of immigrants in the United States. You know, the. Right now, I think the.
I think things are so bad and we had the reality of, you know, really mass deportation already existing under the last several administrations, including Democratic administrations. So the, I think getting back to just making the argument for immigration to, to the United States again is really necessary. So that we don't get whipsawed. You know, I think Sanders like repeating his opposition to H1B visas was really dumb to do that in this moment. I mean he has a fair critique of the, the system for sure. But, but adding to the narrative that there are immigrants in the United States taking Americans jobs and lowering working conditions when you know Trump is trying to do a military pogrom on working people without papers like I, that's totally irresponsible. So I think right now first principles is that we need to, we need to be making the argument that immigration is good, it's good thing for the country. It's a. And, and we should have it.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: Well, let's make that a little more concrete out of our own California experience. So people may not remember but they should that 30 plus years ago immigration was the central issue in politics.
Measures were on the ballot to take many kinds of rights away from and benefits from immigrant people. That was the agenda of the Republican Party. We had a Republican Governor Pete Wilson who wanted to run for president on all that stuff.
And the outcome of Prop. Was it 187 was to unite Latino and Asian American communities against the Republican Party. And I know I'm simplifying history but basically we can mark a big transformation politically in California from the anti immigrant politics that was then seeming so important dominant and that you know led to the abolition of affirmative action. You know so that transformation has been enormous politically. I mean we, we have, that's why the Democratic Party is, has a super majority in the legislature and why you know the Republican Party in most of the state is so marginal has to do is rooted in that story. Well that's isn't that should be more under, you know we.
How did that happen in California? So the REM here's a remarkable thing that to me.
[01:01:52] Speaker B: Are you making a noise? I'm sorry, are you talking?
[01:01:54] Speaker A: I was clicking something which I shouldn't do on the re. On the podcast. Never click anything on a podcast like your pen. Don't click it. The University of California, the majority of students in the university are either immigrants themselves or the children of people who are immigrants. The majority, the majority of students at the University of California, which is a highly selective elite public institution are non white.
You know, only about a third of the students now at the university are white. I don't see any politics in the state that is angry at that of the use of taxpayer money for that university at this point. I mean maybe I'm missing a big story but I don't see it. There's a kind of under, it's one of the better things that's happened is the acceptance of California as a multicultural state. Right. With power in the hands of people of many different cultural backgrounds and people voting for people of many different backgrounds. I don't mean there's an absence of racism. Don't be. That would be quite ridiculous to say, but there's something maybe to learn, maybe transferable about some of what's happened in, on around the immigration question in California where the rest of the country and maybe I don't know how you, how you see what I just said, but I agree.
[01:03:27] Speaker B: And that was certainly the story about California politics that I would tell until very recently. So the only thing that I would add is that the California model that you're talking about, which has produced Democratic majorities, it's produced some kinds of progressive policy, not others. But it's under stress. And it's under stress because of things like, you know, a stronger Latino vote for Trump, which can transfer to other Republicans because one of the like America is built on immigration and migration and people moving. It's built on acceptance of new groups of people. It's also built on like pulling the ladder up and a group of people that just got here turning around and being against the next group in this case, sometimes even from the same country. So, and you know, I, I can never think of California the same way again after hearing those recorded conversations of Latino and labor politicians, you know, con talking about taking out black electeds with, you know, so the point being that we have, we, we have a lot of, it's fraying in, in lots of different ways. But the, but I agree with you that there's something worth defending and extending in the California way.
So, yeah, with, on that, maybe we.
[01:04:57] Speaker A: Wrap up, make one small comment which is that the divisions within, let's say Mexican American community, generational divisions where older, presumably older people or people who came here earlier resent the, the new arrivals. This is the one of the oldest stories in immigration in this country.
[01:05:21] Speaker B: Exactly.
[01:05:22] Speaker A: Again, about the Jewish community. German Jews came here first. They hated the Eastern European Jews who were coming, many of them.
And so, you know, which really speaks to the fact that, and you were implying this in what you said, all of the, there's tremendous amount of contradiction and strain and complexity in all of these kinds of formations.
And I would just simply say the hope is that people have multiple ideas about all of these questions. So people can be upset on one level about certain things having to do with relating to the immigration question. And then on the other hand, they would recognize, yeah, we're very dependent on immigrant labor, aren't we? That is what keeps our community going, is to have all of these people willing to do these kind of jobs or, you know, so that means that, you know, having the right framing and this has been maybe the main point of our conversation today is the. The left side of the Democratic Party, if it wants to build, which it does, a majority coalition that can gain power nationally and as well as locally, needs to keep working on the way it is communicating its values, not giving up those values, but constantly thinking, how can we make them better understood? How can we make what we're saying better understood? How can we make full equality and full dignity and rights for people something that's understood to be in the benefit of all? How can we be open to the anxieties that people have with cultural and social change and. And at the same time, not abandon, but really strengthen our principles? Is that a good final message?
[01:07:20] Speaker B: Sounds good to me.
[01:07:21] Speaker A: Me too. Thanks for being here, folks, and thanks, Daraka, for a thoughtful, stimulating conversation.
[01:07:29] Speaker B: Thank you, Dick.
[01:07:31] Speaker A: And we will sign off on that. Thanks. Take care.
[01:07:36] Speaker B: Bye.
[01:07:37] Speaker A: Bye. Bye.
[01:07:38] Speaker B: Black man have to do this is if you was white, she's all right if you was brown, stick around but.
[01:07:46] Speaker A: As you black would, brother, get back.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: Get back, get back.
[01:07:55] Speaker A: I hope win.
[01:07:56] Speaker B: Sweet victory with my little ply and ho Now I want you to tell.
[01:08:02] Speaker A: Me, brother what you gonna do about the old Jim Crow?
[01:08:05] Speaker B: Now if you's white, she's all right if you's brown, stick around but if you's black, oh, brother, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
