In what circumstances should we think of pop culture as political? What should we think of Selma’s Oscar snub, or Azealia Bank’s recent comments on reparations?
What is a social movement? How would we know it if it existed? How would we distinguish events that are “social movements” from events that are not?
In a short interview on James Peterson’s show The Remix, Adolph Reed suggests that neither #blacklivesmatter nor Occupy Wall Street qualify as social movements, and that the recent fascination with cultural politics represents a slide into idiocracy.
Listen. (fast forward to about the 7 minute mark)
I do think we place far too much weight on what he calls “manufactured controversy”. And while Reed focuses on Azealia Banks I’d place the Bill Cosby rape scandal, the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson controversies of last year, questions about JayZ’s refusal to participate in politics, questions about Beyonce’s feminism, the Selma Oscar snub, whether Idris Elba should be the next James Bond, whether Shonda Rhimes gets the respect she deserves from the New York Times, all in the same category. The stances we take on these issues come to displace a range of issues that are arguably more amenable to political action. Further, they come to stand IN for political action. Arguing about whether Bill Cosby raped more than 20 women (I think he did, and am surprised people think otherwise), or whether Ray Rice should have been suspended (he should have), in the form of tweets or status sharing or commenting, become equivalents to political participation even though the only participation they tend to generate is yet more intense sharing, commenting, and tweeting. Furthermore in as much as all of these debates center on the status of wealthy African Americans, they tend to reproduce inequality rather than contest it. Every moment we spend defending Cosby (or even someone worthy like Ava Duvernay), is taken away from people not so independently wealthy and/or prestigious (us). Reed brings up the culture industry for a reason. Huffington Post, Facebook, Gawker, Time-Warner, etc. all are part of a larger industry that makes money off of the clicks, comments, shares, likes, these controversies generate.
This isn’t to say that these controversies cannot generate political action. Nationwide hundreds of thousands of rapes have gone unsolved because of untested rape kits. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy found 11,000 of them in a Detroit warehouse several years ago and has been fighting to get the resources to test them. One could imagine how furor about Cosby could be used to make a (legitimate) claim that black women’s lives are largely ignored by the government (even when that government is largely run by black men and women), a claim that could lead to a massive effort to get the public resources required to test the rape kits and bring the rapists to justice.
But while an actress–Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order SVU fame–has stepped in to lend critical support to Worthy’s call, you’d find absolutely no connection between the various and sundry pieces critical of Cosby and rape culture, and this issue, which came to light around the same time the Cosby furor began. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the first time you were made aware of this (or even the potential connection between the two events) is from this piece. And this is because web writing doesn’t really lend itself to the type of investigative reporting that we need to be informed about and then move on issues like this. It more often lends itself to the type of commentary spurred on by a viral video/tweet, which is how we even know about Cosby, Ray Rice, and Adrian Peterson in the first place.
I’d be dishonest if I suggested there were no political value in popular culture. But I think we garner far more from examining how popular culture and the industry that partially generates it reproduces the political status quo rather than contests it.
#Blacklivesmatter
Here too, Adolph has a point, although a weaker one. It’s clear that both #blacklivesmatter and Occupy Wall Street were not simply responses to individual outrageous acts, but were (and are) the responses to a longer pattern of physical and economic brutality. And these responses generated novel forms of social organization and tactics in bringing attention to these issues.
But how do we define a social movement? Charles Tilly is helpful here:
A social movement is a sustained series of interactions between power holders and persons successfully claiming to speak on behalf of a constituency lacking formal representation, in the course of which those persons make publicly visible demands for changes in the distribution or exercise of power, and back those demands with public demonstrations of support.[foot]Tilly, C. (1984b) ‘Social Movements and National Politics’, in C. Bright and S. Harding (eds.), Statemaking and Social Movements (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press), 297–317.[/foot]
I want to focus on two passages. First:
…successfully claiming to speak.
This implies that the people who have brought the issue to light have somehow been granted the authority to speak on behalf of the people they are organizing for, by those people. But how do we know this?
Here’s where the second part comes in I think:
make publicly visible demands for changes in the distribution or exercise of power, and back those demands with public demonstrations of support.
And here’s the problem in both cases. While it is clear that large percentages of black people believe in reforming the police in order to reduce the number of unarmed black citizens they murder, and it is also clear that large percentages of people believe income inequality should be curtailed, it isn’t clear how these two beliefs translate policies or even alternative modes of organization that redistribute power. And the reason it hasn’t been made clear is because the people seeking to speak on behalf of the unspoken for haven’t made them clear. What people in the OWS case and what people in #blacklivesmatter appear to be operating on is the assumption that if they engage in enough disruptive actions, then the political change will take care of itself and a movement comprised of more people will then spontaneously generate–the “myth of the spark” that Adolph Reed brings up at about the 17 minute mark.
The best Patterson can do at this moment is to bring up the “generational divide” [foot]As an aside, can we figure out another term to use for people 30 and under? Chuck D., KRS-One, “Run” Simmons, Darryl McDaniels, and countless other seminal hip-hop figures, are all old enough to be members of the American Association of Retired Persons. The term hip-hop generation is pretty much analytically useless as a way to distinguish these individuals from people born 30 years after them.[/foot], suggesting that people like Reed are out of touch and aren’t giving younger folk their props. Adolph’s response bears quoting in full:
I guess what I would say is that while getting old is not a lot of fun, being old confers some advantages and one of them is having been around the track enough times to be able to make some generalizations. And among the things that I’ve noticed is that for all of this kind of stuff, and this is like Occupy, this goes back to the Million Man March, all of this stuff, the principal defense is a call for what these actions and these lines of endeavor will produce. So you can’t really say anything to that except that well, it hasn’t happened yet. We’ve done this kind of thing before and it hasn’t produced the outcome that you insist this one is going to do. So the argument basically depends on a call for faith in things as yet unseen. So there’s not much you can say to that…
I wouldn’t place either Occupy Wall Street or #blacklivesmatter in the same category as the Million Man March. Whereas the Million Man March was a conservative reproduction of the neoliberal status quo, both OWS and #blacklivesmatter can and should be thought of as critical responses to the neoliberal turn. Further while the MMM was top-down, and ostensibly designed to place Minister Louis Farrakhan at the head of the “black leader table” neither OWS nor #blacklivesmatter are about that life. At all. Patterson isn’t wrong to criticize Reed on this point.
However Reed can be wrong on this while still being correct in general. I wouldn’t at this point, place either OWS or #blacklivesmatter in the same category as the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Labor Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, or a number of other movements that not only made visible demands for change that were supported by large groups of people, but actually accomplished those demands. And while I wouldn’t go too far with this–I don’t believe we need a “new” civil rights movement and I don’t want to be read as supporting such a notion–I do think that Reed’s critical approach is something the people directly involved in #blacklivesmatter should be more attentive to. Activists have already done the hard work required to bring people together to put their lives on the line. What we need are more actions designed to generate support for either specific policies (that are explicitly articulated), or for an alternative source of public power (that too, is explicitly articulated). The politics won’t take care of themselves. We have to take care of them.
lol, well, you shoehorned “neoliberal turn” into it, but couldn’t you get at least one gratuitous “intersectionality” into this essay? That’d give it the cathedral’s full and fully-feminized imprimatur…, oh yeah Reed is correct in his prognosis about the dead-end of OWS 2.0 blacklivesmatter.
I plussed CNu’s comment in a moment of weakness, and I regret it now, not because I disagree with the gist, but the tone’s simply not helpful. I think you’re very right when you say, “What people in the OWS case and what people in #blacklivesmatter appear to be operating on is the assumption that if they engage in enough disruptive actions, then the political change will take care of itself and a movement comprised of more people will then spontaneously generate–the “myth of the spark” that Adolph Reed brings up at about the 17 minute mark.”
Where I think you go wrong is in thinking “Whereas the Million Man March was a conservative reproduction of the neoliberal status quo, both OWS and #blacklivesmatter can and should be thought of as critical responses to the neoliberal turn.” Here’s David Harvey from his book on neoliberalism: “Neoliberal rhetoric, with its foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms, has the power to split off libertarianism, identity politics, multi-culturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power. It has long proved extremely difficult within the US left, for example, to forge the collective discipline required for political action to achieve social justice without offending the desire of political actors for individual freedom and for full recognition and expression of particular identities. Neoliberalism did not create these distinctions, but it could easily exploit, if not foment, them.”
Could you tell me what you take from Harvey in your comments above? Which part of my statement do you disagree with?
I think #blacklivesmatter serves neoliberalism unintentionally. A great many white people have also been killed by the police for things like carrying a toy gun or a cell phone—one white kid was killed for coming to the door with a WII controller—as well as for being unable to respond as the police expected them to because of medical or psychological reasons. By making this a racial issue, the effort to address it is diffused. I expect there’ll be a great deal of angry chatter online, but nothing significant will come of it, just as nothing significant came of OWS, a movement I respected up to the point that it refused to actually propose any specific solutions, like Martin Luther King’s favorite, Basic Income.
Mind you, I hope I’m wrong. I want change. But like Reed, I’ve watched an awful lot of short-term outrage dissipate.
Thanks for expanding. I disagree in two different ways.
First I don’t think either OWS or BLM are insignificant. Thinking locally about Occupy Baltimore for example, there’ve been a variety of important spinoffs and legislative victories at the local level, spinoffs that wouldn’t have happened without OB. For example, one of the most important public housing activist groups in the country is a spinoff of OB. A plan to privatize Baltimore’s water system was (easily) defeated by a coalition of people who came together because of OB. I suspect the same thing is going to happen as a result of BLM. This is a lot more than angry chatter. Just because I’m not willing to call it a social movement yet doesn’t mean I think it’s insignificant. The organization and planning required to coordinate massive highway disruptions across the country isn’t insignificant.
Second Harvey is wrong about the role race plays in the neoliberal turn in general. What stands out about Ferguson isn’t just that Michael Brown was killed in cold blood and left for hours. Ferguson’s second highest revenue generator (to the tune of 21%) is tickets and fines. The average Ferguson household has 3 warrants I think. In the wake of the neoliberal turn, municipalities are forced to become more and more entrepreneurial. Part of this move involves imposing a variety of control taxes on poorer citizens. These policing tactics are predominantly used on black and brown bodies, regardless of their level of income. Harvey (and Reed’s) old school Marxism hurts their analysis here. They may very well reproduce neoliberalism in their failure to call for more public resources, but to the extent they’ve made mistakes focusing on the peculiar relationship between police and black citizens isn’t one of them.
I want to think the ripple effect matters. Since there’s no way to know what would’ve happened without OWS or #blacklivesmatter, I won’t quibble there. The bigger question: How do you win issues of economic injustice by excluding the white poor who, as in King’s day, outnumber the black poor two-to-one, or, if you include Hispanic whites, three-to-one?
This is an important question. Where are the white poor organizing? What are they organizing for? What ideological predispositions do they have?
As for ideological predispositions, as Krugman noted long ago in a piece called “Bubba Isn’t Who You Think” (it’s online), the white poor, even in the South, vote for Democrats. But as for organizing, the white poor are far more rural than the black poor, so organizing is harder. This is part of the reason it’s sad that identitarians choose to ignore them.
This is misleading. They vote democratic (although this is changing) but the Democrats they tend to vote for are incredibly conservative on issues of social justice. They tend to be anti-union, anti-minimum (much less working) wage, pro-guns, anti-government (but NOT anti-police). Along these lines to the extent they are organizing in rural areas they are organizing mostly (note MOSTLY) around the types of policies that go against their class interests. THEY too are “identitarians”…however while blacks and Latinos tend to (note TEND to) organize around race issues that simultaneously fit their class interests, whites tend to organize around race issues that go against their class interests.
What are you basing this on? Poor whites vote for conservative Democrats because that’s who rich Democrats give them to vote for. Most of the white poor know the police are not their friends. You seem to be confusing the white middle-class with the white poor.
Sorry it took me a bit to respond to this. White poor voters, just like most voters, are held hostage by the two party system. But at the same time, every piece of data I’m aware of, from voting behavior at the local, state, and national level, to survey data, shows that white poor voters tend to support conservative ideas and policies, even those that go against their material interest. As it relates to the police it’s complicated. They tend to support the right to bear arms as a way to protect themselves from government….but this rarely translates into support for victims like Michael Brown.
The left not only lacks collective discipline, it lacks the technical and operational skills required to do, have, or be anything sustainable. In the game of musical chairs on the deck of the Titanic, the notion of paying a “basic income” to infantile oxygen thieves who can’t get their shit together is a political non-starter.