Angela Davis's "Women, Race and Class"---Please read before you try to sell your candidate.

Angela Davis's "Women, Race and Class"---Please read before you try to sell your candidate.

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Lots of outrage over identity politics---people voting based upon their self perceived identity within some particular demographic group. In a perfect world, we would all get out our calculators and figure out which candidate will give us the most buck for our vote. Dems would win every single time in that world. However, we live in a world in which we have been divided along religious, ethnic, racial, health, sexuality and age lines. Then there are differences between different sectors of the economy. Everyone potentially belongs to a dozen different groups. We "identify" with those which seem to have the most effect on our lives. And so, if you have made it through medical school and are now a neurosurgeon, you may not identify quite as much with other Blacks who are still living lives of undereducation, overprosecution and discrimination and poverty. You now identify with "doctors" a privileged group in our culture. If you were arrested for jay walking at age 18, saw the charges bumped up to resisting arrest and have since been denied an education because of your "jay walking" conviction and now make minimum wage---you very likely identify as Black. If you also happen to be a woman with a jay walking conviction and a kid you can not afford because they shut down Planned Parenthood and your condom broke, then you identify as Black and female. How do you vote when you identify with multiple groups? Which liberation do you focus on first, your liberation as an exploited member of the working class or your liberation as a woman or your liberation as an ethnic minority? No fair saying "race and gender do not count in a perfect world, focus only on socialist economic worker versus bosses politics." In this imperfect world, other workers seek to exploit you because of your race and gender. Other workers need to be persuaded to join you in solidarity before the socialist revolution can begin. So, how do you raise your own value within the system? How do you destroy the individual 'isms which keep all workers down? How do you make other workers stop seeing you as a _____ and a _____ and a ______ and start seeing your as their brother/sister in arms?


http://www.amazon.com/Women-Race-Class-Angela-Davis/dp/0394713516/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443121654&sr=8-1&keywords=angela+davis+women+race+and+class