"I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are!"

I was trolling recently and came across a post by a queer activist, denouncing white privilege. She raised many good points, and I'd link to her blog if I remembered where it was. Anyhow, she specifically targeted straight white male (SWM) privilege: the kind of privilege that keeps straight white men talking to, at & about everyone.

Being a straight white male, I naturally felt the need to comment. The irony didn't strike me until afterwards. Cos it's true that SWMs take up a lot of space. I see them - er, us, everyday, barging up to counters, catcalling, generally making asses of ourselves. And that doesn't cover the white men in the boardrooms and governments, whose opinions can lead to people dying, being thrown out of work, etc.

I see it when non-SWMs keep their thoughts to themselves, because the men won't let them get words in edge-wise. When others do speak up, they're attacked for their point of view, or accused of not being able to 'take' aggressive conversation. Or they're put on the defensive by said SWMs who, after talking so tough, suddenly get awfully sensitive. These are general statements, but ones I've had confirmed to me by non-SWM activists. So even I resent SWMs - I can only imagine how everyone else must feel.

However, the logical conclusion of this argument is for me and those like me to just shut up. Which, I think, verges on guilty white liberalism. This is the opposite extreme: the idea that, due to SWMs having so much space already, and being responsible for a host of historical and ongoing crimes, the best thing they can do is to keep quiet and let others repair the damage they keep causing. Since I have a blog as a platform, I'll try to expand on where I think the middle ground is, and what SWMs can do to help.

Identity is not just in your head

As I've argued here before, identity is not a fixed tabula rasa. It's a material relation, structured by capitalism. In the abstract, it's completely flexible and open to change, as astute queer theorists (and the original sexual liberation movement) have pointed out. Being white - or queer, or whatever - has no social impact on its own. It only acquires meaning when it becomes material: when it's used by social institutions like the media, government, etc. to construct common sense. In other words, identity is a political issue when it becomes an ideology, and a means to divide and conquer. Being white is not just a colour, now. It's become a passport to better jobs, better housing, social acceptance - the material benefits of a 'psychological wage' granted to white people. (And sometimes, to being an arrogant prick.)

But if we're talking materially, we have to recognize that not all SWMs are equally empowered. In fact, the vast majority live as wage workers, with few privileges. The privileges they do have can sometimes be key. Perhaps anti-oppression theorists would be surprised to learn Lenin identified this dynamic way back in 1916 (or perhaps not, I don't know.) He talked about a 'labour aristocracy' that, due to material and pyschological benefits from living in an imperialist country, were more willing to support their own rulers than ally with workers of other nations.

I strategize my joints you know it don't stop
And it don't pop son it's p'jects bound together
The beats in concrete when I'm creamin' with my stiletto
Got 16 for the imperial fascists
Lenin, aka Digable Planets - Dial 7

However, Lenin qualified this statement by showing how unstable material privileges were, and how a dedicated communist party could show the tangible benefits of international solidarity. In WW1, this was a hard argument, given the level of nationalist fervour. But Lenin and the internationalist left made it consistently. As millions of workers slaughtered each other for 'their' nation, the strength of the argument grew. So, a reactionary identity could be challenged by a political argument, based on the very material alternative of not having to clamber out of a muddy trench and get run through by a bayonet.

You could even say that a whole branch of Marxist theory - ideology and how it works - grew from questions of identity: how to break workers' identifying with the church, the state, even sports heroes. This took on a directly racial aspect in the U.S., where Communists were one of the few groups of non-black activists to work hand in hand with, and even recruit from, African-American communities. (Check out Robin Kelley's book "Hammer and Hoe" on Alabama Communists, or Mark Naison's "Communists In Harlem During the Great Depression".) In each case, Communists fought racial oppression directly, while linking that oppression to the capitalist system that creates & perpetuates it.


Whites who do take up too much space...

I bring up this history to show that SWMs aren't irretrievably reactionary; that many have taken the question of identity and privilege seriously. (It must be said that many mid-century Communists were Jewish & Eastern European, and thus weren't considered 'white'.) I also reject completely the idea that SWM 'bring' anti-capitalism to people of colour. There is a rich history of anti-capitalism and anti-oppression among non-white groups - after all, they're the ones who suffer the most from capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and so on.

This has been borne out in my - extremely limited - personal experience. I've worked with radicals in the Iranian, Palestinian and - once, two weeks ago - Haitian communities. I never had anyone tell me to shut up and stop taking up so much space. In fact, the people I met were grateful for my presence - not because Great Whitey had finally come to tell them what to do, but because they need all the help they can get. Naturally, I approached these groups from a position of respect, knowing some of the history of their regions and the life-or-death struggles they've faced.

But - and this is key - I also approached them as a Marxist. Which means that, no matter how much privilege I exude, I'm still fucked over by the system. Even as a SWM, I still have to work shitty jobs, my very survival depending on my ability to sell my labour power. My relations with women and queer people are distorted by patriarchal capitalism. Those racial structures I 'benefit' from, harm me by separating me from people who should be my natural allies.

I need to stress that this matters materially. Guilty white liberals can go on and on about changing their thoughts and attitudes: good luck to 'em, but we're socialized in this society, it's impossible to avoid alienation. (And most activists have absorbed it far more than they'd like to admit.) I'm a socialist because I know racism and sexism aren't just ideas in people's heads, but material relations that keep black men in prison, women as primary care-givers and turn white guys into angry old men in the back of doughnut shops. And while systemic oppression gives SWMs an edge, it's a small edge. Those at the top of the system, the - often, but not always - rich, white guys who own everything, keep grinding us down and destroying the planet. For which we white folk accept the pitifully small substitute of getting to yell at chicks or call someone a n*gger. (Note... sarcasm... I don't do either...) I have more in common with the black UPS driver I chat about the weather with at work, than with my white boss I awkwardly say good morning to.


... and some whites who don't

And this is my problem with some anti-oppression theory & sentiments. It stops at individuals' behaviours. Overbearing white male activists (Mao-chos, or Manarchists, in the local lexicon) are a sign of oppression. But they're just the tip of the iceberg. And, indeed, to reduce oppression to bad behaviour by individuals is a way of minimizing and de-legitimizing oppression as a category. If it were just ideas, education would be enough to stop it. But oppression is rooted in profit: the same profit that Lenin saw war industries raking in during WW1, while their men in government urged fratricide on the working class. Today it's business lobbying for more private prisons so they can pick up cheap black workers, and women being forced to rely on estranged husbands to raise their kids. And, objectively, the lack of solidarity that results when white men are separated from workers of other colours & genders. Oppression is far bigger than activist circles. I want to see the term 'oppression' reclaimed to mean what happens to most people, most of the time, when they're shat upon, whether they express it in political terms or not. And if Christmas came early, I'd like to see a mass movement that challenges oppression, both through education, and by directly attacking the political and economic structures that produce it. I.E. a mass, revolutionary socialist movement.

Of course, the question is what to do in the meantime. In practice, If SWMs are taking up too much space in a coalition or meeting - if they're acting disrespectfully, not allowing others to talk - then sure, they should shut up. Women and people of colour in socialist groups have sometimes created separate caucuses to deal with problems like that. If someone's an asshole, then it doesn't matter what colour/gender they are. And I readily admit that capitalist society socializes a lot of white guys to be jerks. This kind of thing has to be worked out on the ground.

However, I don't generalize this conclusion to all white guys. There are more pro-capitalist women of colour in the world than anti-capitalist white men. (And, luckily, a far bigger majority of women & men, black & white, with the potential to become anti-capitalist.) If obnoxious male Marxist students were the worst problem the movement faced, I'd happily become a guilty white liberal, don my selwar kameez, play my bongo quietly and not bother anybody. However, anti-capitalist sentiment is sorely lacking in most places. Yesterday I was in spirited conversation with a pro-capitalist white woman. Had I kept quiet, I would've done all my comrades, of various colours and genders, a disservice. I will defend Marxism/leftism/progressive politics to the best of my ability, and not shrink from political argument, while trying not to be a jerk about it. I call upon all my SWM brothers, drooping in their khakis, the first flush of a beer belly rounding out their mid-sections, to do the same.