Limits Of Intersectionality And The Importance of #BlackLivesMatter

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

On May 25, Derek Chauvin, a white American police officer, killed George Floyd (46), a black man in Minneapolis, USA. In broad daylight, the police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck like a coward trophy hunter. There are 18 complaints registered against Chauvin so far and he is the first white officer to be charged for the murder of a black civilian in Minnesota. On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed by another white police officer in New York.  “I can’t breathe” were the last words of both Floyd and Garner before their tragic murders.

These two are among the many institutional murders that have sparked widespread protests against racism across the world. They reveal how inherent and institutional racism is in the United States. Floyd and Garner’s last words did not die with them. These words have become the anthem of social justice protests against racism in the world.

#BlackLivesMatter

The #BlackLivesMatter movement, which emerged in 2013, continues to campaign against racism within and outside the United States. It derives its inspiration from historic political struggles for equality, liberty and justice and continues to represent the legacies of anti-colonial struggles, civil rights movement, other progressive, radical, social and political movements. The spontaneous and powerful protests across America, Europe and elsewhere in the world speak volumes about how pervasive racial discrimination, frustration and despair of coloured people are, in the face of racism. Black, Asian, and other minority ethnic communities face varied forms institutional discrimination and structural violence on a daily basis in different parts of USA, Europe and Asia.

White supremacy owes its origins to transatlantic slavery and European colonialism that still inform and underpin racial and other forms of discrimination within and outside the West. This is why movements like #BlackLivesMatter carries global significance.

The movement has opened up old wounds of all other forms of discrimination across the world – against Muslims, Kashmiris, dalits and tribals in India, non-Bengalis and religious minorities in Bangladesh, Ahmadiyas, Baluch, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians in Pakistan, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Rohingyas in Myanmar, Tibetans, Uighur Muslims in China and other forms of discrimination based on gender, sexualities, dress and food habits are unadulterated realities of our unequal capitalist world. The forward march towards an egalitarian and non-discriminatory world depends on people’s resolve to fight against all forms of discrimination based on prejudice. 

Intersectionality

There is a global upsurge in right-wing politics and reactionary movements that patronise the politics of hate and othering. They breeds discrimination, violence and inequality in different parts of the world. The liberal and right-wing commentators offer a eurocentric Lockean social contract as an alternative to re-establish peace and social order based on ideals of hierarchy and domination. Progressive, democratic and emancipatory political forces and their movements are divided into different ideological sectarian lines. Social, cultural, religious, racial, gender and economic divisions in the society echo within weak and divided emancipatory political struggles. Many radicals, socialists and progressive movements consider identity politics as the cultural logic of failed capitalism. They argue that identity politics destroys the unity of the working classes and the fight of the marginalised against capitalist systems. In reality, these two ideological trends of progressive and radical movements need to understand that race, ethnicity, gender, and class intersect with each other within a capitalist system. Intersectionality helps to understand the existence of multiple and overlapping forms of exploitation, violence and oppression. This realisation is essential to develop clear emancipatory political strategies.

The intersectionality of race, gender, class, caste, sexuality and other marginalised communities are critical indicators to understand different layers of exploitations and oppressions within the hierarchy of capitalist systems. The different forms of identities-based discrimination, oppression and exploitation exist not in separation but in unity with different structures and processes of capitalism. The politics of intersectionality ignores the role of pre-existing unequal social relations in shaping conditions of production and reproduction within capitalism. The failure of class politics and defeat of revolutionary movements during the 1990s led to the rise of intersectionality as an approach to understanding exploitation and discrimination based on personal characteristics of individuals, i.e. race, gender, sexuality, caste, region, territoriality and ethnicity. The postmodern and poststructural theories provide the ideological foundation to intersectionality identity politics.

The idea of intersectionality attempts to find alternatives within the existing capitalist system that reproduces gender, caste and race-based inequalities, resulting in precarity and proletarianisation. Current debates on intersectionality have failed to locate the fluidity of power relations and sites of struggles against identity-based violence, exploitation, dominance and discrimination within and outside communities. This approach is ahistorical, as it does not look at the roots of the different forms of exploitation with capitalism. Therefore, de-radicalisation is an inadvertent outcome of intersectionality as a political approach to emancipatory struggles.

The critiques of intersectionality do not reject and disregard the realities of multiple forms of the power structures that exploit, discriminate and kill on the basis of individual identities. The ideas of identities are not just about atomised, abstract and individual self-reflection but also involve individual identity’s organic relationship and interactions with the environment and fellow beings. The individuals build relationships with others to fulfil one’s own desires and needs that give meaning to their lives. This generates the foundation of collective identity based on voluntary but natural relationships. These relationships are territorialised and de-territorialised by multiple identities created and destroyed as per the requirements of neoliberal capitalism under globalisation. For example, the identity issues of displaced persons, refugees, internal and external migrants and the like are direct or indirect products of capitalism. So, there are material conditions that shape identity politics.

However, mindless criticism of identity politics is also dangerous. It is crucial to analytically and politically separate two different ideological trends of identity politics. 

The growth of European reactionary nationalist politics led by the British Nationalist Party and the English Defence League in the United Kingdom, UKIP in England, the National Front in France, New Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary are classic examples of reactionary identity politics that promote the cultural logic of failed capitalism. The politics of ‘upper’ caste Hindus led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and white supremacists in Europe and America too are part of this bandwagon and need to be challenged. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) follows both regressive and progressive aspects of identity politics which adds to the complexities of identity politics. The past four centuries of globalisation have led to the normalisation of precarity, and emancipatory labour and trade union movements now exist for wage-bargaining and promote representative careerism in the name of affirmative actions. Such an approach helps in hiding the discriminatory institutional practices of capitalist structures led by the patriarchy of white supremacists in Europe and the Americas, and the Brahmanical Hindu caste order in the Indian subcontinent. 

Dalit and tribal movements in India, LGBTQ, women’s and anti-racist movements and those led by indigenous communities for land and livelihood across the world are emancipatory identity politics. Therefore, it is crucial to embrace the progressive aspects of identity politics, develop the significance of intersectionality and transcend differences as a political strategy to strengthen emancipatory struggles for liberty, equality, justice and fraternity. Progressive ideological engagement with intersectionality can reduce the intensity of the isolationist feature of identity politics.

It is impossible to fight racial, gender and caste discrimination without fighting capitalism. The academic Left and their armchair political engagement must get on with it without creating a further mirage with theoretical complexities alone. The struggle against racism, patriarchy, caste and all other forms of exploitation are, essentially, struggles against capitalism. Let the everyday realities of people with their subjective and objective conditions guide an organised and united struggle for alternatives to all dehumanising structures of capitalism.

Finally, as the significance of the #BlackLivesMatter movement is recognised globally with its open and inclusive approach, it is important to call for borderless revolutionary internationalism, based on experiences from local sites of struggles against all forms of inequalities, injustices and exploitations. The local, national, regional and global alliance of revolutionary collectives will only aid in democratising the world and ensuring peace and prosperity for all.

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Dr. Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a Senior Lecturer in Business Strategy at Coventry University, UK. Read his piece on the ‘Failed State’ thesis here.

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