Orthodox Erasure
I came across this comment in Marcus Bernhard’s Social Anarchism book review of Sam Mbah & I. E. Igariwey’s African Anarchism, which I recently finished reading.
“Opponents of anarchism, especially opponents on the orthodox left, often reject anarchist thought, activism and history with the critique that anarchism is a white middle class movement. This is a very problematic assumption. It is a straw-person fallacy, sometimes resorted to in lieu of insightful argument. Moreover the insistence that anarchism is adhered to by privileged Euro-descendant constituents denies unappologetically, the experience of those folks that are anarchist and of neither privileged group. Black, Asian and Amerindian experience and identification with anarchism becomes abrogation.”
White leftists often use the same fallacious ad hominem argument against veganism or animal liberationism, with the same result of erasing the existence and experiences of activists of color under the guise of antiracism.
That’s one of many reasons I’m so eager for the publication of the forthcoming Sistah Vegan anthology, which will serve as a useful corrective while also provoking everybody to think in new directions. (I’ve seen the essays and I can promise: No matter who you are or what kind of activism you do, somebody in that book is saying something you haven’t thought of yet.)
I’m also less than thrilled by the all-too-common conflation of “white” and “middle class,” which erases poor and working class white folks while colluding with the racist conflation of “poor” and “of color.” And don’t get me started on the charge that veg*ism is an inherently expensive way to eat, as if beans were more costly than meat!
January 20th, 2008 at 4:49 am
I like the way you think. I love anthologies, I own several on many different subjects and you’re right, no matter how you think on the subject, there is always something in there that you have not thought of and you’re left sitting there and reflecting and hopefully you learn something new.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Let alone the fact that no matter who thought of it or supports it — let’s assume it IS only white middle-class people who advocate a non-violent diet, which of course isn’t true — the fact is that veganism is correct in itself and is practiced on behalf of creatures who have nothing to do with the human-created atrocities of culture, race, class, and such. In other words, when evaluating the IDEA alone, the PRACTICE alone — when evaluating VEGANISM ITSELF, such concerns are totally irrelevant. But that’s Logic 101, and it’s abandoned by leftists of all stripes when they just don’t want to have to care about animals.
Now, issues of race, class, etc., are not irrelevant when discussing such things as WHO is vegan, who advocates veganism, long-term AR strategies, building coalitions, eradicating the human-created wrongs such as racism, classism, sexism, etc., and so forth, that exist in the movement (and elsewhere), but that’s a whole other conversation. Not that many people can tell the difference.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Holly, I’m a fiend for anthologies too. So many of them have shaped my sensibilities. I got my introduction to intersectional thinking via Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology and the classic This Bridge Called My Back. More recently, on that tip, are the two INCITE anthologies, The Color of Violence and The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. On the animal angle, of course there’s the classic In Defense of Animals and the more recent Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? For ecofeminism, there’s Reweaving the World and for radical environmentalism, Igniting a Revolution. And don’t get me started on literary anthologies and quirky issue anthologies or we’ll be here all day!
Charlotte, I hear you. Me, I always find it amusing when people who purport to be all about logic commit the most basic logical fallacies.