Hillary mentioned the intersectional approach to progressive politics in her latest speech, and it’s the main reason many progressives prefer her to Bernie Sanders. But what is intersectionality and why is it better than Old Leftism, which fights for goals like high wages that affect all workers equally? Let’s go over some basics.
Intersectional analysis looks at the different axes of privilege that intersect to give each person their unique identity and the treatment they will receive from society. Glenn Greenwald, for example, has white privilege and male privilege, but not straight privilege. Hillary Clinton has white privilege and straight privilege, but not male privilege. Bernie Sanders has white privilege, male privilege, and straight privilege, but not religious privilege. Analyzing things this way lets us understand more about why people are treated the way they are by society.
There’s a crisis among straight white males in this country, a sense of rage and despair that both Bernie and Trump are appealing to. People experiencing that particular intersection show an increase in suicides lately. The anger and pain of this group of people are real, and just as valid and important as any other group’s pain. The question is how do we solve that white male anguish problem without rolling back the gains we’ve made for everyone else.
Bernie’s answer seems to be to consider social justice a distraction from workers’ issues, and that’s in line with what the Old Left of the sixties and seventies believed: Capital creates distractions among Workers by fostering phony prejudices. Bernie’s very proud of never once changing that view in 50 years. But in those 50 years we’ve seen the white male Democrats leave the party specifically because of its embrace of civil rights. They stayed away this whole time, despite our party being the better economic choice for them, because that’s how much they’re personally opposed to equality. No Boss made them think that, and they’re not horrible human beings, they’re simply reflecting back the bigotry that was baked into the society they were born in.
What Bernie’s offering women and people of color is basically trickle-down equality. Take good care of all workers first, and the bigotry that affects daily life for a majority of the people in this nation will just disappear. Science and history show us that is unlikely to be true, and intersectionality explains why. That’s why I’m with the person with modern ideas, not 50-year-old ones.