Reply #30: Ulysses: You know me [View All]

[markses]

Massive disciplinary project. 'Member that? I think it goes directly to this question.

DU is "liberal," to the extent that "liberal" is itself not particularly concerned with race, class, or gender. these are the "particularist" concerns that disrupt the consensus aimed at by liberalism. There was a post here earlier about the difficulty African Americans are having squaring away the gay marriage issue, given the traditional emphasis of a - let's just say it - homophobic tendency in African American communities, often fueled by the churches. Now, here's the problem: we all know that the African American churches have been a motor for organization and change in that community, and have worked double time in history forming something like a "class consciousness" for African Americans with respect to oppression in American society. OK: The conflict is now clear. The very force that produces struggle and organization on one issue tends to reinforce oppression on another. What to do? Liberalism thinks these differences can be smoothed over at another level. It either privileges one form of oppression over any other (i.e., the economism that destroyed - quite rightly, from the perspective of feminist, racial/ethnic minority/ LGBT struggles - the New Left), or expects some resolution in "democracy" writ large, as the rule of reason - liberalism back to its roots: liberalism hates difference - perhaps not as much as conservatism, or perhaps more insidiously.

The problem is not that DU is NOT liberal. Class is an object of scorn among centrists, who parrot a conservative line in the most obnoxious overtones imaginable, and can focus (as per the usual idiocy) only on specific incident that evoke blame. Race - at best - makes most of these voices uncomfortable. Gender is - and the original poster is right - little more than an opportunity to ban certain words. It is hardly the political force that delimits and strangles forms of life. On the contrary, DU is too liberal. With the caveat here that DU is not a monolithic entity, I would say that for the most part posters on DU view struggle with indifference, unless it is easily tied to personages.