Multiracial Organizing: Neither Class Reductionism nor Race Essentialism
Photo by Life Matters from Pexels
by Kevin Richardson
As socialists, we must take an intersectional position in understanding and abolishing all systems of oppression, domination, and exploitation, including capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, and patriarchy. Antiracism, racial justice, and fighting racial capitalism should be integral to every part of our organization, from our external political campaigns to our internal organizational infrastructure.
DSA is committed to building an organization that is reflective of the multiracial working class in both its membership and leadership; however, some DSA members accept a race-neutral theory of change. The theory goes like this. We know that the working class is predominantly composed of people of color, and that capitalism has disparate effects on people of color. We also know that social programs that benefit the entire working class — like universal healthcare, the Green New Deal, the PRO Act, and so on — will disproportionately benefit people of color. Therefore, the race-neutral theory goes, socialists do not need a distinct analysis of race, they do not need to engage in race-conscious recruitment or messaging, and they do not need to lift up and specifically support socialists of color.
People are attracted to the race-neutral theory for different reasons. Some adopt the class reductionist theory as they believe that racialized violence and dispossession can be summarized exclusively along class lines and thus it’s not necessary to consider material conditions along color and race lines. They explain George Floyd’s death by either not mentioning or downplaying the role of his race. Other people adopt the race-neutral theory of change because they have not thought much about race and socialism in the United States, which is admittedly a topic that is difficult to navigate but one that needs to be given thought and study. Then there are people who accept the race-neutral theory solely because they want to avoid another harmful political analysis: race essentialism.
Class reductionists refuse to see race, but for race essentialists, race is the only thing they can see. Race essentialism means that certain Black organizers are expected to speak for all Black organizers, for all Black working class people. It means that white comrades are expected to defer to the judgments of POC representatives, no matter their politics. It means depending solely on a leadership layer of racial representatives, ignoring both the politics of these representatives and the class differences among them. Racial essentialism works from an ethos of separatism, not solidarity.
Race essentialism generates its own set of problems. It creates an unhealthy climate of tokenism, false deference, and often promotes individual expertise over collective organized action. It undermines democratic deliberation by allowing debates within DSA to be shut down on the basis of racial identity alone. It also isolates organizers of color and needlessly pits them against white comrades. The tension between these two errors - class reductionism and race essentialism - can cause people on both sides to harden their positions. This makes it impossible to develop a shared vision of a DSA representative of the racially diverse US working class, which is something the vast majority of our members want.
But there is an alternative. We can be race-conscious without being race-reductionists. We can center class without de-centering race. We can have racial representation without reducing organizers of color to their identities. We can acknowledge the importance of racial representation while recognizing the difference in politics between organizers of color. We can support and develop POC-only spaces without falling into separatism. We can have an intersectional analysis — recognizing the role that gender, race, sexuality, and other social identities play in concert — without taking class to be just another identity but a position we hold in relation to capital. We can change our organizing culture to better support people of color without falling into liberal identity politics and its individualistic solutions.
I believe the alternative to class reductionism and race essentialism is multiracial organizing. That means building solidarity across racial differences, taking an organizing approach to meeting DSA’s challenges, and having a strong analysis of racial oppression. Every campaign undertaken by DSA or a DSA chapter should ask itself three questions.
How does the proposed campaign prioritize under-resourced and and/or politically-marginalized communities (Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, LGBTQ, disabled, etc)?
How does the campaign build power for the aforementioned group(s)?
What specific organizing steps are being taken to ensure the aforementioned group(s) are intentionally involved in this campaign and its operation?
Asking these three questions from the jump and evaluating our progress as we organize is a crucial step to combating racism and recruiting more working class people of color into DSA.
Multiracial organizing is intentional and race-conscious from the start and not as an afterthought. It also uses the basic tools of organizing - intentionally setting concrete goals and frequently assessing whether we are successfully meeting them. It’s important not to reduce these goals as simply quotas or racial representatives. Rather, they are oriented around whether we are building power in and with communities of color that we’re currently not reaching. Our goals should be realistic and tailored to the circumstances that DSA chapters find themselves in. We also have to hold ourselves accountable for meeting these goals - not by creating a punitive atmosphere but by evaluating our work, and adjusting our priorities and actions accordingly. The United States is a deeply segregated country, a fact that we have to keep in mind as we work to overcome the barriers to multiracial organizing.
Intentionality does not stop at our political campaigns. It should also be reflected within our internal organizational culture. Do our communications and political education programming resonate with BIPOC members? How could our conflict resolution and grievance practices better support people of color? How can we lift up leaders of color without tokenizing them? How can we develop the leadership of people of color within the organization and recruit the many great organizers of color who are currently not within our ranks?
I do not pretend to have answers to all of these questions, but I believe that we can only get answers to these questions if we prioritize multiracial organizing. To ensure that this work happens, I believe in creating a national committee, called the Multiracial Organizing Committee, that will be specifically tasked with supporting chapters and national committees in this work.
This resolution both continues and expands upon the work of a previous resolution that was passed by one of the authors of this article. In February, the NPC passed a resolution that I wrote which prioritizes the recruitment, retention, and development of BIPOC members of DSA. This resolution has been an internal priority for the organization since February, but it will expire immediately before convention, and it was purposely designed as an initial step, not a long-term program.
To further transform the organization into a vehicle for socialism that truly represents the multiracial working class, I ask that you support this resolution and the direction in which it moves DSA. I do not see this resolution as an easy fix. Changing the organization will not happen overnight. This work will be ongoing, it will sometimes be difficult and uncomfortable, but it will be worth it when we all win.
