BLK GRRRL BOOK FAIR

We need to reclaim identity politics original meaning as presented by the Black Lesbian Feminist Socialists of the Combahee River Collective, “if Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” Laid out in Combahee River Collective (CBC) Statement was identity politics. It was not defined to mean that only those who experience a certain oppression can discuss it and neither was it about working class people being elected to office for working class districts to carry out the evil doings of capitalists. Neither of the two aforementioned activities have anything to do with identity politics.

We the people, were supposed to be working together not have siloed groups. The CBC was taking Marx and challenging the popular interpretation of his dialectic —that everyone experiences oppression similarly, which often means just freeing white men whose freedom does not trickle down to all the working class. Identity politics was meant as a solidarity framework to free everyone without anyone having to wait and no one being viewed as a “distraction”—I view it as a compass. A compass that if on the way we saw another oppression to free, we would free people from that too. It was to acknowledge everyone’s humanity and right to live. It was to free everyone from the hell that is hegemony.

I make an effort to see everyone and I want us to all be free. Under the identity politics framework, no one has to wait. No one has to take a lower wage or accept fewer rights. We all come up together.