The Dig: Mistaking Identity Politics
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2018
⏱️ 99 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Checking your privilege. Invisible knapsacks. Intersectionality. In his new book from Verso, Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump, Asad Haider questions the terms and concepts that underpin much liberal and left conversation about race and racism, exploring critiques advanced by the black radical tradition to mount a thoroughgoing demolition of what we now refer to as "identity politics" — something that had a quite different meaning when it was first coined by the black, radical lesbian feminists of the Combahee River Collective. This is not a book that dismisses racism and sexism. Quite to the contrary. Haider shows that we can only confront and defeat oppressions like racism and sexism if we recognize their relationship to the capitalist exploitation of the working class as a whole. The corollary is also true: capitalism can never be defeated without recognizing and fighting the various oppressions that help sustain it.
Thanks to Verso Books. Check out We Built the Wall: How the US Keeps Out Asylum Seekers from Mexico, Central America and Beyond by Eileen Truax (versobooks.com/books/2606-we-built-the-wall) and Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory by Mike Davis (versobooks.com/books/2779-old-gods-new-enigmas).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters at patreon.com |
| 0:05.0 | and by Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles, |
| 0:10.0 | perfect for dig listeners like you. |
| 0:13.4 | One that you might like is, |
| 0:15.1 | we built the wall, how the US keeps out asylum seekers |
| 0:19.0 | from Mexico, Central America, and beyond, |
| 0:22.2 | by Eileen Truax, translated by Diane Stockwell. |
| 0:27.0 | A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican government. |
| 0:35.1 | From a storefront law office in the US border city of El Paso, Texas, one man set out to tear |
| 0:40.6 | down the great wall of indifference raised between the US and Mexico. |
| 0:45.6 | Carlos Specter has filed hundreds of political asylum cases |
| 0:49.6 | on behalf of human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents. |
| 0:54.0 | Though his legal activism has only inched the process forward, |
| 0:58.0 | 98% of applicants from Mexico are still denied asylum. |
| 1:02.0 | His myriad legal cases and the resulting media |
| 1:05.6 | fallout have increasingly put US immigration policy, the corrupt state of |
| 1:10.4 | Mexico, and the political basis of immigration, asylum, and deportation decisions on the |
| 1:17.1 | spot. |
| 1:18.9 | We built the wall is an immersive engrossing look at the new front in the immigration wars. |
| 1:25.0 | It follows the gripping stories of people like Sal Reis, forced to flee his home after a drug |
| 1:30.0 | cartel murdered several members of his family, Delmy Calderon a 42 year old |
| 1:35.3 | woman leading an eight woman hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. |
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