The
Intersection of Race, Sex and Class in the Culture Wars
Since the killing of Michael Brown
by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014, we have seen an unprecedented
push for racial justice in the way that black and brown communities are policed
in this country. Aided by cellphone cameras, the Black Lives Matter movement is
revealing the insularity, indifference, and outright institutional racism that
characterizes our criminal justice system. As one diversity trainer I heard put it,
despite the other identities that feel marginalized in our country, in 2015 we
were “in a racial moment.”
In a similar vein, declarations by
women of widespread sexual misconduct by powerful men unleashed by the claims
against Harvey Weinstein, have placed us in “a sexual moment,” when what
society has long known is true can no longer be suppressed. The impact has been
startling. We may be undergoing a revolution in sexual relations as male icons
have fallen from grace, power and sometimes any position in society. The
“#MeToo” movement is emboldening women to go public with any instance of sexual
misconduct they’ve ever encountered.
As a male who has long championed
gender equality I am gratified by the rapidity with which the landscape is
shifting on this issue today. But as an African American I feel compelled to
raise this question. What would this society look like if people of color could
take down powerful white people (mostly men) by making claims of racial
discrimination? Like women, most of the time POC suffer racial micro and
macro-aggressions in humiliation and silence. Like women, when we do share our
experience with white colleagues, we are often met with incredulity. That’s the
equivalent of saying “get over it, that’s just the way the world works.”
Of course, women of color working
as domestic servants or farmworkers are the most vulnerable of all to powerful
male transgressions. As Sarah Leonard pointed out in a recent New York Times op-ed, collective action,
often through trade unions, can be an effective way of achieving redress for workplace
sexual misconduct. Leonard makes an important point. As white middle-class
women take individual actions to bring down the most powerful men in society,
don’t forget your working class and brown-skinned sisters who often suffer in silence
unless they find the resolve to organize collectively. And don’t overlook the women
and men of color who still face intransigence as they take collective action
against institutional racism in our criminal justice system. If all of these
identity movements work together, we could be living in an “intersectional
moment,” when advocates of justice along sex, race and class lines can build the
kind of long-term movement that will make this society the kind of humane and
decent place in which we all want to live.
