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When Those Who “Represent” You Oppress You
It doesn’t matter your background if you are oppressing folks; you are an oppressor. That’s it.
I’ve spent the better part of the last month and a half observing the incoming president and his team parade the new cabinet under the guise of “diversity.” It’s this long, drawn-out attempt to justify selecting nearly identical folks Obama had picked for his team (and we all know how that turned out). The president-elect’s team is filled with former state department members advocating for US imperialism and a board member of a military defense contractor, along with others with histories who made their careers by oppressing the Global South.
I wrote a piece earlier this year briefly discussing the history of the term “identity politics” as something entirely different from the way politicians today exploit peoples’ identities, but an idea of politics formed by Black feminist socialists in the 70s. It did not matter to me that Harris had been selected as VP. It’s clear her record has demonstrated she has little to no regard for working for Black folks, and she’s a prominent example of how a Black person can be egregiously anti-Black. Countless scholars, from Fanon (freshest as I’m reading him currently) to DuBois, spoke vehemently about what we consider the Black petit-bourgeois and its…
