The Strange Workings of Identity and Adolph Reed Jr.'s Thought
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- Published on Wednesday, 05 June 2019 10:12
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1823 ... May 11, 2019
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The Strange Workings of Identity and Adolph Reed Jr.’s Thought
Umair Muhammad
The Socialist Project’s podcast, Oats for Breakfast, recently featured an interview with the American political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. A longstanding member of the American left, Reed has produced a large amount of writing -- both scholarly and popular -- while also partaking in numerous organizing efforts since at least the 1970s. In recent years, Reed has come to be known for his contributions to the debate about the politics of identity. Reed’s criticisms of "left identitarianism," as he calls it, have become a significant source of controversy among leftists. It was not surprising, then, that the publication of Reed’s interview by the Socialist Project resulted in some contentious online debates between his... detractors and those who sympathize with his outlook.
According to many of his detractors, Reed is a "class-reductionist." In fact, Reed’s detractors tend to take the position that the socialist left in general is -- and more-or-less always has been -- insufficiently attuned to the concerns of those who have marginalized identities. In emphasizing the need to build a "movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" socialists are said to have ignored those who do not find themselves fitting comfortably into the majority -- such groups as ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, as well as women.
Reed’s outlook is thus seen as further emboldening the identity-blind approach that socialists have apparently always adopted. I personally find characterizations of Reed as a class-reductionist to be quite confusing. Any good faith reading of his work, it seems to me, should lead one to a very different conclusion. Far from trying to bolster an economistic, class-reductionist understanding of the world, Reed has gone out of his way to do the opposite. Below, I will go into why I think this is.
