Reply to Ted Stolze

Abstract

Although Professor Stolze endorses my effort to challenge the arrogance and pretensions of U.S. policymakers, he argues that I am mistaken about the fundamental obstacle to realizing liberal democratic ideals in the developing world. According to Stolze, it is the capitalist economic system and not hypocrisy on the part of policymakers that has led to increasing worldwide socioeconomic polarization, endless wars, and ecological devastation. It is capitalism that, if it does not prevent, at least, inhibits the realization of global equality and justice. I think, however, that Stolze has gotten me wrong. While he is correct to suggest that I am concerned with hypocrisy on the part of policymakers and that I am skeptical of liberal democratic ideals, nevertheless my skepticism does not go so far as to suggest that liberal ideals are irrelevant, nor am I saying that global problems are simply a product of selfrighteous or absolutist pretensions on the part of U.S. policymakers. Rather, I am worried about the politics of identity--the identity people have, who they have to distinguish themselves from and how they do so, what this requires of them, and how all of this becomes central to the individual, community, or nation. I am concerned with what happens when one has a notion of identity that would not exist without the creation of an "other" that is subordinate or degraded. I argue that the possibility of marginalizing, externalizing, or defamilarizing the "other" points up the moral necessity for self-reflection. I draw on the work of Catherine MacKinnon, Gregory Mantsios, and George Lipsitz to underscore the notion that identity is relational. They advise that every day, in ways that are invisible to us, we act out our gender, class, and racial identity. One learns who one is and comes to identify oneself as a result of a social and temporal process that is dialogical. For example, Ruth Frankenberg gives a spatial and urban interpretation of the politics of identity. She interviews white women who talk about their lives as children. Frankenberg reports that the racial identity they form depends in large part on the map of the environment they are born into and live in from day to day as they grow up. The social geography of race is reflected in the organization of space, with boundaries defining different spaces for different races. This social geography is then a rigid social boundary suggesting that where one expects or does not expect to see Latinos, blacks, or Asians, for instance, is defined by certain geographic boundaries. In certain areas of the city one would not see a Latino, a black, or Asian. They come in, but as maids, garden-