Resisting Post-Oppression Narratives

Abstract

My wife, daughter, and I recently decided to spend the holiday season with my mother and siblings at the family home on the South Side of Chicago. Upon arrival at Nana’s house, I realized that I would always regard Chicago as “home,” despite having lived on the East Coast for the last sixteen years. And yet whenever I visit my childhood home, I often experience an odd muddle of feelings — from love and excitement at reuniting with family and old friends to anguish and despondency over the unrelenting poverty and crime that has come to define my community. A thoroughly African American area due to past and current segregative practices, the Woodlawn-Roseland neighborhood that I grew up in has long been plagued with high rates of crime, poverty, and unemployment. And while I spent long stretches of my childhood on “welfare” and avoiding gang violence, I had always remained ardently hopeful for the future of my community. Indeed, my commitment to social justice was strongly shaped by my experiences growing up in the “wild, wild, 100s” (south of 100th Street) and fed my personal and scholarly interests in overcoming oppression through action and critical theory.As we drove through my old neighborhood, any lingering feelings of Obama-esque hope for change were tempered by the too-familiar signs of crushing poverty: burned-out buildings, hopeless drug addicts, boarded-up homes, and gang-controlled corner blocks. Far from experiencing a revival, my Woodlawn-Roseland neighborhood has suffered a re-entrenchment of race-based poverty over the last two decades. The strict racial boundaries that separate our neighborhood from nearby “white” neighborhoods are still often enforced with violence. Racial re-segregation of our public schools has increased at a startling rate over the last few years, while poverty and crime have become more rampant. And perhaps most worrisome, the feeling of hope for the future that previously defined my old neighborhood has dissipated since my childhood and is now replaced with a sense of desperation and resignation.I steeled myself as we approached the family house, reminding myself that my mother’s new next door neighbor was a high-ranking leader of the Gangster Disciples (“Folks”) gang. I steeled myself at the memory of my youngest sister having to shield her infant son (my nephew) with her body during a fatal shooting at the nearby Ada Park a couple of years prior. I steeled myself as I considered the safety of my wife and infant daughter, both snoozing quietly in the back-seat of the rental car.This narrative of my community mirrors the national reality. It is clear that our society continues to struggle with increasing levels of poverty and racial inequality. In the aftermath of the “great recession,” the rate of income inequality between the richest Americans and the middle-class and poor has eclipsed the previous high set during the Great Depression. The wealth gap between white and non-white households, similarly, has escalated to its highest level in twenty-five years. As the degrees of economic inequality continue to rise during the modern era, so do race-and class-based disparities in a variety of social contexts, including education, health outcomes, and rates of incarceration. Rising social inequality has been thoroughly linked to public policy failures to implement progressive financial reform and address continued racial discrimination.Despite these realities, my community’s narrative seems to be at odds with the national narrative of racial progress and the purported end of systemic class exploitation and oppression. A disturbing post-race and post-class worldview has taken root in our society, government, and law, whereby race and class disparities are thought to be caused by neutral “cultural” or market forces rather than systemic discrimination and oppression. Simply put, the relevance of the embedded systemic nature of class exploitation and racial discrimination has diminished in popularity as an explanation for our society’s continuing social inequalities. In its stead, a “post-oppression” ideology and rhetoric has developed, which leaves “distortions” (such as race-based disparities) to the market alone to resolve.Rather than recognize that educational, employment, health, wealth, and incarceration disparities (to name a few) are linked to systemic class and race oppression, the burgeoning “post-oppression” narrative provides ostensibly “neutral” explanations for inequality.In the education context, this perspective is manifest in many modern reformers’ claim that racial discrimination and poverty are not key predictors of poor academic performance. Rather, the “choice” movement of educational reform asserts that racial and class disparities in public education can be eliminated by incorporating basic economic principles such as consumer choice, market competition, and accountability into education policy. As such, under the class-and race-neutral “choice” perspective, the crisis of public education is typically linked to poor teacher performance and school quality.In the affirmative action context, the social and judicial trend has been to distort and mischaracterize the nature and historical purpose of race-sensitive social policy. Originally, affirmative action policy developed to recognize that both past and current racial discrimination and oppression affect the life outcomes of non-white persons. That is, affirmative action was defined in terms of social inclusion. And yet now, under a post-oppression narrative, the focus of affirmative action has shifted to center on redressing the professed injuries suffered by innocent white victims.In the sociology context, academics and policy makers have resurrected the discredited notion that a “culture of poverty” contributes to the perpetuation of class and racial inequality. And in the genetics context, researchers increasingly assume (wrongly) that race and class disparities in health outcomes are linked in part to immutable racial genetic differences, obscuring the role that persistent poverty and racial discrimination play in health care. Genetic researchers thus increasingly view race in biological terms, with an eye towards commoditizing racial health disparities into a pharmaceutical good.The disturbing trend to view race in biological terms has also arisen in the criminal justice context, where it is now commonplace for prosecutors to introduce DNA evidence against criminal defendants, estimating the likelihood that another “Hispanic” or “African American” or “Asian” or “Caucasian” would match a DNA sample found at a crime scene.Society once again, it appears, seems to be experiencing exhaustion (to use Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s infamous words) when it comes to class and race issues. How have we reached this point? Why are we possibly standing at the deathbed of race-sensitive social policies and witnessing the re-inscription of dated biological notions of race? Why is society once again resurrecting “cultural” explanations for poverty?I believe an explanation for the current post-oppression narrative lies in society’s long struggle to reconcile belief in democratic equality with the persistence of social inequality. That is, if we are to hold true to the belief that all members in society are equal and are entitled to equal and fair access to social resources and opportunities, then how can we explain the entrenchment of inequality? How can we explain the existence of inequality that is often localized in particular social groups, such as the poor and non-white? How can we resolve the moral dilemma caused by the persistence of social disparities in an ostensibly “equal” society?The honest (and accurate) explanation recognizes the primary roles that class exploitation and systemic racial oppression play in producing social inequality. The disingenuous (and false) explanation proclaims that society has finally achieved a peculiar state of post-racial nirvana, where any inequalities can be resolved through neutral, color blind policies. The latter path has increasingly been followed by our politicians and courts, perhaps entranced by the false promise of moral absolution that comes with no longer seeing race or class.To recognize the reality of oppression, after all, would require significant structural change in order to resolve this American dilemma between equality and inequality. It is much easier for those who adhere to a post-oppression worldview to instead rationalize the existing social structure as fair and natural. Understanding one’s racial and class position as natural normalizes the existence of class and racial subordination and allows such a person to feel freedom from moral responsibility for existing inequalities. A willing shroud of ignorance, invoking post-race and post-class rhetoric, then, provides the post-oppression adherent with certain psychological and social benefits.There is much that progressives can do to displace the narrative of post-oppression. We must all strive to interrogate racial and class privilege, while becoming active participants in the dia-logue of social change. In order to lift this veil of ignorance, we must continue to challenge misconceptions based on flawed views of race and class in an edu-cated and persuasive manner. Tikkun provides important conceptual space for this alternative “justice” narrative to be heard, and yet we must continue to seek out additional opportunities — community-based, media-oriented, and legal — for the voices and experiences of the Other to be valued.