The Clare Spark Blog

July 15, 2019

The “women of color” meme is bogus

The “Women of Color” meme is ungrounded in historical reality. Even Fox News conservative guests like savvy Buck Sexton, while criticizing “The Squad,” have failed to identify what is confusing or incorrect about the “women of color” meme (or perhaps their minds are on more pressing issues). No wonder, for that meme is leftover from the all-encompassing 1960s civil rights movement that a few conservatives still oppose. or misunderstand.

  One cannot simply blend “the Yellow peril” (Chinese), Reds (the dissimilar but  often lumped together Indian tribes), Blacks, recent immigrants from Central America (“Mexicans” or Africans), all Latinos and women, yet moderates like Heather Mac Donald, deny the basic facts of American and/or World history.

Enter “multiculturalism,” that ostensibly exists to eradicate “discrimination” based on “race” or gender, while erasing individual difference in favor of collective discourses. The same goes for “people(s).” Take ex-slave Blacks, originating in West Africa during the age of expansion. Yet “multiculturalism” (a holdover from German Romanticism), designates “African-American” as if Africa, a huge continent, is a single society (which hides the history of Muslim enslavement of other black Africans.)

The German theologian J.G. von Herder, whose collectivist followers or inspirations included Kant (a comtemporary) and Fichte (a follower), is considered to be the founder of “cultural history” are legion (including postmodernists), got the ball rolling in the late 18th century. There was a Herder revival in The Third Reich (1933-1945), which is damning enough, but leave the question of Western “fascism” aside for now. What is the matter with Herder and postmodernists? Like other collectivists, they omit individual difference, thus all blacks are supposed to share the same personalities and interests, enabling multiculturalists to claim that there is no difficulty in lumping them together. Clearly, “the pomos” are not figures of the Left, for class difference is also eliminated.

No matter how corporatist liberals appeal to “white supremacy,” their protestations fall onto (my) deaf ears. You don’t have to a Marxist to smell rats.

What about the other “colors”? “Asian-Americans” are not a category at all. Chinese are not Japanese or Vietnamese or Indonesians, though Chinese workers were a threat to  working-class “whites” as did foreign labor in general in the 19th Century. Labor competition is invisible to most liberals.

But to conflate Indian “removal” or near-extermination with slavery or immigration is also ridiculous. What about Mexicans or other (often part-Indian and un-removed) “Latinos” who are part of the debate over open borders vs. current laws? We may look to current cultural nationalist tendencies since Mexico lost a substantial amount of land in the 19th C. War with Mexico. I see the current immigration flap as enmeshed in the understandable desire to reverse that victory of “Yankee imperialism” as if William Walker (have you heard of this Southern adventurer?) was from New England.

The case of “women of color” is more complex, since “white women” are considered to be exploiters of the “colored,” as some surely are. But one cannot conflate working-class women with other “whites.” “The Squad” may have a point in this restricted case, but I have not, for personal reasons, investigated that crucial matter.

I do know that I am not a Marxist, having too much regard for individuals and, also, I look askance at actually existing “socialist” movements and countries. Forgive me for belaboring the obvious, but I am a historian.


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