Trumpism vs. identitarianism: Neither approach works on the Fresno Unified school board

I watched a short clip from the Fresno Unified School District board meeting that was cut short because the majority had enough of listening to Trustee Maj. Terry Slatic, USMC (ret).

I conclude from this short clip that Fresno’s citizens are doomed. Here are two cults, removed from reality and stuck in their own feedback loops, fighting for control.

Slatic, the right-winger, voices an earnest and informed critique of the anti-racism resolution on the agenda. He remains polite, even as he employs sarcasm. He engages the other side by quoting the resolution. As a reader of right-wing journals committed to developing arguments against liberal ideas, I recognize the sources of Slatic’s criticism. I whole-heartedly disagree with it, but that is not my main concern here.

Rather, listening to Slatic’s liberal detractors, who read only their own publications, and listen only to their own voices, is an alarming reminder that they do not recognize what they are up against. Hence, their response to Slatic is politically catastrophic.

The board’s clerk, Keisha Thomas, responds to Slatic by insisting that not to support the resolution is to be oblivious to the racism that people of color in the school district experience, and to refuse to listen to their voices.

She assumes that racism is a pervasive problem — that much is certainly correct, and Slatic would probably deny this.

But Thomas also assumes that the only possible, valid response to this problem is to follow the identitarian prescription of fixing individual consciousness, ideally through education.

Says Thomas to Slatic, “If you have not seen (the problem of racism), you have closed your eyes.” That is the language of a quasi-religious cult.

She cannot fathom good-faith disagreement, and goes ad-hominem against Slatic, insinuating that an incident a few months back, when he yelled at a student, was motivated by his own racist attitudes, and that Slatic thus serves as an example for the pervasiveness of racism.

“You belittle the work (of the staff who authored the resolution), which goes to show that you are so far removed from reality, that is ridiculous,” adds Thomas.

Since identitarians like Thomas do not think in categories beyond the individual and their character and conduct, she has no other language to object to Slatic’s argument than to call into question his character, intelligence and motives.

Once again, Slatic’s argument urgently requires criticism. But the liberal response, “if you do not agree with me, you are a depraved soul,” is inadequate.

Liberal identitarianism, with its insistence on philosophical foundations like “standpoint theory” and its rejection of the emancipatory and egalitarian traditions of the Enlightenment, is not an antidote to Slatic’s “color-blind” nationalism, but merely a different branch of the same tree, rooted in reactionary ideas.

U.S. liberals and conservatives are within inches of each other on the philosophical spectrum of Western thought, and they are both far to the right of center.

Neither side sees racism as a function of economic power. Capital is not a category either of them apply, because both sides are perfectly fine with capitalism. Both ignore the most obvious source of racial and gender inequality — wage labor.

Both sides aim to produce, by way of the school system, useful graduates whose labor can be turned into surplus value. One side wants this capitalist education system painted red, white, and blue, the other wants it painted in diversity rainbow.

They represent competing cults who wish to run the affairs of the bourgeoisie and to manage the working class, raising the little people up to their own level, remaking them in their own image.

What do they have to offer to people of color? Inclusion in one or the other faction of the educated middle class. Talk like Thomas, and rise in the ranks of liberalism. Talk like Slatic, and rise in the ranks of Trumpism.

But talk like yourself, and discuss your material conditions and needs, and you can be sure that both will yank the welcome mat straight out from under your feet.

This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 10:51 AM.