WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25th has quickly become the catalyst which has given rise to mass uprisings in every major city in the United States. In the days following Floyd’s murder, thousands upon thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets in a massive display of anger and protest against the structural, racialized violence that operates in the name of the US police system. The uprisings have raised with them demands for the defunding of police departments across the US, the abolition of the prison system, the indictment of murderous police officers, and the immediate release from jail of arrested protesters, among other things. Calls for Justice for George Floyd and the insistence that Black Lives Matter has provided in this moment the potential for massive fundamental change to the system of racialized violence that has plagued the United States since its inception.
While this immense degree of mass uprising is certainly unprecedented in the history of the US, this is not a moment that stands in isolation. The protests and the demands they inhabit share a common legacy with the Civil Rights Movement, a legacy that is firmly rooted in the struggles and organizations of Black revolutionaries. Here to help us better understand that legacy and its importance in the current moment is author and historian Asad Haider. Haider is a founding editor of Viewpoint Magazine, an online Marxist research collective, and author of the 2018 book Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump.
In Mistaken Identity, Haider engages with the history of revolutionary struggles in the United States that center on racial and particularly Black oppression with the aim for emancipation. Haider recognizes the origins of identity politics in these emancipatory struggles of the 20th century, and opposes its current usage as a practice of exclusion and neutralization to the collective necessity of insurgent universality. In so doing, Haider insists on the interconnected relationship between racial oppression and class oppression, asserting that “not only is socialism an indispensable component of the black struggle against white supremacy, the anticapitalist struggle has to incorporate the struggle for black self-determination.” A survey of antiracist, anticapitalist struggles then allows Haider to offer lessons of coalition building and revolutionary organizing in the living struggles of today.
Episode producers Bella Bravo and Cole Nelson begin by asking Haider about his claim that ‘politics happens under conditions’, a claim that suggests emancipatory politics can only arise under very precise moments of rupture from the status quo. Haider then considers what the conditions are in the present that may give rise to a thoroughly emancipatory politics.
GUEST
Asad Haider is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research and an editor of Viewpoint and author of Mistaken Identity: Anti-Racism and the Struggle Against White Supremacy (Verso, Spring 2018).
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MUSIC – Makaya McCraven
“In the Moment” (In the Moment)
“Spontaneous” (In the Moment)
“The Newbies Lift Off” (Universal Beings)
“Prosperity’s Fear” (Universal Beings)
“Next Step” (In the Moment)
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Bradi Heaberlin
Segment Producers: Bella Bravo and Cole Nelson
Audio Editor: Sean Milligan
Music and Mixing: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Kade Young
