Jotalogues: Queers of Color Against Privilege Politics!

posted by Eve Mitchell.

Last weekend some friends and I went to see Jotalogues, a two-person monologue/dialogue play promoted by Austin’s major queer people of color nonprofit, allgo. The performers said they are still workshopping their piece and so I don’t want to give much away but I wanted to share some love for Adelina Anthony and D’Lo for their amazing writing and performances.

When I first heard about Jotalogues, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Here is the description:

“A performance piece that tackles our multiple intersections from a pan-ethnic, pan-generational, and pan-sexual viewpoint. As our communities continue to face deep crisis, JOTALOGUES gives voice to the most marginalized—and its not your typical queers. In this show, Adelina and D’Lo, enact zany characterizations to explore the effects of non-regulated human impact and destruction on our planet. Tackling the familiar tropes of racism, sexism, and homophobia, Anthony and D’Lo’s us their signature comedic chops to give us fresh insights into a very special ‘underground’ world.”

And the flier:

It’s very unclear what this play is about and given the description, I thought it was going to be stale, academic intersectionality theory and what I call “privilege politics.” This is basically the argument that we need to dissect our various privileges and oppressions, stack them one on top of another and compare them to other individuals. The result will be a giant game of oppression olympics. +1 for POC, -1 for whites; +2 for gender variant, +1 for women, -1 for cisgender men; etc. Whoever gets the highest number gets to determine how everything will run. Anyone who challenges hir will be smashed. This makes accountability very difficult.

The flipside of privilege politics, the side that really irks me, is that it claims that oppressed people are weak and incapable of overcoming the material conditions that have held us back. Essentially, it meets us where we’re at and leaves us there. Privilege politics take away our Subjectivity. For example, I could say that when straight, white men take up a lot of space in conversations with me, this is because of their privilege and my lack of privilege. And this may be true. But my answer is not that men should just give up their privilege and everything is ok; my answer is that I am strong enough to intervene, take up more space for myself and tell that man that he is dominating our conversation. Centering our theoretical arguments around one side giving up their privilege is to center the fight for queer liberation on straight folks: if they just stop being homo/trans*phobic, we will be free. RIDICULOUS!

¡¡¡We will only win our liberation by fighting for it ourselves!!!

To be fair, privilege politics need to be situated in the correct historical context. I haven’t done enough study to give a detailed account of how this theory emerged but I have a few ideas. Privilege politics grew out of a specific historical moment, organically from the conditions organizations were facing in the 1960s. At that time, Black Nationalist groups were the “vanguard” (for lack of a better term) of mass politics and feminism was dominated by white middle class liberal women. People were organizing on the basis of their various identities and were forced to choose between them. Chicana and Black feminists stayed in organizations such as the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party and pushed for womens caucuses and feminist politics from within race-based organizations, rather than break away or bloc with the white liberal feminists.

Also at this time, Separationism was being thrown around as the path to liberation. Lesbians believed they needed to form their own communities outside of more privileged communities; to rebuild themselves and be safe from the oppression straight men may inflict upon them. Separatism also taught that all straight folks, all men, etc., were the oppressor because they had privilege. Even if they denounced their privilege, they still had the choice to use their privilege at any point and so they were innately the oppressor. The natural result of all of this was the rise of privilege politics, a way of understanding the very real, material circumstances of the world around us: oppressed peoples are “othered” and marginalized, and white folks and men (mostly) benefit from racism and patriarchy in society.

Unfortunately, since there has not been a mass movement in the US since the 1960s, privilege politics has been festering in academia and anyone who has taken a class in college, been around students, or broadly organized with the liberal left has encountered privilege politics. I would argue that these politics have had their historical place and we need to move on.

Today, we should take into account the general ethos of Separationism, the idea that we need POC-only spaces, women and trans* spaces, etc. We do need to space and time to rebuild ourselves from the very real marginalization we feel on a daily basis. But this is not the end. We now know that our fight for trans*liberation benefits cisgender men because if people are free to express whatever kind of gender they like, men (and everyone else) will not have to live within the rigid male gender roles. And there will be less of a basis for division among the working class. This new politics is the politics of recognizing where we’re at and changing it. The best place I’ve seen this positive vision is the conclusion to Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (see pages 228-229).

So anyway, back to Jotalogues. Privilege politics is what I expected to see at the Jotalogues performance. And I did. But it was critiqued! Without giving too much away, a character who is middle class, disabled and considers herself oppressed under the rulers, is smashed by another character. This other character faces more material barriers for survival and experiences a more blatant form of violence daily. So this second character decides that the middle class disabled character isn’t a real revolutionary and doesn’t get to be a part of a struggle for liberation. It shuts her down and while she still thinks highly of the “more oppressed” character, the audience is left feeling that it was a disillusioning experience. Something we’ve all probably felt before.

The writers do not work through this conflict to fully develop critique of privilege politics and lay out a positive vision. But I do believe that this scene and other narratives within the story were leading in the right direction. For example, in another scene, the speaker is going on about how people of color are treated unfairly. She pauses to highlight the ways in which some white folks have it better than people of color. But she adds another layer, saying (in so many words) that she’s never even met a white person and as long as they’re down with the cause, they’re fine with her. But it is important to highlight the fact that the focus of the monologue was on people of color. This comment about white down white folks was important but was only a marginal side note.

In applying this scene to organizing, it’s comparable to making demands that benefit the most oppressed folks and allowing anyone to organize with you, regardless of identity, as long as they agree with the demands. To me, this is the real fabric of what Fanon began; the new positive vision that will be practiced and more fully developed as new organizing projects emerge and mass struggle again becomes normalized.

I hope to be a part of developing a new theory that meets us where we’re at and changes it. And, from the excitement generated at the Jotalogues performance, I can tell that there are many others in my community who feel the same way.