A strategic political identity can unite people across skin-color differences

Evidence

What they said was, “We may be different actual color skins but vis-à-vis the social system, vis-à-vis the political system of racism, there is more that unites us than what divides us.” People begin to ask, “Are you from Jamaica? Are you from Trinidad? Are you from Barbados?” You can just see the process of divide and rule. “No. Just address me as I am. I know you can’t tell the difference so just call me black. Try using that. We all look the same, you know. Certainly can’t tell the difference. Just call me black. Black identity.” Antiracism in the 1970s was only fought and only resisted in the community, in the localities, behind the slogan of a black politics and the black experience. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 244

Categorization

• XREF: Exemplifies how a constructed political category (black) functions as a strategic coalitional identity — directly parallel to arguments in the Islamophobia literature about ‘Muslim’ as a political category uniting disparate communities. — connects to: Finding ways to see the human in racialized others underpins cross-racial solidarity. — Amit Singh, “Carnal conviviality” and the end of…, 16; Utopian color words like purple function as strategies for avoiding race — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 1499; Universalist populisms are possible when demands cut across ethnic identities. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 389 (+5 more)
• SEED: Article angle: how strategic umbrella identities (black, Muslim) both enable coalitional resistance and become targets of ‘divide and rule’ fragmenting.