Prophesy Deliverance: Race Matters

"You remind me of Cornel West, the refusal to be a Marxist because you are a Christian and then the much more radical politics as a result," says a far, far, far too kind comment on an earlier post. Well, yes, I cannot accept dialectical materialism because it is incompatible with incarnational theology. But I contend that that cannot be separated from fidelity to the Petrine Office, and that it is the implications of this that are far more radical than anything that Marxism could ever formulate, much less deliver. 

So I am no Cornel West, although I faintly echo his roaring critique of cancel culture, not that some of us have ever not been cancelled, and of identity politics by reference to class politics. He is also right that one's attitude to the treatment of the Palestinians is one's attitude to the specific phenomenon of white violence anywhere in the world against People of Colour, BAME people, BIPOC people, politically black people, call us what you will. Seen through the lens of the theological critique of capitalism and of its imperialism, of course.

The death of Colin Powell brought out identity politics as the "cutting-edge tool to make the class hierarchy and the imperial hierarchy more colourful with all the talk about diversity and inclusion". First black this, first black that, first black the other. All identity, and no politics. Such is the chosen ground of the "neoliberal disaster" that is Joe Biden and Keir Starmer. Yet we can win on that ground.

For example, I have been a declared and active candidate for this seat of North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last General Election. There is no Labour candidate for a seat that that party lost by a mere 1,144 votes. But should one ever materialise, then I would have him or her beaten from the start on race. White? The candidate for people who just did not want a mixed-race MP. Black? A comical attempt to out-colour me. Somewhere in between? Some variation on either of those. Exactly my skin tone, with a name exactly as WASP-y as David Alexander Stephen Lindsay? A mere tribute act, the candidate who was as much like me as possible without being me. Any of those ways, I win. I am really, really, really going to enjoy this.