“These protesters, these activists may have the luxury of spending days at a time on a blockade, but they need to check their privilege,” said @AndrewScheer. “They need to check their privilege and let people whose job depends on the railway system...do their jobs.”
This is a disturbing quote, made more disturbing, for me, by the fact that it is not the first time I have heard this. There is, I've tried to argue, a problem -- an antinomy -- that lies at the heart of middle-class progressive politics, but no one should mistake this perspective for support for a more conservative position or for anything that Sheer might have said. Indeed, the politics of Sheer's quote is intended to do precisely the opposite of the comments I was trying to make. Here, Sheer is trying to call the wave of protests across Canada in support of Indigenous rights into question. He is trying to suggest that the protesters are somehow not authentic, that they are the modern equivalent of tenured radicals, and that they are not "people" who work but more or less wealthy lay abouts disconnected from the working world.
I'd be concerned about any general statement of this sort because it makes a pretension to knowledge that its speaker (whoever it might be) simply cannot have. In this case Sheer simply cannot know about the people on the protest lines. He can make some assumptions but he does not present his argument like that. He presents what he says as truth unadulterated. And, this is the first problem with this type of statement: its issues a truth claim that its speaker knows from the beginning he cannot confirm and so in its own way, it is dishonest. But, there are some more problems with this and because I have heard these kinds of statements before, let me highlight a few of them. My aim, I want to say, is not to reject or push away people making these statements. Instead, I seek to engage them and ask them to be engaged and contribute to a new type of politics.
The second problem with this argument -- which may not apply to others -- is its hypocrisy. Sheer is as close to a person of privilege as you are going to get. His downfall as Tory leader was likely over-determined by its precipitating cause was Sheer's privilege: the party was paying for private school for his kids. I am going to argue that we need to think closely about privilege and what it entails and, in my view, I think we need to find another way of thinking about the contradictions of class positions. But, rank hypocrisy -- shooting someone else down for living the life you in fact live -- is not one I would suggest others follow. Sheer is trying to cast aspersions on the politics of support for Indigenous rights, but in the process he edits his own life out of the equation. He calls others out for privilege, whatever this might mean, but ignores his own.
The most significant problem is this type of argument proceeds from a false assumption. We might say that we can all agree with the first and second points I've tried to make. One should, for instance, try to proceed in a factually accurate way and not make statements about things one cannot know. Nor should one be a hypocrite. I don't think either of those points is controversial and if you want to know why people didn't like Sheer, well ... I suspect there is a big part of the reason right there. If he had not behaved in this way, he might still be CPC leader.
The more significant problem is what do people who are privileged in some way but who support the right cause, whatever this cause might be, do? That cause could be decolonization. It could be the need for action on climate change. It could be an anti-poverty campaign. Should one shoot down someone protesting against the mistreatment of Indigenous people or for support for the poor or for the state to take serious matters to address climate change just because that protestor might be wealthy (let's leave aside the question of what constitutes wealthy for the sake of argument)?
In my view: no. One might have a point to engage, a ground of discussion, some reason for starting a conversation, but a person's relative economic standing does not negate their politics simply and purely because of their economic standing. Imagine this scenario: outside of First Peoples themselves, imagine it was only white middle class people who supported Indigenous rights. Would that fact (the fact that white middle class people support Indigenous rights) mean that Indigenous rights claims had become illegitimate? Does it mean that the First Nations campaigning for their rights are wrong (and, you might notice, that Sheer here equates Indigenous activists with the "privileged" but let's leave this point off, too)?
I am arguing that it means nothing of the sort and this is where I disagree with Sheer. The campaign for Indigenous rights did not emerge from middle class or privileged people and we should not pretend or suggest that it did. Even if it did, however, would the fact that people want to support good causes be a bad thing? What, after all, would we think of the alternative? Imagine this scenario: you daughter comes home from college and has learnt about the problems of colonialism or how poverty negatively affects people or gendered violence. What would tell them? Gee, dear, I know there are a lot of problems with gendered violence but we're middle class so we ignore those things because we are privileged and so we will do nothing about them. Do we tell our kids: our privilege makes it wrong for us to support a good cause.
Is that a message anyone would feel comfortable in sending? If you said no ... the implication of Sheer's argument is actually precisely that: if you are middle class and see an injustice ... ignore it because you are privileged. I know I likely talk too much about my own life and I am not trying in any way to hold myself up as a model. What I will say is this: at my church, we spend a great deal of time telling people the exact opposite. If you see a problem, you should try to be part of the solution and ignoring it -- or, telling others to ignore it -- is not a solution.
Let me conclude on one other issue: positive go-forward politics must necessarily draw people together. I am arguing that we need to build connections between people and ignoring the chances to work together on good causes is a really odd way to think about society (again, think about it, did anyone's parents ever tell them that, hey ... here is a good cause. Ignore it. Don't work on good causes with other people who may be economically different from you.). If we are going to build dialogue and politics across socio-economic divisions, we can't tell people to stick to their own economic kind and not become involved in issues if they or their families happen to have a bit of money. It is by working with others that we can create a stronger and more engaged society with deeper and more meaningful social connections.
We have spent the better part of the last twenty years lamenting the fact that youth appear politically disengaged. Here we have a concrete example of youth being engaged, of taking a stand, and putting a lot of time and energy into it. Not one of the protesters caused this problem. It was caused by a number of factors but the most significant one was a raid on Indigenous territory by the RCMP. If we want youth to be involved, if we want our citizens to be active and to treat their citizenship serious, if we want citizens to make commitments to important causes, we can't tell them that they are wrong when they do precisely that. The politics of protest is not always pretty, but the politics of the words being mobilized against them never is.
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