Jordan Peele and the Class Blind Imagination
I am an automotive technician. I spend most of my time with other automotive technicians or other skilled workers. I’m working class, specifically, proletariat (industrial working class). I also have a PhD, which means that, on occasion, I’ve been in rooms with members of the bourgeoisie, mayors, foundation leaders, corporate bosses, etc. I can tell you from experience that I have little in common with the ruling class, who were almost always white, and much in common with the working class of all races. I understand the desire and I support the push for “land back” and reparations because of the singular experiences of indigenous and Black people in the United States specifically and more broadly in the Americas. But, I don’t want to be governed by the bourgeoisie of any race.
This is where Peele’s Afrofuturism goes off the rails. The bottom map is from Lovecraft Country a sci-fi reimagining of the United States along the basis of a race utopia. While I neither want nor have any say on how indigenous or Black territory should be governed, both proposed white areas are governed by what would seem to be a rural ruling class, much as they are now. In this imagination, simply changing the location of the races is utopia without structural transformation of how geographies are governed, at least in white spaces. It just assumes we want our current rulers to govern us.
The top map is made by the Automotive Free Clinic to describe a potential utopia in the American South, and while “Republic of New Afrika” or “Indigenous Soveriegn Territory” do not denote a governance system, “Redneck Nation” implies worker democracy because rednecks are workers by definition. The only group cut out of the governance process is the white ruling class and given their history, it is appropriate to do so. In Peele’s map, the white bourgeoisie stays in power and in ours, they are totally subordinate.
I don’t offer this critique as a prescription for what the world should look like, but to see where antiracism is taking our imagination. It’s taking us to a place where the class that has done the most damage remains in power, albeit in a more limited way, while a classed imagination subordinates them and capital to the will of the people, again, at least in white spaces. Indigenous and Black people are free to deal with their bourgeoisie however they see fit. Antiracism is a powerful force in American politics, but because it doesn’t push for structural and material transformation, it is in danger of leaving the very people in power who caused all the harm in the first place.