The Distinctive Political Status of Dissident Minorities
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American Political Science Review (2020) 114, 4, 963–975 doi:10.1017/S0003055420000659 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is included and the original work is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use. The Distinctive Political Status of Dissident Minorities DAVID SCHRAUB University of California, Berkeley issident minorities” are members of marginalized groups who dissent from the consensus “ group position on matters seen as critical to their group’s collective liberation. This paper D articulates the distinctive political status—powers, vulnerabilities, and obligations—of dissident minorities. Dissident minorities may be especially vulnerable to slurs or ostracism as “self- hating.” But they also can wield significant public influence by positioning themselves as exceptional and https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000659 . exemplary members of their group. Both the powers and vulnerabilities of dissident minorities, in turn, converge around the prospect of “tokenization”—the use of the dissident minority’s dissident opinion by majority group actors as a means of discharging a stipulated obligation to engage with the minority group writ large. While dissident minorities should be free to hold and advocate for their divergent positions in public spaces, they retain a distinctive obligation to not offer themselves out as adequate replacements for engagement with the broader group. n 2019 the House Oversight Committee, respond- deny the severity of the problem and contend that the I ing to the rise in racist activity in the United States, Jewish organizations alleging antisemitism were acting convened a hearing focused on American white in bad faith in order to suppress anti-Zionist activism. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms nationalism. While most participants were emphatic Jewish Voice for Labour offered itself out as an alter- about the threat white nationalism posed to African native Jewish resource for the Labour Party that could Americans and other minorities, the Republican witness, replace the Zionist-identified JLM (Rich 2018, chap.7). Black conservative activist Candace Owens, took a dif- Like Owens, JVL’s sharp public dissent from positions ferent tone. Owens, a prominent proponent of “Blexit” that otherwise mostly united British Jews curried them (Blacks exiting the Democratic Party), attacked the very favor with elements of the British left but did not premise of the hearing, deriding white nationalism as endear them to the bulk of the Jewish community. “isolated, uncoordinated, and fringe” and contending Owens and Jewish Voice for Labour are examples of that it was not even among the “top 100 problems facing “dissident minorities”: members of marginalized groups [B]lack Americans” (Knowles 2019). Owens’ vocal criti- who dissent from a consensus group position on matters cisms of positions often viewed as core to Black Ameri- seen as critical to their group’s collective liberation. And can equality have rendered her a deeply unpopular as both Owens and JVL demonstrate, dissident minor- figure in much of the Black community even as she holds ities often influence public dialogue to a degree that growing influence with American conservatives. seemingly far exceeds what one would expect from their , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at Around the same time, the UK Labour Party was numbers alone, occupying a political status that cannot embroiled in a controversy over antisemitism. Many reduce to accounts describing the minority group more British Jewish organizations, including the Jewish generally. This article thus identifies and excavates “dis- Labour Movement (Labour’s official Jewish affiliate), sident minorities” as an analytically useful category testified about a wave of harassment emanating from characterized by distinctive political powers and vulner- party activists that significantly impeded the Jewish abilities. These in turn generate a distinctive political ’ 27 Sep 2021 at 01:58:29 community s ability to participate in political spaces. obligation carried by all persons (inside and outside of These attacks often framed themselves as “anti- the group) to reject tokenization. “Dissident minority” is , on Zionist,” but were experienced by their targets as anti- a political category; it refers to ideological dissent, not semitism. While these experiences alienated much of identity-based oppression. And the anti-tokenization the British Jewish community from Labour, a new principle is a political obligation: it inheres in any case 170.106.33.14 group named “Jewish Voice for Labour” emerged to of deliberation, formal or informal, geared towards orienting or legitimating collective social action. Part I defines “dissident minority” and establishes its . IP address: David Schraub, Lecturer in Law, University of California, Berke- conceptual contours. A dissident minority is not any ley, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, University of member of a minority group who takes a position California, Berkeley, [email protected]. contrary to the majority of their minority-group com- Prior versions of this article were presented at the American Political patriots. It is rather specific to dissent vis-à-vis their Science Association conference, the Association for Political Theory conference, the UC-Berkeley Political Theory workshop, and the fellow minority group members around a particular UC-Berkeley Race, Resistance, and Inequality workshop. Thanks to type of issue—that which the minority group generally Jeremy Elkins, Nina Hagel, Elliot Mamet, Sarah Song, Joseph War- considers to be central to their collective equality or ren, and Kristin Zuhone for their helpful comments and questions. equal standing in broader society. Most Jews are pro- Received: January 11, 2020; revised: June 20, 2020; accepted: June 25, choice, and most Jews are Zionist, but only anti-Zionist https://www.cambridge.org/core 2020. Jews are “dissident minorities.” 963 Downloaded from David Schraub Parts II and III delineate the distinctive vulnerabil- survival or equal standing in the larger society. It is a ities and powers possessed by dissident minorities. On political and ideological category, demarcated by a the former, a host of slurs—“Uncle Tom,”“Self-Hating sincere divergence in opinion regarding these critical Jew,”“Kapo”—are geared specifically towards deni- issues.1 Prominent examples might include Black con- grating and undermining dissident minorities. More- servatives or Jewish anti-Zionists (or, for that matter, over, dissident minorities are uniquely disadvantaged American Jewish Trump supporters).2 Importantly, the in their ability to construct their own identity as mem- criteria for an issue being one “that the group takes to bers of their minority-identity group. All minority be important to its survival or equal standing” is meant members may suffer from stereotyping and majoritar- to be practical, not essentialist. Indeed, it makes no ian prejudices that create a mismatch between their difference whether the issue actually is one that has lived experience and how their group identity is con- these high stakes, let alone whether such rarefied status structed in the public eye. But dissident minorities in is essential to the very nature of the group-qua-group. some ways suffer a greater indignity: the alien construc- After all, one suspects that a frequent basis for the https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000659 “ ” “ ” ’ . tions of what it means to be Black or Jewish are put dissident minority s dissenting outlook is precisely that forward by fellow minority group members—persons they contest their group compatriots’ assessment of the who, in a very real sense, are authorized to tell the tale. importance or centrality of this supposedly core issue. Yet the story of dissident minorities is not solely one But what makes these issues important, for our pur- of disempowerment. Dissident minorities are often poses, is their phenomenological character—the role able to leverage their identity to amplify their voice they play in group discourse based on their perceived and exercise disproportionate influence. Theorists importance, without registering an opinion as to have long recognized that minority group members whether that view is ultimately warranted. are often accorded extra credibility when they express Most of the literature exploring “minorities within opinions atypical within their group, but that advance minorities” focuses on what we can call “internal the interests or ideology of non-group members. This is minorities”: circumstances where a person is a member https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms amplified by social practices that—in certain circum- of a minority identity-category that is in turn nestled stances—accord value to minority voices as a legitim- inside another minority identity-category (Crenshaw ating tool for discourses about that group. But insofar 1989; Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev 2005; Pinto as this legitimating power of dissident minorities is 2015).3 The LGBT member of a small religious sect often predicated