By Chief Ali
Colonialism, capitalism, and the bourgeoisie are always trying to evolve to overcome the contradictions they face, finding new sources of unity and strength to continue their exploitation over the world. The theory of Intersectionality is one of these evolutions for the colonizer to unite around. It allows our oppressors to create false divisions within Colonized nations, getting in the way of our liberation.
If intersectionality were worth anything to a revolutionary, it would answer how to get rid of sellouts. It would unite colonized people around a collective solution to their problems. It would stop ignoring the main question under Colonialism – are you colonized?
This is why universities allow “critical theory” and other things to be studied, but in no way will universities investigate and support things like communism or anti-zionism – things that directly attack colonialism-capitalism.
These colonial universities, which support and develop the white ruling class’s ideas, try to grapple with the contradictions of sexism, racism, etc., through white feminism and critical race theory, which paved the way to the theory of intersectionality.
With intersectionality, the oppression people face (or, on the other hand, their privilege) comes from their numerous identities: Are you male? Are you white? Are you cis-gendered? Are you light-skinned? Are you “able-bodied”? Are you straight? Are you beautiful? Are you wealthy?
Intersectionality means the more boxes you check, the more privilege you have, and the fewer boxes you check, the more struggles you’ve had to overcome, and the more your understanding of the world isn’t clouded by privilege and the prejudices that come with it.
But the theory of intersectionality has some major issues for anti-colonial revolutionaries.
Why? For an anti-colonial revolutionary, all theory has to be based in reality. Intersectionality does not build from historical dialectical materialism. This means that intersectionality does not place a focus on history, global forces, or material reality. Instead, it just focuses on individual people, not how we fit together in societies with histories of interactions.
It’s also no accident that intersectionality ignores colonialism. The theory itself was created by a petty-bourgeois black woman, Kimberle Crenshaw, so it’s no shock to see other black female sellouts like Kamala Harris championed as “intersectional” cops.
The theory has to ignore colonialism so that it can keep producing sellouts.
At its core, Colonialism is not a complicated system: a foreign nation occupies a native one and takes over all of its stuff by force. It sits at the head of the current world order. Intersectionality tries to hide this plain fact by taking the source of all oppression out of the equation.
By hiding a sensible world order, one that is based in reality, Intersectionality comes up with no solution to overturn that world order. Revolutionaries should always be concerned with overturning the colonial system. Still, petty-bourgeois feminists like Kimberle Crenshaw and Kopmala Harris are only concerned with how to carve out a small crumb for themselves within this system. Their theory makes oppression a source of competition and not a source of unity for the masses of colonized people.
Furthermore, Intersectionality is implemented through the same diversity politics that got Kopmala to the Vice-Presidency, proving how little intersectionalists care to criticize these colonial ideas or policies.
We can see this at play both in colonial politics and capitalist industries. Colonial war profiteers like Raytheon are happy to publish diversity reports with the hopes of showing that they’re “progressive” forces for good because they implement intersectionality to hire women, LGBT people, poor people, and colonized people (“of color”).
We see this same logic with the democratic party of the u.s. who purposefully chose Kamala Harris, a mixed-race woman (who also incidentally happens to be a colonial pig), and choosing a cabinet of advisors, including woman war hawks and gusano colonizers from Cuba.
The same logic that gave Barack Obama the ability to murder colonized people is multiplying and thriving under this new intersectional regime.
Black Hammer’s 3rd principle states that all problems that colonized people face are from Colonialism and the neocolonial sellouts within our nations. As dialectical historical materialists, we know that colonialism holds on to power by doling out crumbs of our stolen wealth and encouraging more people to sell out their own nations.
Intersectionality directly encourages individualism and oppressed people to sell out!
It’s no accident that most “leftist” organizations, which have petty-bourgeois roots, are drenched in an intersectional analysis and ALSO have a history of abuse. Intersectionality isn’t a tool to stop abuse. It’s just a tool to cover it up.
What does this mean for problems of sexism and patriarchy? Black Hammer’s 2nd principle of unity holds that all colonized people are equal; this is the simple but powerful tool that far surpasses the petty-bourgeois theory of intersectionality.
The forms of horizontal violence we see today: sexual abuse, homophobia, transphobia, etc., were all created and deepened by colonialism. This isn’t to say that before our nations were colonized we didn’t have any problems. It just means that the global violence of today, the root of all problems we face as colonized people, is colonialism.
Our people learned abuse from the colonial police, military occupiers, and slavemasters as they took over our bodies and families. Our people learned homophobia from British colonial laws as they took over our land. Our people learned transphobia from colonziers like Columbus who fed trans people to dogs.
Instead of the individualism and the focus on divisions between colonized identities that intersectionality leads us to, we need a focus on unity. We need to uphold equality among all colonized people, no matter our gender, sexuality, age, body type, location, religion, language, mental/physical differences and/or bi/multiracial identity.
This means it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to fight discrimination on all of these fronts and work towards trusting our comrades who are fighting among us for equality and the anti-colonial liberation of our nations.
Let the understanding that our pain and suffering — even at the hands of people who look like our comrades — should not disunite Colonized people.
Intersectionality is the tool of the colonizer. Anti-colonial unity is the tool of the revolutionary. Let’s join together to fight discrimination as we fight colonialism at all fronts and build a world where nobody lives at the expense of another.
Join Black Hammer! Land back!
