This is an opinion piece I wrote in spanish on my blog a few days ago, and now I just translated it to english, for english speakers to read.
I write about the “Straight Moderate”, in a way akin to how MLK talked about the “White Moderate”, because I fell identified with his frustrations, extrapolated to the LGBTQ+ struggles.
Tell me what you think if you read it, thanks.
I liked it. I think there may be a difference between American moderates today with LGBTq and American moderates in the past on racial issues. In the US moderates are pretty progressive on lgb issues (Idk about the t yet) compared to the rest of the world (including South America in my understanding). But American moderates were pretty behind on racial issues in the 60s, as it was still decades before interracial relationship on TV were shown regularly or interracial marriage was legal.
In the US at least there has been real progress in most cities that make up the majority of the population, or suburbs where all the moderates in the US live. Political progress comes in stutter steps with political power since not much gets done.
I read it and I think you make a lot of good points. I think it will be a stronger piece if you use more material and historical specificity. At the moment it sort of jumps around between the US and Venezuela and unspecified times and places, and rights are at different stages/states in different countries right now.
Next time you write, try centring it more on the specific history of civil rights struggle in Venezuela and on your own lived experience.
I know it’s a paradox but it is by talking about the specific that we can make the most powerful arguments that can then be extrapolated more widely.
Thanks. But my country has not the same experience with civil rights in the matter of race as the USA.
We never had strong segregation laws, slavery was abolished almost at the same time as in the us, since then we race mixed a lot, and some believe that “there is no racism” here because we are mixed, even when is so obvious that there is a lot of racism, but people just stay quiet about it. But as I said, there were no hard segregation laws no I cant draw some similar experiences from here.
I know your history is different from theirs, but I still think it would make a strong argument and ground what you are saying.
Venezuelan political struggle seems to intersect quite strongly with ethnicity as well as social class and economic status. I think there were a white-aspiring middle class group who were bystanders during the riots etc - the same kind of people who probably say “there is no racism” and turn a blind eye.
It did not take me long to find this criticism by a Venezuelan academic:
The Left in our country is predominantly and primarily conservative and Eurocentric; it does not ask itself these questions because race does not fit well in its cheat sheet of “class struggle.” Moreover, much of [the Left] is in a process of self-destruction, having been co-opted by the government’s apparatuses, logics, and rhetoric—hence their oscillation between justifications, denying reality, and an abetting silence towards the state’s excesses and human rights violations. Only minority sectors, with little weight, remain active in struggle.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your essay, it was a good read.
Thank you. Yeah. That is true. Im a “white” “middle class” (I say middle class because of my living conditions, which are way above average and I lived in privileges my entire life, but im currently gathering coins for public transport and I have to walk almost everywhere I go) leftist and certainly I dont get along with others like me because they are too comfortable, they are too conservative to be considered leftists, besides what they think of themselves, and they dont really care about class, race or gender issues.
Moderate just means you’re not particularly sadistic.
