by SHENILA KHOJA-MOOLJI
CARTOON/Luis Chavez/El Tiempo – San Pedro Sula, Honduras/The New York Times
Even as I see the racist and Islamophobic practices of Trump’s supporters (at his rallies, for instance) day in and day out, as a brown, immigrant, Muslim woman, I refuse to believe that such behavior is inherent.
I see their practices as an effect of the social and economic marginalizations that they are faced with; a reaction to the precarities in their own lives. It manifests in them blaming immigrants for taking their jobs, demonizing muslims, resisting extending a helping hand to refugees, and perpetuating the racist policies that have kept blacks on the periphery for centuries.
However, these are precarities that all of us, and not just Trump’s supporters, face today. They are an effect of the current global social and economic order, which is increasingly functioning on neoliberal principles.
Neoliberalism is an ideology that reduces all aspects of social life and individuals to economic logics and terms. As an economic theory, neoliberalism proposes that individuals are driven by self-interest and competitive spirit; that an unregulated capitalist system or the free market is the only efficient way to deliver on the promise of economic growth. The state is assigned a very limited role in this process.
In this context, the neoliberal citizen – you and I – have to develop an identity that can survive in this social and economic order. We are individualized; we have to become responsible for our own development with limited reliance on the state or even other units of belonging such as faith communities. We are seen primarily as economic actors, an untapped market, potential consumers, or small-scale entrepreneurs.
What is problematic, though, is that we are not on a level playing field. Histories of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, gender, racial, and sexual oppression, war and conflict position some of us at the periphery of this system.
Furthermore, there is a push to discard members of our society who do not fit the neoliberal criteria of “productive” labor – these often include the elderly, children, disabled, single parents, etc., all of whom require additional protection to survive.
As a human species, we have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the principles of neoliberalism, with its spirit of individualism and competition. We believe that if we only work hard, we shall be rewarded.
This is the myth of meritocracy – a promise that is not being fulfilled. Rising income inequality, downward pressure on wages, increasingly contingent and part-time work opportunities, decimation of the planet, etc. are all an effect of a very precarious social order.
Huffington Post for more
(Thanks to reader)