Caucus

Social Justice Usage

Source: Racial Equity Tools, “Caucus and Affinity Groups.”

White people and people of color each have work to do separately and together. Caucuses provide spaces for people to work within their own racial/ethnic groups. For white people, a caucus provides time and space to work explicitly and intentionally on understanding white culture and white privilege and to increase one’s critical analysis around these concepts. A white caucus also puts the onus on white people to teach each other about these ideas, rather than constantly relying on people of color to teach them. For people of color, a caucus is a place to work with their peers on their experiences of internalized racism, for healing and to work on liberation.

New Discourses Commentary

In the activism around Critical Social Justice, an identity-based “caucus” is a strategic euphemism for describing a segregated space. For example, a “BIPOC caucus” would be a space in which only BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color / Black and indigenous people of color) are allowed entrance or other rights, e.g., the right to speak (white “allies” may sometimes be allowed in to listen—see also, shut up and listen). A gender non-conforming caucus might only permit transgender, non-binary, and other gender non-conforming people to participate. These could be designated at any level of granularity based on identity factors, and they are used to claim a form of segregation as an act of “desegregation.” They would be consistent with initiatives under strategically misleading headings like diversity, inclusion, belonging, and, perhaps, equity.

The reason for the term and concept of “caucuses” is obvious: under anti-discrimination law in most Western nations, including the United States, segregation based upon race is illegal. Referring to a segregated meeting as a “caucus” attempts to obscure the fact of what is going on and sidestep being held accountable for the violation.

A core stated goal of identity-based caucuses is to facilitate overcoming the central problem that prevents a society based on Critical Theory (see also, neo-Marxism), which is false consciousness. In brief, false consciousness is a socialized lack of awareness of one’s oppression by the system. The idea of the caucus is to give members of a particular identity group an uncontested space in which participants can be led to see their own complicity in the power dynamics of the system, thus exposing their false consciousness and replacing it with a critical consciousness (see also, Wokeness), which is to say becoming Critical Theorists in their own rights. Members of caucuses of “dominant” groups will be expected to interrogate their “internalized dominance,” and members of caucuses of “oppressed” groups will be expected to interrogate their “internalized oppression.”

The logic of claiming a need for segregated spaces is a bit more challenging for liberals to understand than the language game in calling them “caucuses” (see also, desegregation). In brief, the Theory of Critical Social Justice holds that oppressive systemic power dynamics like whiteness (thus systemic racism and white supremacy), heteronormativity and cisnormativity (thus homophobia and transphobia), and patriarchy or masculinism (thus misogyny), etc., are ubiquitous and immanent in society, lurking just beneath the surface (see also, hegemony, Critical Theory, and neo-Marxism). As such, only limited-identity (that is, segregated) spaces can provide people who suffer systemic oppression an opportunity to put their guards down and simply be themselves in a kind of safe-space refuge from the system that oppresses them. Therefore, “inclusion” and “belonging,” which are integral components to maintaining “diversity” and achieving equity, require segregated spaces that exclude as much as possible the dominating influences of privileged groups, which will always reassert dominance, according to Theory. “Caucuses” are a linguistic workaround that attempts to make this workable and (ostensibly) legal.

Related Terms

Accountable; Ally/Allyship; Belonging; BIPOC; Cisnormativity; Complicity; Critical; Critical consciousness; Critical Theory; Desegregation; Diversity; Dominance; Equity; False consciousness; Gender non-conforming; Hegemony; Heteronormativity; Homophobia; Inclusion; Internalized dominance; Internalized oppression; Language game; Liberalism; Masculinism; Misogyny; Neo-Marxism; Non-binary; Oppression; Patriarchy; People of color; Power (systemic); Privilege; Racism (systemic); Safe space; Segregation; Shut up and listen; Social Justice; Socialization; Space; System, the; Theory; Transgender; Transphobia; Western; White supremacy; Whiteness; Woke/Wokeness

Revision date: 11/19/20

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James Lindsay