I think the politics of race are minefield that is necessary to try to negotiate, because I agree that it’s worthwhile and necessary to acknowledge historical and ongoing injustices and inequities that are based on race. I also think that analysis should go hand-in-hand with a clear-eyed view of how our historical and contemporary politics have taken advantage of fissures along racial lines, dividing working people on those racial lines instead of class lines. Conservatives have stoked white resentment against a chosen “other,” while liberals have often focused on idpol and representation at the expense of any real structural change. There’s a lot that gets lost in the shuffle there—poor white people, rural black people, immigrants of other ethnicities—all people who would be empowered by class-based politics, all people who are kept apart by the same contemporary political forces.
It makes intuitive sense to people until it you call it Marxism, then it’s bad.