[This is an expanded version of notes for a presentation I made to a discussion group at First Universalist Church of Rochester, N.Y., last Sunday.]

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who was recently elected Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, had this to say about this political philosophy in an interview back in 2021.
There’s a difference between progressive Democrats and hard-left democratic socialists. It’s not a distinction that I’m drawing. They draw that distinction. And so clearly, I’m a Black progressive Democrat concerned with addressing racial and social and economic injustice with the fierce urgency of now. That’s been my career, that’s been my journey, and it will continue to be as I move forward for however long I have an opportunity to serve. There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism.
Black progressives do tend to tackle issues first and foremost with an understanding that systemic racism has been in the soil of America for over 400 years. Hard-left progressives tend to view the defining problem in America as one that is anchored in class. That is not my experience as a Black man in this country. And perhaps that’s where we have a difference of perspective.
What this shows is that there are the two perspectives among American liberals and progressives about justice for black American citizens.
One prioritizes fighting racial injustice. The other prioritizes fighting economic injustice.
One says the main problem is oppression of black people and other minority groups by the whites. The other says the main problem is the exploitation of the have-nots by the haves.
One sees African-Americans as an oppressed nation, like the Irish under British rule or the Poles under Russian rule. The other sees black people as individual American citizens who have been unfairly excluded from the mainstream of American life.
One defines its mission as overcoming exclusion and marginalization. The other sees its mission as fighting exploitation.
Both agree that African-Americans and other minority groups are entitled to equal justice and equal treatment. But one says they also are entitled to equal representation.
I’ll call these two viewpoints racial essentialism and class essentialism. Nobody I know uses these words, although some use the negative terms “race reductionism” and “class reductionism.” However you label them, I think these two viewpoints exist and are important to understand.
Both viewpoints are held by intelligent people with good intentions. I agree with one more than I do the other, but I will do my best to state the strong arguments for both sides.
If you’re a person of good will of good will, you may wonder what the problem is. Why not fight both racial discrimination and economic inequality at the same time? Why should this even be a problem? The answer lies in differing views of the nature of racism.
The late, great W.E.B. DuBois explained American racism as “the wages of whiteness.”
He said Southern plantation owners told poor white sharecroppers that, as low as they were on the social and economic scale, they at least could have the satisfaction of knowing they were considered superior to black sharecroppers.
A similar story was told to poor European immigrant sweat-shop workers in the North. An Italian-American acquaintance of mine once remarked that he always felt he was made to feel he was “not quite white enough.”
So racism is an artificial idea created by elite white people to keep lower-class and working-class white people divided against each other. The whites received no economic benefit, but they received a psychological benefit
If this is so, the way forward is to show get non-elite white people to understand that race is an illusion, human rights are universal and the best way to improve their condition is to join forces with their black fellow citizens for the common good.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The view of the historic civil rights movement – DuBois himself, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – has been a campaign to get white people to understand that human rights are universal, race is an illusion and blacks and whites should unite for the common good.
But there was another stream, based on racial solidarity. It has gained strength because of the perceived failure of the civil rights movement. It is represented by the Black Muslims, the Black Panthers, the Black Power movement and the Critical Race Studies movement. I think it was represented by the black empowerment movement in the Unitarian Universalist Association.
All of them were a reaction against the historic civil rights movement because of its perceived failures. (more…)