For [the poor, the black, the unemployed] the distinction between the mailed fist and the velvet glove is a stylistic abstraction, the defining limit between consent and force a middle-class abstraction. Black youth in the inner cities know only the blunt force of the state, those on income support have it translated for them in a thousand not so subtle ways. If we are to extend the freedoms in civil society through a politics of hegemony, those who stand at the intersection of consent and coercion should surely be our first constituency and guide--a yardstick to measure our politics by. How do you extend a "politics of food" to the hungry, a "politics of the body" to the homeless, a "politics of the family" for those without an income? How do any of these politics connect up with the third world?... Class cannot just be a matter of identity, it has to be the focus of commitment.
A. Sivanandan