Problematizing rights-based politics

Lisa Marie Chaco’s “Social Death” problematizes many concepts about rights, personhood, and legality that we often do not engage critically in a liberal multicultural society. From immigration reform to same-sex marriage, we are taught that the good of the American system lies in the fact that the rights and privileges of citizenship are constantly being expanded to include more people. But, as Chaco points out, marginalized people who “form the foundation” for certain laws can never be incorporated into laws that depend on their criminalization (p.8).

I was especially moved by the complexity surrounding marginalized people’s claims to American citizenship. Despite the validity of these claims for one group, they often reinforce or further advance the ‘social death’ of another marginalized group. I could see a lot of this in the conversations after Trayvon Martin’s death, where the focus became on how black men should avoid dressing like criminals – as if their criminalization lie in an article of clothing, not their blackness. But this kind of respectability politics is frequently used to further marginalize young black males who wear hoodies and baggy jeans as if they are deserving of their social death.

Ultimately I find myself wrestling with the implications of Chaco’s book. We know that claims to citizenship and liberal rights are not going to bring marginalized bodies ‘to life’ so to speak. What would an immigration movement look like that did not reconstitute legal / illegal binaries, or a gay liberation movement that did not seek legal recognition of some same-sex relationships by further marginalizing those that were non-homonormative? Moving beyond rights-based politics remains a challenge because it feels like it is the only thing we know (and is certainly the only thing we are taught in K-12 schools), but it must be done if we are committed to an oppression-free world.