Do the Right Thing
Martina De Castro
The choice to dedicate this section of the pioneers of inclusion to Cyril Lionel Robert James and Selma James — same surname, as they were married for a few years — is due to their ability to anticipate events with a foresight that has few equals. Pioneer of postcolonial studies and cultural studies, he, pioneer of the construct of «sex-race-class» and intersectional studies, she, the two dedicated their lives to investigating what makes each human being «different» or «equal» to others and how identity difference turns into social inequality. Both militants of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, an American workers’ organisation founded in the 1940s, CLR attempted, through his own deviant pigmentation and his belonging to western and white culture, to make black matters central to the settlers’ debate by converging the variables of race and class; Selma, a woman, worker and single mother, tried to demonstrate how, in capitalist societies, biological differences become social differences. By referring simultaneously to the individual and the collective, the personal and the social, the James’s thought seems to us particularly suggestive, as well as effective in terms of interpretation, because it offers us a multitudinous key to understanding phenomena.
Keywords
CLR James, Selma James, Black matters, Sex-race-class, Intersectional studies.
