In This Moment

Abstract

It is 2024, and in the United States of America, the wealth gap is increasing. Women’s reproductive rights and the LGBTQIA+ community are under attack. Affirmative action in higher education is no more. And books are being banned all across the country. It is very easy to be overwhelmed and consumed by all of the problems that are confronting us and to lose sight of the bigger picture. In this very short essay, I situate our present moment in two important ways. First, I place 2024 into critical and historical context, because the problems currently confronting us are not isolated events that appear overnight. Instead, they are the current expressions of long-simmering antagonisms and fears that have deeply entrenched roots in our socio-economic-political system. This context should ground and guide us, the OutCrits of today and our allies, as we navigate the precarious world we find ourselves in. Second, I focus on the majority-white to minority-white demographic transition that will occur in the United States in 2044 as one of the triggers for what Antonio Gramsci calls an “organic crisis.” More specifically, I argue that the U.S. is currently in an organic crisis, one which I suggest threatens the white, hetero-patriarchal norms on which this country was built and has given rise to the “White Identity movement.” But, because a crisis does not dictate a specific outcome, the crisis we are currently in is also a moment of reconstruction and, therefore, a moment of potential change. It is up to us to make the most of it.

Keywords: law and society, social change, Gramsci, Critical Race Theory, race, history, white supremacy, white women, White Identity movement, white majority to white minority demographic shift