“Identity” politics

Brian Duignan writing for the ultra-respectable Encyclopedia Britannica defines identify politics this way:

[P]olitical or social activity by or on behalf of a racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other group, usually undertaken with the goal of rectifying injustices suffered by group members because of differences or conflicts between their particular identity (or misconceptions of their particular identity) and the dominant identity (or identities) of a larger society. Identity politics also aims, in the course of such activity, to eliminate negative misrepresentations (stereotypes) of particular groups that have served to justify their members’ exclusion, exploitation, marginalization, oppression, or assimilation to the point of erasure. (1)

As that definition indicates, the concept can cover a lot of ground!

“Identity politics” is generally used as a criticism in the US. Civil rights activists defending African-Americans’ right to vote is “identity politics”; white Republicans trying to block their right to vote are just “Republicans.” Even explicitly white supremacist sects and gangs are not usually said to be practicing “identity politics.” In Europe and the US the Identitarian movement adherents Richard Spencer are normally not described as doing so either, although since they call themselves Identitarians maybe that would be redundant!

Cressida Heyes describes it this way:

The phrase “identity politics” is also something of a philosophical punching-bag and increasingly a term of political abuse. Since the twentieth-century heyday of the well-known political movements that made identity politics so visible, a vast academic literature has sprung up; although “identity politics” can draw on intellectual precursors from Mary Wollstonecraft to Frantz Fanon, writing that actually uses this specific phrase, with any of its contemporary baggage, does not begin until the late 1970s. Hence the articulation of political projects that embrace a self-understanding as “identity politics” is more or less concomitant with deployments of the term that use it as a negative short-hand to gesture to an opposing position. As updated versions of this article have appeared over the last 25 years, this latter phenomenon has become both more marked and more diversified: “identity politics” (critically and sometimes scornfully inflected) can be intended to capture a form of virtue-signaling that unfairly privileges women and racialized people at the expense of white men while inhibiting freedom of expression; or, especially in extra-academic political discourse, simply a kind of unspecified defense of interest groups that undermines nation-building, cultural cohesion, or tradition. [my emphasis] (2)

She notes that “critics charge” that so-called identity politics “closes off the possibility of critique of these perspectives by those who don’t share the experience, which in turn inhibits political dialogue and coalition-building.”

Here’s an actually sober report from around two years ago on the concept of identity politics, its development, and its current state in American politics. (3)

Of course, political language evolves over time. And disparate groups working together, in politics or otherwise, have always had to find ways to cooperate with each other without abandoning their own positions. But “identity politics” is normally used as disqualifying to someone else’s position.

In US popular movements in the 1960s and 1970s, there were long and often convoluted discussions and debates among left-leaning activists over how to achieve what more recently has been called intersectionality so that advocates for Black civil rights, Latino rights (then also called Chicano rights), women’s rights, gay rights could mutually support each other without giving up their own particular focus. In the European and US labor movements, a similar process has gone on since the 19th century in the context of labor rights and the right to form a union over what kind of position unions and labor parties should take on the rights of women, racial and national minorities, and immigrants. The European Social Democrats in the late 19th and early 20th century spent a great deal of time and energy about how to combine social-democratic partisanship for the working class with support for liberal individual rights for women and minorities.

Liza Featherstone uses an interesting variation of the term to describe accusations that the more conservative, corporate-oriented wing of the Democratic Party has employed against progressives. Notably in the 2016 primary campaign when they accused Bernie Sanders – mostly completely unfairly - of being insufficiently attention to women’s and minority and LGBTQ rights.

Remember when we were supposed to celebrate the first black president, even though he disappointed the hopes of every progressive who campaigned for him? Remember when supporters of Bernie Sanders were relentlessly tarred as sexist (and racist, somehow) for opposing Hillary Clinton?

This style of politics continued to define liberalism during the Donald Trump administration. While women lost abortion rights and right-wing men gained power, liberals cheered the spectacle of prominent liberal men — mostly in media and cultural institutions — losing their jobs for sexual harassment. Land acknowledgments became prevalent in corporate and academic settings, even as the construction of pipelines on indigenous lands continued apace. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by the police, many were disappointed by how little changed for poor and working-class black Americans: the most tangible outcome of the widespread street protests of 2020 was that corporate America put more black people on its boards.

This was neoliberal identity politics, an elite discourse that centered identities as a way of undermining a robust, effective class politics. Of course, race, gender, and sexuality matter and are salient political concepts in the fight for human freedom. But elites used neoliberal identity politics to undermine broad human solidarities, divide the Left, and advance policies that benefited only the 1 percent. Because bigotry is still a real problem, many good progressives would fall for it every time. [my emphasis] (4)

Featherstone also criticizes “the prim, hectoring moralism of neoliberal identity politics.” She goes on to make an important point about the remarkable push by supporters of Israel’s currently expanding war to punish not only college students who protest against it but their universities, as well. She calls attention to the effort to make criticism of Israel and criticism of the ideology of Zionism equivalent to antisemitism. She ends on a hopeful note, opining that “neoliberal identity politics” among Democrats seems to be receding. “The Left moving on from the culture war while the Right remains mired in it would only be good news for our political prospects.”

The category of “identity politics” is obviously much broader and imprecise than specific anti-discrimination demands such as having a federal statute to protect abortion rights nationwide.

Duigman gives an overview of the various ways scholarly social theorists treat the identity politics concept:

Every time this article is revised it is more tempting to write that “identity politics” is an out-moded term, over-determined by its critics and part of a reductive political lexicon that rather remarkably spans the socialist left, the liberal centre, and the populist right. Yet in 2024, still, there are recent iterations of the recognition [of group discrimination] versus redistribution [of wealth] debate, ongoing arguments about the demands of intersectionality, and new forms of political resistance within the movements that circulate under the sign “identity politics.” Both flexible and extensible, identity political tropes continue to influence new political claims … [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Duignan, Brian. "identity politics". Encyclopedia Britannica 11/21/2024, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/identity-politics> (Accessed: 2024-24-11).

(2) Heyes, Cressida, "Identity Politics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/> (Accessed: 2024-24-11).

(3) Elite Capture: Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics. Democracy Now! YouTube channel 01/18/2023.<https://youtu.be/81cLuGAwM9Y?si=l-rDjN4UbZMqhszD> (Accessed: 2024-01-12).

(4) Featherstone, Lisa (2024): All That Remains of Neoliberal Identity Politics Is Fascism. Jacobin 10/31/2024. <https://jacobin.com/2024/10/all-that-remains-of-neoliberal-identity-politics-is-fascism> (Accessed: 2024-24-11).