“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).

Left critical perspectives on superficial forms of wokeness/cancel culture/political correctness

A friend of mine recently called my attention to this video from a YouTube podcast series called Carefree Wandering by Hans-Georg Moeller, Wokeism 06/09/2021.

It deals with various issues currently in discussion around "wokeism," the most recent label for what conservatives derided for decades as "political correctness." "Cancel culture" is a relative concept. Which mainly refers to efforts of people trying to be less racist and sexist and to criticize conditions and practices promoted racism and sexism.

It's an interesting survey of the issues connected to what we're calling "wokeism" these days. On the one hand, any left politics that carries on any part of the socialist or New Deal traditions would have to pay attention to class dynamics as a central issue. And I'm still part of the team that thinks the arc of the universe bends toward One Big Union by-and-by. So, if I were going to make an argument about what's True Left, I would insist on a hardcore pro-labor element.

Like pretty much every concept in politics practiced by mortals, concepts can used, abused, instrumentalized, altered, and condemned for a variety of purposes ranging from high principle to ultra-prgramatic and/or corrupt politics of a given moment. But since all practical politics requires some kind of prioritization and tactical calculation, finding the best balance of issues and approaches to support the labor movement, fighting against racial and gender discrimination, and other left and left-center concerns like combatting climate change, opposition war and nuclear weapons proliferation, and defending democracy and human rights.

He also takes on the arguments of pop philosopher Jordan Peterson and some of his nonsense about postmodernism and left "political correctness." The talk includes an interesting an informative discussion of the memory of the Holocaust in German politics, although I would describe what he calls German "guilt-pride" in a different way.

Here's a commentary from 2020 by the late Michael Brooks, The Problem With “White Fragility” (TMBS 146) 07/05/2020, dealing with a case he persuasively portrays as a "woke" business trend that actually does disconnect anti-discrimination politics from a particular subjective brand of "wokeness." Sadly, less than three weeks after he made this video, he died suddenly of a previously undiagnosed medical condition. Broadly speaking, it focuses on the way "wokeness" relates to politics as current practiced by the European and American left.

He makes reference to Cedrick-Michael Simmons' article, I'm Black and Afraid of 'White fragility' The Bellows 06/22/2021

This is another podcast on Wokeism and the left hosted by Ana Kasparian, who started and co-hosted this particular show before his untimely death, Wokeness Is Hurting Democrats 05/02/2021:

Here's a third podcast, this one about the versions of the discussion going on in Germany and Austria, put on by an Austrian social-democratic organization. The label more often used there is "identity politics," which of course is also used in the US and other countries, as well. Die Selbstgerechten und die linke Identitätspolitik BSABund 06/10/2021:

Kaveh Yazdani covers the German discussion in The poverty of mainstream universalism and exclusive identity politics Open Democracy 03/23/2021.

In the American context, the history of self-identified Black Nationalists like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and groups supporting types of minority ethnic nationalism is important background. That trend stressed that it was the responsibility of whites who wanted to support black civil rights to concentrate on changing the perceptions and actions of white people.

Even in contexts of multiracial civil rights groups and labor unions, it was considered very important that whites needed to recognize the reality of white racism and how it functioned. And fighting for civil rights has always involved confronting a very real white power structure. And part of the functioning of that white power structure, which broadly means the same as the common phrase "structural racism" today, has always been to persuade whites who are otherwise disadvantaged by existing conditions that siding with the ruling elites on the basis that the existing structures allowing them to not only feel superior to non-whites, but provided at least some kind of material advantage (white privilege).

One among many examples of this are the slave patrols in pre-Civil War times that used nonslaveowning whites to patrol for black people who might be escaped slaves, and in practice gave poor whites the opportunity to play "master" by arbitrarily abusing random African-Americans under cover of state authority. Another would be mine owners who employed only white workers but used African-Americans as strikebreakers during labor conflicts.

So it is important for activists on the left or anywhere else on the political spectrum to remember that even the most conscientious whites may have an unfortunate tendency to be convinced that downplaying the urgency of civil rights issues in order to spare the tender feelings of other whites. Racial and gender discrimination is very often intimately connected with class and economic conditions. But the notion that an economic "rising tide lifts all boats" will solve discrimination problems is false. Affluent African-Americans, for instance, are far more at risk of being arbitrarily executed by police on a traffic stop than whites of the same economic status.

That doesn't eliminate the inevitable prioritizations and tactical calculations of politics. But discrimination and institutional racism and sexism won't go away without opponents combatting them directly. And, yes, part of that means directly confronting whites with the reality of those problems. That doesn't means that politicians and activists have to be stupid or mean about it. But, yes, the only way to avoid pissing off any white people is not to oppose racist policies and practices.

Economic interests and US elections

John Stoehr raised a question on Twitter:

If economic self-interest did not affect voting in 2016 (it was the racism, stupid), why are we looking to economic self-interest as a *cause* of Trump's declining polling numbers?

I'm skeptical.

A more likely cause is most ppl like him less and less.

Thoughts?

— John Stoehr's Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) September 12, 2019

It‘s certainly not the case that the outcome even of Presidential elections can be reliably projected from econometric data. But there is an enormous amount of public polling data on the concerns most important for voters.

Those show that economic concerns are important. But the current Democratic discussion about whether ”it‘s all about economics“ vs. ”it‘s all about race and gender“ sometimes sounds like a theological argument that ultimately doesn‘t depend on empirical facts.

In reality, issues about jobs or prosperity or social class are intertwined with race, gender, religion and other ”tribal“ factors in voting behavior.

But when it comes to major political donors and billionaire political operators like the Koch brothers, it‘s painfully clear that business and economic considerations loom large for them.

Of course, billionaire donors are channeling their political money based on macroeconomic trends but on policies and regulatory issues that affect their profits.

And particular individual factors like a foreign policy crisis (Iranian hostages 1980) and structural concerns can also be decisive (the Electoral College structure, gerrymandering) can be decisive in outcomes.

And so do very specific organizational concerns, like how active local or state party organizations are, and how thorough and effective the get-out-the-vote operations are.