At least judging by her column in the Guardian I don’t think that Kimberley Foster quite gets what has happened in identity politics:
When a group of black feminists called the Combahee River Collective coined the phrase “identity politics†in 1977, they imagined that the “seemingly personal experiences of individual Black women’s lives†would provide the foundation for a politics that is “actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppressionâ€. Their ideology began with self, but it was not self-obsessed. Ultimately, they knew their work would benefit everyone.
Since then, identity politics have veered away from Combahee’s foundational ideals. We should return to them, not to appease the right wing but to reaffirm the importance of a progressivism that touts liberty and justice for all.
Identity politics become flimsy when they devolve into shallow back-and-forths that conflate lived experience with sound political analysis. A worldview that moves us closer to equality doesn’t stem from living in a certain kind of body. It emerges from pursuing a certain kind of politics.
The problem is that when championing equality for racial minorities, women, or lower classes never quite seems to result in improving conditions for the racial minorities, women, or lower classes but does result in vastly improving conditions for the champions personally one can’t help but be suspicious that the con has been on all along.
“Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.” ~ Eric Hoffer
Always puzzles me why the term identity politics seems to apply only to groups on the left, when it is at least as strong on the right. Think of the single issue abortion voters as an example. Gun owners who vote on that as a single issue. Meh.
Steve
Here’s a dictionary-style definition of “identity politics”:
In other words it’s not single-issue. Rather all issues are seen through the prism of your group identity. IIRC the term was originally coined by a group of black women.
The reason it’s applied to the left may be that the left has embraced the strategy.
The left has forced identity politics on all of us. Nowadays, the most important thing about anyone is his race/ethnicity, and people are expected to vote their race/ethnicity.
Perhaps this is unavoidable, and the left should not be blamed for it. When America was over 80% White (as recently as the 60’s), we could avoid race-based nationalism and enjoy a civic nationalism, in which economic and policy issues predominated. But with Whites becoming just another minority, albeit the largest by far, this is no longer possible. Racial coalitions are the key to power.
Multiracial, multicultural empires like the US are held together by brute force. The Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian Empires of the early 20th Century and more recently Hussein’s Iraq are examples. We, too, will get our Hussein, and there won’t be any outside power to intervene.
To quote Heartiste:
“Diversity + Proximity = War”
According to the census America was over 80% white in 1990. Demographic projections have predicted that whites will remain in the majority until 2045 but that assumes the persistence theory. If the persistence theory were applicable to demographics, the U. S. would be 85% white.