Not that I agree with Antifa, but this exact logic could say that Christians are guilty at the door due to the actions of past Christians, or insert thing here is guilty due to past transgressions of insert thing here.
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That’s a fair post.
Being concerned about discrimination, or saying that you believe there is privilege related to race, gender, or class isn’t what this is about. I would agree with all of those things.
The idea that we’re working toward a universal human dignity where we see people as individuals, according to the content of their character, or of an ideal of being color-blind where we aren’t concerned with race, is considered naive, outdated, and offensive under Identity Theory and Intersectionality. If I tell you that my kids have very mixed friend groups, and they date outside their race or ethnicity, or that I have racially mixed friends, and have dated an AA man, and a Middle-Eastern young man, and Latino men, that’s seen as a way to “pretend,” while preserving my privilege. Remember, slave owners also “dated” their slaves. That came up in another thread here, right? There’s no escaping the unearned privilege of “whiteness” and the guilt and needs to go with that, according to these theories.
So, if I say that I’ve taught my kids to see things they have in common, and that the kids in our neighborhood of other races and ethnic groups are just like them, under Identity Theory that’s seen as a sophisticated adaptation for me to retain my privilege that is a convenient hiding place so I can pretend that I’m not benefiting from unearned privilege. This is very different than the kind of thing most of us associate with as a desire to reduce discrimination and racism. According to Identity Theory, it’s an idea that doesn’t work, has not achieved equity (which is not to be confused with equality.) The only way to “fix” this is to tear down the system. In my view, the rhetoric becomes less about lifting up the poor kids, or lifting up people who’ve been discriminated against, it’s also about lowering and pulling down, and about dismissing the accomplishments of individuals.
From a new article by Mark Lilia this week. He’s talking about this a bit here. "The more our student gets into the campus identity mind-set, the more distrustful she will become of the word we, a term her professors have told her is a universalist ruse used to cover up group differences and maintain the dominance of the privileged.
I swear, it looks a lot like the Struggle Sessions from Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Note the female white student at minute marker 6, making her confession. Whiteness as an identity that is associated with being an oppressor. In another even there, they took young white men who came early to a lecture so they could get seats on the front row, and told them they had to move to the back of the room because they were not going to tolerate their “white privilege.”
Needless to say, Evergreen is facing a law suit, and has come out saying that they are developing a better plan to deal with discriminatory behavior against white students.
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Your rhetoric is as overheated as Lilla’s. You speak of a monolithic ideology called Identity Theory as if it dominates campus life nationwide, rigidly demanding adherence to its singular view of the world. And while anecdotes and isolated examples of identity-politics-overreach abound, its extent and influence does not approach the level suggested by you and Lilla.
There is a linked article on the sidebar of the Lilla piece entitled What Mark Lilla Get Wrong About Students. Its closing paragraph includes the following:
“Lilla posits an imaginary student, one he terms a “recognizable campus type drawn to political questions.” Let’s forgo the substitution of “types” or fictional characters, especially ones that parody students and their efforts to meaningfully engage with the world.”
Bingo.
Yes, extremist instantiations of identity politics can be found on many campuses (such is the nature of college life–students tend to take things to the extreme). And they have managed to procure an outsized influence at a few schools (eg, Evergreen, apparently). But identity politics is not the universal scourge you and Lilla would have us believe it is. Most institutions seem to get it about right by Lilla’s standards, when he says “[i]dentity politics on the left was at first about large classes of people — African-Americans, women, gays — seeking to redress major historical wrongs by mobilizing and then working through our political institutions to secure their rights.” Bingo, again.
As for Lilla’s political advice, I simply can’t get my head around the cognitive dissonance inherent in the following paragraph:
“There is a good reason that liberals focus extra attention on minorities, since they are the most likely to be disenfranchised. But the only way in a democracy to meaningfully assist them — and not just make empty gestures of recognition and “celebration” — is to win elections and exercise power in the long run, at every level of government. And the only way to accomplish that is to have a message that appeals to as many people as possible and pulls them together. Identity liberalism does just the opposite, and reinforces the alt-right’s picture of politics as a war of competing identity groups.”
In other words: Yes, minorities are disenfranchised. But if we (libruls) are going to address this, we first have to get elected. And the only way to get elected is to ignore the fact that minorities are disenfranchised, because acknowledging it plays into the hands of the alt-right. Once we get elected into office, then we can acknowledge their disenfranchisement, and set about addressing it. But…By acknowledging their disenfranchisement, won’t we be engaging in the sort of identity politics that prevents us from getting elected in the first place?
Talk about your Catch-22: You have to ignore disenfranchisement to do something about disenfranchisement. But as soon as you do something about disenfranchisement, you’re no longer ignoring it, and thus can’t do anything about it.
My head hurts…
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It might be time to shave and get a haircut, Pat. 
Seriously, I’ve been stopped for speeding over the years many times, and have only had two tickets over all the years. I remember being alone when I was pulled over on a lonely stretch of road in So. Colorado when I was in my early 20s. There’s a vulnerability to being alone at night, and young, and female for sure. I got a ticket for a rolling stop a couple of years ago and I made jokes about how “I guess now I know that I’m officially old, Dammit!” Ha!
I’m sure it is. I feel pretty strongly about some of this, as you can tell. I’ve been talking about diversity of thought on college campuses here for a long time, something you’ve dismissed out of hand before, so. Hey, we disagree. Again.
And this is key. Any policy or idea needs to answer one basic question: with respect to the divide between different peoples, does the policy tend to shrink the division or enlarge it? If the latter, throw it in the dumpster where it belongs.
Identity politics comes from the kernel of a very good place - overcoming (artificial, but nonetheless persistent) distinctions based on race. That’s a worthwhile approach. But identity politics is a rabbit trail in the wrong direction. We can’t work together in hopes of improving a common good if we are adamant about the essentially irreconcilible differences between us - and identitarians firmly believe in irreconcilability, because they insist that no one outside their “Identity” has the right to challenge their ideas or experience. There is no room for compromise, and believers in identity politics decide they have no obligation to engage and learn about people different from them.
Identity politics takes that core error and compounds it by convincing people that the navel-gazing narcissism that prevents us from working toward common goals is ok.
I have strong opinions on this because I’ve seen this nonsense play out in the real world - I’ve alluded a few times to my involvement with non-white, inner city youth. Identity politics doesn’t help them. It sets them back. It convinces them to weaponize their ethnicity against people who are different from them instead of merely being confident in their identity but prioritizing finding common ground with people who don’t share their background.
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I think you just won the thread. Very well put.
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Yep.
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I don’t think it’s that simple. For example, most people would agree that MLK’s activities in the 60s caused a temporary widening of the gulf between white folk and black folk. Does it follow that his actions were a mistake, a regrettable error? Do we look back and say ‘Race relations would be so much better now if MLK hadn’t insisted on all that rabble-rousing’?
The point: Play the long game–not the short one.
You are conflating two concepts here. One is identity politics, and the other is what you call identitarianism–identity politics twisted into an intolerant, angry, extremist ideology. The two are not the same. There is no need to throw out the identity-politics baby with the identitarianism bathwater.
No, I completely agree - and agree that some things will be (and have to be) uncomfortable in the short term but will ultimately bring overcome divisions in the long term.
But identity politics won’t help us get to the long game achievement - and I’m not even sure if it’s adherents believe in the same long game achievement. Identity politics is not about tearing down walls, it’s about building them higher and with stronger reinforcements. The DNA of identity politics isnt union and reconciliation - it’s fortifying and deepening our differences.
I meant “identitarian” as someone who adheres to the ontology of identity politics and theory - not in the same way the term attaches to the white nationalist extremists. Completely agreed, they’re not in the same camp. To avoid confusion, I’ll call the former folks something else.
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I think identity politics is the natural and inevitable result of recognizing the reality (or at least the import) of privilege. Absolutely, it (identity politics) can be taken to a place where it is divisive to the point of being counter-productive (at least in the short-term). The difference between us seems to be that you think such extreme divisiveness is both inevitable and irrevocable, whereas I believe it is neither. Of course, absent a crystal ball, neither of us can state out our opinion with anything like surety.
I would also point out that calling for the rejection of identity politics is tantamount to rejecting the reality (or at least the import) of privilege, and is thus a strategy at great risk for ‘increasing the divide between people’ in and of itself. In other words, if you tell someone ‘Yes, people like you are currently and actively experiencing legacy-bigotry, but those of us, including you, who are concerned about such things should ignore this fact in order to form A More Perfect Union,’ you risk alienating and marginalizing such groups even further.
tl;dr It is problematic to simultaneously recognize privilege and counsel its sufferers to ignore it.
That’s exactly it. But I also think it’s more than that, as I noted earlier - I don’t think IP adherents even want the same thing as many of the rest of us. They like the differences and work to keep them, they don’t want them to go away. If that is your starting point, your endgame isn’t a place of reaching common ground with people different from you and joining forces - your interest is instead detente.
Detente is not and never will be union and reconciliation.
Then why have we achieved so much progress in relations in the absence of IP?
Far from helping us achieve more, IP risks taking steps backward from gains already made.
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Again, I would distinguish between identitarianists (the sort of person you’re describing) and those who, while ascribing to ID politics, are far less strident and closed-minded about it.
I’m not so sure we have. That is, while the label identity politics was not employed to describe it, I would argue that significant aspects of the civil-rights movement of the 60s could reasonably be described as such.
I’d have to disagree. In fact, I read MLK’s Dream speech to be a repudiation of precisely the kind of thinking IP is based on.
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The civil rights movement was born out of necessity.
Identity politics is a way to turn snowflakes into blizzards.
Do you think the civil rights movement would have happened without IP?
Guess that extends to any rights movement. Without IP, do ANY rights movements EVER gain steam?
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While perhaps your identitarians would disagree with him (you still seem to insist that everyone who ascribes to ID politics is cut from the one extremist cloth), I strongly suspect the vast majority of individuals who recognize the legitimacy of white privilege as a construct, and of identity politics as a political approach, have the same ultimate goal as MLK.
It’s worth remembering, MLK ultimately ascribed to playing the long game.
This seems to be the rub to me in current day. People put IP akin to feminism, alt right, alt left, etc. Everyone is so caught up in being willing to identify these groups by their loudest members that they forget not every feminist is a man hater, not every republican is a nazi, and not everyone that subscribes to IP is a BLM member shouting for the death of local cops.
For every 1 feminist that screams at people outside starbucks, there’s 10 people that just want women to have equal rights. For every 1 BLM member starting tire fires, there’s 1000 that just want AAs to be able to be pulled over without fearing death. etcetc.
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Yes, and it did. As I mentioned above, I don’t equate IP with geberal anti-discrimination or civil rights ideology generally. Simply recognizing the ills,of discrimination and indeed racial privilege isn’t IP.
The civil rights crowd wanted inclusion - they wanted a seat at the table - and their mission was to work to find commonality, not differences, to make the case they belonged at the table, which meant learning as much about others as learning to be comfortable with their own selves. The IP crowd believes something different - they aren’t interested in learning about others, they have siloed themselves within their identity and don’t care about other perspectives that might challenge their own. They don’t want a seat at the table with others - they want to stay at their separate table endlessly discussing themselves.
No, I don’t - most IP folks I’m aware of aren’t extremists like the ethno-nationalists.
They actively ascribe to something different than what MLK spoke of - they aren’t all that interested in sitting down together at the “Table of Brotherhood”. To do so would require them to learn about others, possibly compromise, and shed some of their self-worship of identity.
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