Identity politics
Identity politics is a term that describes a political approach wherein people of a particular religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factor form exclusive socio-political alliances, moving away from broad-based, coalitional politics to support and follow political movements that share a particular identifying quality with them. Its aim is to support and centre the concerns, agendas, and projects of particular groups, in accord with specific social and political changes.
The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. It took on wide-spread usage in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in myriad cases with radically different connotations dependent upon the term's context. It has gained currency with the emergence of social activism, manifesting in various dialogues within the feminist, American civil rights, and LGBT movements, as well as multiple nationalist and postcolonial organizations.
In academic usage, the term identity politics refers to a wide range of political activities and theoretical analyses rooted in experiences of injustice shared by different, often excluded social groups. In this context, identity politics aims to reclaim greater self-determination and political freedom for marginalized peoples through understanding particular paradigms and lifestyle factors, and challenging externally imposed characterizations and limitations, instead of organizing solely around status quo belief systems or traditional party affiliations. Identity is used "as a tool to frame political claims, promote political ideologies, or stimulate and orient social and political action, usually in a larger context of inequality or injustice and with the aim of asserting group distinctiveness and belonging and gaining power and recognition."
Contemporary applications of identity politics describe peoples of specific race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, economic class, disability status, education, religion, language, profession, political party, veteran status, and geographic location. These identity labels are not mutually exclusive but are, in many cases, compounded into one when describing hyper-specific groups —for example: African-American, homosexual women constitutes a particular hyper-specific identity class.
History
The term identity politics may have been used in political discourse since at least the 1970s. The first known written appearance of the term is found in the April 1977 statement of the Black feminist group, Combahee River Collective, which was originally printed in 1979's Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, later in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. by Barbara Smith. She and the Combahee River Collective, of which she was a founding member, have been credited with coining the term. In their terminal statement, they said:Identity politics, as a mode of categorizing, are closely connected to the ascription that some social groups are oppressed ; that is, the claim that individuals belonging to those groups are, by virtue of their identity, more vulnerable to forms of oppression such as cultural imperialism, violence, exploitation of labour, marginalization, or subjugation. Therefore, these lines of social difference can be seen as ways to gain empowerment or avenues through which to work towards a more equal society.
Some groups have combined identity politics with Marxist social class analysis and class consciousness—the most notable example being the Black Panther Party—but this is not necessarily characteristic of the form. Another example is the group MOVE, which mixed Black nationalism with anarcho-primitivism. Identity politics can be left-wing or right-wing, with examples of the latter being Ulster Loyalism, Islamism and Christian Identity movements.
During the 1980s, the politics of identity became very prominent and it was linked to a new wave of social movement activism.
This includes the presidential election of Donald Trump, who was supported by working and middle class whites, the economically advantaged, and prominent white supremacists such as David Duke and Richard B. Spencer.
Debates and criticism
Nature of the movement
The term identity politics has been applied retroactively to varying movements that long predate its coinage. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. discussed identity politics extensively in his 1991 book The Disuniting of America. Schlesinger, a strong supporter of liberal conceptions of civil rights, argues that a liberal democracy requires a common basis for culture and society to function. Rather than seeing civil society as already fractured along lines of power and powerlessness, Schlesinger suggests that basing politics on group marginalization is itself what fractures the civil polity, and that identity politics therefore works against creating real opportunities for ending marginalization. Schlesinger believes that:Similarly Brendan O'Neill has suggested that identity politics causes political schisms along lines of social identity. Thus, he contrasts the politics of gay liberation and identity politics by saying:
In these and other ways, a political perspective oriented to one's own well being can be recast as causing the divisions that it insists upon making visible.
In this same vein, author Owen Jones argues that identity politics often marginalize the working class, saying that:
LGBT issues
The gay liberation movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride. In the feminist spirit of the personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on coming out to family, friends and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person. While the 1970s were the peak of "gay liberation" in New York City and other urban areas in the United States, "gay liberation" was the term still used instead of "gay pride" in more oppressive areas into the mid-1980s, with some organizations opting for the more inclusive, "lesbian and gay liberation". While women and transgender activists had lobbied for more inclusive names from the beginning of the movement, the initialism LGBT, or "Queer" as a counterculture shorthand for LGBT, did not gain much acceptance as an umbrella term until much later in the 1980s, and in some areas not until the '90s or even '00s. During this period in the United States, identity politics were largely seen in these communities in the definitions espoused by writers such as self-identified, "black, dyke, feminist, poet, mother" Audre Lorde's view, that lived experience matters, defines us, and is the only thing that grants authority to speak on these topics; that, "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive."By the 2000s, in some areas of postmodern queer studies the idea of "identity politics" began to shift away from that of naming and claiming lived experience, and authority arising from lived experience, to one emphasizing choice and performance. Some who draw on the work of authors like Judith Butler particularly stress this concept of remaking and unmaking performative identities. Writers in the field of Queer theory have at times taken this to the extent as to now argue that "queer", despite generations of specific use to describe a "non-heterosexual" sexual orientation, no longer needs to refer to any specific sexual orientation at all; that it is now only about "disrupting the mainstream", with author David M. Halperin arguing that straight people may now also self-identify as "queer". However, many LGBT people believe this concept of "queer heterosexuality" is an oxymoron and offensive form of cultural appropriation which not only robs gays and lesbians of their identities, but makes invisible and irrelevant the actual, lived experience of oppression that causes them to be marginalized in the first place. "It desexualizes identity, when the issue is precisely about a sexual identity."
Some supporters of identity politics take stances based on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's work and have described some forms of identity politics as strategic essentialism, a form which has sought to work with hegemonic discourses to reform the understanding of "universal" goals.
Critiques and criticisms of identity politics
Critics argue that groups based on a particular shared identity can divert energy and attention from more fundamental issues, similar to the history of divide and rule strategies. Chris Hedges has criticized identity politics as one of the factors making up a form of "corporate capitalism" that only masquerades as a political platform, and which he believes "will never halt the rising social inequality, unchecked militarism, evisceration of civil liberties and omnipotence of the organs of security and surveillance." Sociologist Charles Derber asserts that the American left is "largely an identity-politics party" and that it "offers no broad critique of the political economy of capitalism. It focuses on reforms for Blacks and women and so forth. But it doesn’t offer a contextual analysis within capitalism." Both he and David North of the Socialist Equality Party posit that these fragmented and isolated identity movements which permeate the left have allowed for a far-right resurgence.Critiques of identity politics have also been expressed on other grounds by writers such as Eric Hobsbawm, Todd Gitlin, Michael Tomasky, Richard Rorty, Michael Parenti and Sean Wilentz. Hobsbawm criticized nationalisms and the principle of national self-determination adopted in many countries after World War I, since national governments are often merely an expression of a ruling class or power, and their proliferation was a source of the wars of the 20th century. Hence, Hobsbawm argues that identity politics, such as queer nationalism, Islamism, Cornish nationalism or Ulster loyalism are just other versions of bourgeois nationalism. The view that identity politics obscures class inequality is widespread in the United States and other Western nations. This framing ignores how class-based politics are identity politics themselves, according to Jeff Sparrow.
Intersectional critiques
In her journal article Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color, Kimberle Crenshaw treats identity politics as a process that brings people together based on a shared aspect of their identity. Crenshaw applauds identity politics for bringing African Americans, gays and lesbians, and other oppressed groups together in community and progress. But she critiques it because "it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences." Crenshaw argues that for Black women, at least two aspects of their identity are the subject of oppression: their race and their sex. Thus, although identity politics are useful, we must be aware of the role of intersectionality. Nira Yuval-Davis supports Crenshaw's critiques in Intersectionality and Feminist Politics and explains that "Identities are individual and collective narratives that answer the question 'who am/are I/we?"In Mapping the Margins, Crenshaw illustrates her point using the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy. Anita Hill accused US Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment; Thomas would be the second African American judge on the Supreme Court. Crenshaw argues that Hill was then deemed anti-Black in the movement against racism, and although she came forward on the feminist issue of sexual harassment, she was excluded because when considering feminism, it is the narrative of white middle-class women that prevails. Crenshaw concludes that acknowledging intersecting categories when groups unite on the basis of identity politics is better than ignoring categories altogether.
Examples
A Le Monde/IFOP poll in January 2011 conducted in France and Germany found that a majority felt Muslims are "scattered improperly"; an analyst for IFOP said the results indicated something "beyond linking immigration with security or immigration with unemployment, to linking Islam with a threat to identity".Racial and ethnocultural
Ethnic and racial identity politics are commonly referenced in popular culture, and are increasingly analyzed in media and social commentary as an interconnected part of politics and society. Both a majority and minority group phenomenon, racial identity politics can develop as a reaction to the historical legacy of race-based oppression of a people, as well as a general group identity issue:Racial identity politics utilizes racial consciousness - or the group's collective memory and experiences - as the essential framework for interpreting the actions and interests of all other social groups.
Carol M. Swain has argued that non-white ethnic pride and an "emphasis on racial identity politics" is fomenting the rise of white nationalism. Anthropologist Michael Messner has suggested that the Million Man March was an example of racial identity politics in the United States.
Arab identity politics
Arab identity politics concerns the identity-based politics derived from the racial or ethnocultural consciousness of Arab people. In the regionalism of the Middle East, it has particular meaning in relation to the national and cultural identities of non-Arab countries, such as Turkey and Iran. In their 2010 Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition, academics Christopher Wise and Paul James challenged the view that, in the post-Afghanistan and Iraq invasion era, Arab identity-driven politics were ending. Refuting the view that had "drawn many analysts to conclude that the era of Arab identity politics has passed", Wise and James examined its development as a viable alternative to Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world.According to Marc Lynch, the post-Arab Spring era has seen increasing Arab identity politics, which is "marked by state-state rivalries as well as state-society conflicts". Lynch believes this is creating a new Arab Cold War, no longer characterized by Sunni-Shia sectarian divides but by a reemergent Arab identity in the region. Najla Said has explored her lifelong experience with Arab identity politics in her book Looking for Palestine.
Māori identity politics
Due to somewhat competing tribe-based versus pan-Māori concepts, there is both an internal and external utilization of Māori identity politics in New Zealand. Projected outwards, Māori identity politics has been a disrupting force in the politics of New Zealand and post-colonial conceptions of nationhood. Its development has also been explored as causing parallel ethnic identity developments in non-Māori populations. Academic Alison Jones, in her co-written Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds, suggests that a form of Māori identity politics, directly oppositional to Pākehā, has helped provide a "basis for internal collaboration and a politics of strength".A 2009, Ministry of Social Development journal identified Māori identity politics, and societal reactions to it, as the most prominent factor behind significant changes in self-identification from the 2006 New Zealand census.
White identity politics
White identity politics concerns the manifestation of the ethnocultural identity of white people in various national political settings such as the United States or Australia.In 1998, political scientists Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg predicted that, by the late 20th-century, a "Euro-American radical right" would promote a trans-national white identity politics, which would invoke populist grievance narratives and encourage hostility against non-white peoples and multiculturalism. In the United States, mainstream news has identified Donald Trump's presidency as a signal of increasing and widespread utilization of white identity politics within the Republican Party and political landscape. Political journalists such as Michael Scherer and David Smith have reported on its development since the mid-2010s.
Ron Brownstein believes that President Trump uses "White Identity Politics" to bolster his base and that this will ultimately limit his ability to reach out to non-White American voters for the 2020 United States presidential election. A four-year Reuters and Ipsos analysis concurred that "Trump's brand of white identity politics may be less effective in the 2020 election campaign." Alternatively, examining the same poll, David Smith has written that "Trump’s embrace of white identity politics may work to his advantage" in 2020. During the Democratic primaries, presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg publicly warned that the president and his administration were using white identity politics, which he said was the most divisive form of identity politics. Columnist Reihan Salam writes that he is not convinced that Trump uses "white identity politics" given the fact that he still has significant support from liberal and moderate Republicans – who are more favorable toward immigration and the legalization of undocumented immigrants – but believes that it could become a bigger issue as whites become a minority and assert their rights like other minority groups. Salam also states that an increase in "white identity" politics is far from certain given the very high rates of intermarriage and the historical example of the once Anglo-Protestant cultural majority embracing a more inclusive white cultural majority which included Jews, Italians, Poles, Arabs, and Irish.
Columnist Ross Douthat has argued that it has been important to American politics since the Richard Nixon-era of the Republican Party, and historian Nell Irvin Painter has analyzed Eric Kaufmann's thesis that the phenomenon is caused by immigration-derived racial diversity, which reduces the white majority, and an "anti-majority adversary culture". Writing in Vox, political commentator Ezra Klein believes that demographic change has fueled the emergence of white identity politics.