Identity politics

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The term identity politics in common usage refers to a tendency of people sharing a
particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity to form
exclusive political alliances, instead of engaging in traditional broad-based party
politics,[1] or promote their particular interests without regard for interests of
a larger political group.[2] In academic usage, the term has been used to refer to
a wide range of political activities and theoretical analysis rooted in experiences
of injustice shared by different social groups. In this usage, identity politics
typically aim to reclaim greater self-determination and political freedom for
marginalized groups through understanding their distinctive nature and challenging
externally imposed characterizations, instead of organizing solely around belief
systems or party affiliations.[3] Identity is used "as a tool to frame political
claims, promote political ideologies, or stimulate and orientate 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."[4]

The term identity politics has been in use in various forms since the 1960s or
1970s, but has been applied with, at times, radically different meanings by
different populations.[5][6] It has gained currency with the emergence of social
movements such as the women's movement, the civil rights movement in the U.S., the
LGBTQ movement, as well as nationalist and postcolonial movements.[4]

Examples include identity politics based on age, religion, social class or caste,
culture, deafhood, dialect, disability, education, ethnicity, language,
nationality, sex, gender identity, generation, occupation, profession, race,
political party affiliation, sexual orientation, settlement, urban and rural
habitation, and veteran status.

Contents
1 History
2 Debates and criticism
2.1 Nature of the movement
2.2 LGBT issues
2.3 Critiques of identity politics
2.4 Intersectional critiques
3 Examples
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
History
The term identity politics has been used in political discourse since at least the
1970s.[5] One aim of identity politics has been for those feeling oppressed by and
actively suffering under systemic social inequities to articulate their suffering
and felt oppression in terms of their own experience by processes of consciousness-
raising and collective action. One of the older written examples of it can be found
in the April 1977 statement of the black feminist group, Combahee River Collective,
which was reprinted in a number of anthologies,[7] and Barbara Smith and the
Combahee River Collective have been credited with coining the term.[8][9] For
example, in their terminal statement, they said:[3]

[A]s children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated
different�for example, when we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for
the sake of being 'ladylike' and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white
people. In the process of consciousness-raising, actually life-sharing, we began to
recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from the sharing and growing
consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end
our oppression....We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work
consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for
ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle
and work. This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of
identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical
politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end
somebody else's oppression.

�?Zillah R. Eisenstein (1978), "The Combahee River Collective Statement"[10]

Identity politics, as a mode of categorizing, are closely connected to the
ascription that some social groups are oppressed (such as women, ethnic minorities,
and sexual minorities); 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
powerlessness.[3] 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.
[11]

Some groups have combined identity politics and 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 MOVE, members of
which mixed black nationalism with anarcho-primitivism (a radical form of green
politics based on the idea that civilization is an instrument of oppression,
advocating the return to a hunter gatherer society).[12][13] 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.[14]

The mid-2010s have seen a marked rise of identity politics, including white
identity politics in the United States. This phenomenon is attributed to increased
demographic diversity and the prospect of whites becoming a minority in America.
Such shifts have driven many to affiliate with conservative causes including those
not related to diversity.[15] This includes the presidential election of Donald
Trump, who was supported by prominent white supremacists such as David Duke and
Richard B. Spencer (which Trump disavowed).[16][17][18][19]

The Christchurch Shooter said the US president Donald Trump is "a symbol of renewed
white identity and common purpose".[20]

Debates and criticism

Nature of the movement
The term identity politics has been applied and misapplied 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
powerless (according to race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc), 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 "movements for civil rights
should aim toward full acceptance and integration of marginalized groups into the
mainstream culture, rather than...perpetuating that marginalization through
affirmations of difference".[21]
Brendan O'Neill has similarly suggested that identity politics causes (rather than
simply recognizes and acts on) political schisms along lines of social identity.
Thus, he contrasts the politics of gay liberation and identity politics by saying
"... [Peter] Tatchell also had, back in the day, ... a commitment to the politics
of liberation, which encouraged gays to come out and live and engage. Now, we have
the politics of identity, which invites people to stay in, to look inward, to
obsess over the body and the self, to surround themselves with a moral forcefield
to protect their worldview�which has nothing to do with the world�from any
questioning."[22] 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:
In the 1950s and 1960s, left-wing intellectuals who were both inspired and informed
by a powerful labour movement wrote hundreds of books and articles on working-class
issues. Such work would help shape the views of politicians at the very top of the
Labour Party. Today, progressive intellectuals are far more interested in issues of
identity. ... Of course, the struggles for the emancipation of women, gays, and
ethnic minorities are exceptionally important causes. New Labour has co-opted them,
passing genuinely progressive legislation on gay equality and women's rights, for
example. But it is an agenda that has happily co-existed with the sidelining of the
working class in politics, allowing New Labour to protect its radical flank while
pressing ahead with Thatcherite policies.

�?Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class[23]

LGBT issues
See also: LGBT social movements, Queer nationalism, Political lesbianism, and
Bisexual politics
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.[24] 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.[24] 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".[24][25] 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.[24][25][26] 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; that, "If I didn't define myself for myself,
I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive."[27][28]
[29]

By the 2000s, in some areas of postmodern queer studies, notably those around
gender, 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.[30] Some who draw on the work of authors like
Judith Butler, stress the importance of not assuming an already existing identity,
but of remaking and unmaking identities through "performance".[31] 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, 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,"[32] which some believe, is a form of cultural
appropriation which robs gays and lesbians of their identity and makes invisible
and irrelevant the actual, lived experience that causes them to be marginalized in
the first place. "It desexualizes identity, when the issue is precisely about a
sexual identity."[33][30] See Queer heterosexuality.

There are also supporters of identity politics who have developed their stances on
the basis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's work (namely, "Can the Subaltern Speak?")
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.[34][35][36]

Critiques of identity politics

The Industrial Workers of the World poster "Pyramid of Capitalist System" (1911)
Some critics argue that groups based on a particular shared identity (e.g. race, or
gender identity) can divert energy and attention from more fundamental issues,
similar to the history of divide and rule strategies. 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.[37] Critiques of identity
politics have also been expressed on other grounds by writers such as Eric
Hobsbawm,[38] Todd Gitlin,[39] Michael Tomasky, Richard Rorty, Sean Wilentz, Robert
W. McChesney,[citation needed] and Jim Sleeper.[40][clarification needed] Hobsbawm,
in particular, has criticized nationalisms, and the principle of national self-
determination adopted internationally 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.[citation needed] The
view that identity politics rooted in challenging racism, sexism, and the like
actually obscures class inequality is widespread in the United States and other
Western nations, but this framing ignores how class-based politics are identity
politics themselves.[41]

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 (and other non-
white people), gays and lesbians, and other oppressed groups together in community
and progress.[11] However, Crenshaw also points out that frequently groups come
together based on a shared political identity but then fail to examine differences
among themselves within their own group: "The problem with identity politics is not
that it fails to transcend differences, as some critics charge, but rather the
opposite�that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences."[11]
Crenshaw argues that when society thinks "black", they think black male, and when
society thinks feminism, they think white woman. When considering black women, at
least two aspects of their identity are the subject of oppression: their race and
their sex.[42] Crenshaw proposes instead that identity politics are useful but that
we must be aware of intersectionality and the role it plays in identity politics.
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?" [43]

In her journal article Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics

and Violence against Women of Color, Crenshaw provides the example of the Clarence
Thomas/Anita Hill controversy to expand on her point. Anita Hill came forward and
accused Supreme Court Justice Nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment;
Clarence Thomas would be the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court.
Crenshaw argues that when Anita Hill came forward she was deemed anti-black in the
movement against racism, and though 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.[11] Crenshaw concludes that
acknowledging intersecting categories when groups unite on the basis of identity
politics is better than ignoring categories altogether.[11]

Examples
Main category: Identity politics
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".[44]

See also
Adversarial process
Affirmative action
Afrophobia
Auto-segregation
Client politics
Conflict theory
Conviction politics
Cultural war
Diaspora politics
Divide and rule
Endogamy
Ethnic interest group
False consciousness
Group polarization
Group rights
Identity (social science)
Identitarianism
Interest group liberalism
Marx's theory of alienation
Minority influence
Nationalism
New social movements
Objectification
Opposition to immigration
Political consciousness
Political correctness
Queer theory
Racialism
Sectarianism
Separatism
Social conflict theory
Standpoint theory
Toxic masculinity
Tribalism
Voting bloc
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External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Identity politics.
Initiative on Religion in International Affairs at Harvard
"Identity politics", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 16 July 2002
Joan Mandel. "How Political Is the Personal?: Identity Politics, Feminism and
Social Change", University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Hasan B�lent Paksoy, Identities: How Governed, Who Pays?
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"Identity Politics Can Only Get Us So Far". Jacobin. 3 August 2017.
"Why identity politics benefits the right more than the left". The Guardian. 14
July 2018.
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