Identity Politics

11/23/16

Identity Politics:

This is a reworking of a comment I made to a FB friend in a brief exchange we had a few months ago about identity politics. It reflects a few points he made that right away deepened, at least I think deepened, my understanding. 

Is this a good distinction better to understand the meaning of identity politics: the contrast between:

 a politics that is committed to--how to put this?--making oppressed, denied, marginalized groups fully equal citizens in their rights and liberties;

 and the interiorizing of the group self as a kind of group self obsession that asserts that group self to the virtual dismissal of other interests where these insistences and assertions strain against the commonalities a liberal democracy requires at its foundation? 

These commonalities, and encapsulated by the word "equal," represent the ideal of the movement from anachronistic status to merit. Hayek called it the move from status to contract.

Does this distinction reflect a more nuanced view that understands the historically rich play of groups vying for power in the securing of their fully equal civil rights isn't identity politics as such?

An example of this might be MLK's statement about the content of character in the context of the struggle he lead for equal civil rights. If so, then identity politics as such, as it ought to understood, might be seen as that very contrasting interiorizing I just touched on. 

The common understanding I perceive of identity politics is a politics that plays to groups, works off coalitions, rather than appealing to all citizens. But as my friend taught me, this view is naive; all politics does appeals to groups, works off group interests and coalitions. This common idea of identity politics is fatuous. 

There's of course much more to be considered. But maybe this is a helpful start.