The concept of “identity politics” is much discussed, but rarely defined with clarity. In that sense, one of the political arena’s most salient cultural debates is swirling around a nebulous idea — one that Democrats face constant calls to reconsider from centrists in their own party.
What does it mean to practice the politics of identity? Is it simply turning greater focus to minority groups or marginalized communities, rather than more broadly focusing on how the economy, healthcare, and other policy questions impact everyone? Does it always go along with the indoctrination of various groups with the idea that they are victims and the world is out to get them? The phrase seems liable to over-application and misuse, flung from some observers every time a Democrat addresses, for instance, DACA recipients or transgender bathrooms.
In a Thursday interview with Adam Rubenstein of the Weekly Standard, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, out with a new book, supplied a clear definition of identity politics that makes a helpful distinction. See below (emphasis added):
Identity politics is the syndrome in which people’s beliefs and interests are assumed to be determined by their membership in groups, particularly their sex, race, sexual orientation, and disability status. Its signature is the tic of preceding a statement with “As a,” as if that bore on the cogency of what was to follow. Identity politics originated with the fact that members of certain groups really were disadvantaged by their group membership, which forged them into a coalition with common interests: Jews really did have a reason to form the Anti-Defamation League.
Thus the “identity politics” problem isn’t exactly an overemphasis on group membership so much as it is assuming group membership definitively and uniformly determines someone’s interests, coupled with the assumption their “identity” as a member of that group enhances the value of their beliefs compared with others.
At a congressional hearing on campus free speech last summer, Ben Shapiro explained “intersectionality,” a theory treasured by progressive academics and activists, as a philosophy contending the “validity or invalidity” of a viewpoint can be judged by a person’s identity. That’s not dissimilar to Pinker’s observation about the preface “As a,” often deployed in the game of identity politics to imply a given statement’s heightened sense of validity.
So is the real problem an ascendant impulse on the Left to assign value to feelings and ideas based on people’s race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.?
As centrists and conservatives have decried the rise of identity politics, the phrase has snowballed into a blunt force object used to undermine dubious progressive ramblings that seem out of touch with voters or toxic to a sense of national unity. In most cases, it’s probably fair. But to more seriously offer Democrats a course correction, agreeing on a precise definition of “identity politics” will be helpful as a means of better explaining the problem.
