Hmm, it seems like it would have to be. If polity in this sentence refers to the exclusive group that marginalized others, then they’d have no concept or understanding of the identity-framework. All they know is the belief-framework, which is a false framework. In other words, why would they talk about politics in terms of identity when they all share the same identity? Hah.
Also, I realized I spelled illusory wrong like an idiot, but it was already too late to avoid the shameful “edit” badge, so I just left it. Ugh.
Again, no. They’ve written the exclusion into law, into policy, into practice. They campaign on the exclusion! They aren’t ignorant of it.
You seem to be assuming that they could not have been both [Republicans / Democrats / Whigs / Federalists / Socialists / etc] and racists in their politics. That’s pretty wrong, isn’t it?
Even today, the outcry against identity politics — by all indications, your outcry — is the realization that the excluded others are no longer being excluded; that they have growing political power and intend to use it. That they demand an end to exclusionary policies and practices.
You keep saying that you’ll reflect on the things people are telling you. I hope you do, because you’re on the wrong side of right and wrong here, and you’re on the wrong side of history. One fewer person fighting that grotesque losing battle would be a good thing.
Ohhh, I finally see what you’re trying to say. Because they must actively and continuously exclude those identities from the political realm, they must be aware of the fundamental identity component to politics.
Even the random Joe at the grocery store that’s never actively participated in this process or given it a second thought (by design, since the marginals had already been excluded by the powers that be) is working within that framework. I still assert that from the perspective of those specific people, politics has always been about belief, since they don’t know any better.
To say otherwise presumes way more political education and awareness than likely exists, which may be hard to believe from your perspective as a political diehard.
This is you saying that no, you won’t actually reflect on any of this because you like your own ideas just fine. Indeed, you’re working very hard to keep them.
I like to understand a political point from all angles. I’m not afraid of the angles that don’t align with mine. In fact, the act of understanding makes me less afraid and uncertain.
Our political society would be a lot better off that way.
This is…hard to believe, given the conversation we’ve just had. If this is the first time you’ve been confronted with the argument that identity politics as a complaint is basically just white male resentment over loss of political control held through their own identity politics, you aren’t trying very hard to find or understand opposing points of view. In any event, my sense is that you’re just trolling.
Oh, it was Tim remembering this post which spawned the rebirth of these identity politics threads wasn’t it. Sorry 😲
I refute and reject a majority of my previous posts in this thread. Not the stuff that remains an issue for exmuslims and LGBT Muslims, ie cultural relativism, or Uncle Tomming etc, but the rest isn’t worth arguing for any more.
I note that some of those sites and articles I linked who used to be right centrist/libertarian centrist and egalitarian went full fash in the last few years, quillette, writers for reason etc. Spiked are actually my enemies now.
Anyway, don’t apologize. It’s my fault for throwing grenades on a sensitive subject without fully considering how other perspectives might view that in a casual thread for bashing Trump. Sorry!
Yeah, this is why it can apply to things which aren’t innate identity.
Ultimately, the notion of identity politics, and what makes it a caustic, stupid thing, is that it suggests that your politics are all driven by your participation as a member of some group. That it’s all about political combat, an us vs. them mentality. It reduces a lot of discussion down to the idea that “they are trying to harm us.”
And when you reduce everything to that simplistic level, you all but preclude things like compromise, which are essential to have a functional society.
Major caveat: there are some things that absolutely can not be compromised on. How many children to put in cages without running water, for example, is not something with room for compromise on.
If we are talking about budget, and allocation of infrastructure projects? Sure. If we are talking about unaccountable police hiding under qualified immunity when murdering random civilians when serving a no knock warrant at the wrong house? No, not really.
Yes, the tribal lens also leads to breathtaking absurdities like the bundling of climate change as a “liberal” issue. As if conservatives can live comfortably at 10 degrees higher temperature than liberals?
Here, two very white wealthy people decry how the society they inherited is being taken away from them, explaining that whiteness was the essence of that society. And they justify violence to sustain white supremacy.
Seems like this whole discussion would benefit from concrete examples, which was what was asked for in the original post that resurrected this thread. It is a common tactic (in my experience) of libertarian interlocutors to drive the discussion into abstraction, locate a rhetorical cul-de-sac to circle around and then claim victory when the discussion cycles to their advantage. All the while, history and culture and society are actually out there.
In actual regimes where members of the power-owing group shared an identity like, say, men in America until the 1920’s or whites in the Jim Crow south, they certainly were, in no way, unaware that they were excluding out-groups from power. It was absolutely deliberate, even if it wasn’t always considered. Does your average white dude understand that he’s more likely to be hired than a black applicant for the same job? C’mon now. Of course he does. He will also be all too willing to express aggrievement about it should society decide to try to redress this injustice.
Hi Matt. I offered myself as an example of how politics (from my perspective) was “all about” beliefs. I wasn’t aware of identity politics until it was explained to me, due to my privilege.
I ignored the original question about identifying a political era because I’m not an historian. Scott offered a personalized thought experiment instead and we’ve been breaking it down from there.
…but the open question remains: Do you still contend that identity politics is somehow new or unprecedented; and if so, what is the basis of that contention? After all, you’re not an historian.
I’m not sure I follow this line of thought, even separate from identity. Politics is at least somewhat empirical. There’s polling and data. And it involves things like economics and science that are even more empirical. Society isn’t an abstraction–there’s a way in which it is kind of amorphous, but you can go out and walk around your city, observe your interactions with other people, turn on your TV and browse the internet, etc. We aren’t floating in space far from gravity. I mean sure, there’s a sense in which political conflict over, say, climate change is about people’s beliefs. BUT, much of political activity around climate change ends up being about disaster mitigation, immigration, water rights, disease research, etc The effects of climate change don’t care about our beliefs and we end up dealing with them regardless, probably not as efficiently or benignly as if we had consensus.
If I was a black man in 1940’s Alabama, I might have a set of political beliefs, but my ability to participate in public life would have been severely circumscribed by the fact of my blackness, regardless of my beliefs or my desire to effect them. And specifically blackness. Sure, a poor white farmer had plenty of obstacles to political actualization, but they weren’t gonna be lynched for trying to register other poor white farmers to vote.
You’re right of course. Maybe I should be more precise and say that I think it’s ultimately about beliefs. I base this in part on my experience at QT3 and at another forum on the other end of the exact political spectrum. Everyone starts by throwing around empirical data. That goes nowhere, of course. So we go back and forth peeling away layers trying to understand each other. At least sometimes we tried. And eventually you’d reach the core values and beliefs of each person. Obviously these are impossible to change on an Internet forum, so we had to drop it there. Which ultimately made me realize what a waste of time it was to do the data dance. YMMV!
Also I haven’t thought about this too hard. I threw it out there as a counterexample to Scott to try to shake him off and focus back on the practical issue at hand.
