"Identity politics is the handmaiden of neoliberalism"
Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 3:11 am
In the comments section of an op-ed in the NYT, I came across the following remark:
It articulates very well what I’ve been thinking for some time. Identity politics and narrowly ethnic-based or gender-based ‘community’ self-focus disempowers all economically disadvantaged people, whatever their gender or ethnic background. It only strengthens those who interest is in maintaining exploitative work conditions and low wages to increase the profits of big businesses and wealthy shareholders.
I come at this from a French perspective. It saddens me that the left, in English-speaking countries, had moved from a focus on resolving economic disempowerment, to instead encouraging people to self-identify strongly on ethnic lines, with the false belief that they have categorically different problems, categorically different experiences, incompatible or competing interests, and no common ground. It saddens me also to see this starting to creep into France as well.
Of course, racism and sexism are very real problems, which blight people’s lives, cause real hurt and deny people fair opportunities. It would be absurd to downplay that reality. But responding to that with identity politics, rather than broad and inclusive civic solidarity, seems to me to be wrong, damaging, self-defeating and even quite toxic. Telling economically disempowered whites (especially men) that they should view themselves as privileged oppressors, when they may be struggling to make ends meet on low wages, is supposed to achieve… what, exactly? Apart from pushing them to the right, and encouraging some of them to adopt a particularly nasty type of identity politics as well?
If I were American, I think I would feel politically orphaned. I’m definitely not a conservative, so I would never vote Republican - religious conservatism, narrow-minded nationalism and hard-right economics are anathema to me. But I would find it impossible to identify with modern American liberalism, identity politics, and what has sometimes been called the ‘regressive left’. I imagine quite a number of Americans, and people in other English-speaking countries too, feel that way as well.
Identity politics is, among other things, the handmaiden of neoliberalism. The black teenager without proper legal representation, the trans woman without medical insurance or a job, and the white man stocking shelves in Walmart all form a single social class of the disenfanchised. Encouraging them to identify according to individual, race or sexual identity––of course, often causes of being oppressed––instead of as economic victims, denies them a common voice. It divides people who otherwise might have solidarity with each other and prevents them from mobilizing across race lines to oppose the corporate abuses of oligarchy and the 1%. And as people further re-define according to more atomized identities, the force of divide and rule is constantly augmented by its own victims.
It articulates very well what I’ve been thinking for some time. Identity politics and narrowly ethnic-based or gender-based ‘community’ self-focus disempowers all economically disadvantaged people, whatever their gender or ethnic background. It only strengthens those who interest is in maintaining exploitative work conditions and low wages to increase the profits of big businesses and wealthy shareholders.
I come at this from a French perspective. It saddens me that the left, in English-speaking countries, had moved from a focus on resolving economic disempowerment, to instead encouraging people to self-identify strongly on ethnic lines, with the false belief that they have categorically different problems, categorically different experiences, incompatible or competing interests, and no common ground. It saddens me also to see this starting to creep into France as well.
Of course, racism and sexism are very real problems, which blight people’s lives, cause real hurt and deny people fair opportunities. It would be absurd to downplay that reality. But responding to that with identity politics, rather than broad and inclusive civic solidarity, seems to me to be wrong, damaging, self-defeating and even quite toxic. Telling economically disempowered whites (especially men) that they should view themselves as privileged oppressors, when they may be struggling to make ends meet on low wages, is supposed to achieve… what, exactly? Apart from pushing them to the right, and encouraging some of them to adopt a particularly nasty type of identity politics as well?
If I were American, I think I would feel politically orphaned. I’m definitely not a conservative, so I would never vote Republican - religious conservatism, narrow-minded nationalism and hard-right economics are anathema to me. But I would find it impossible to identify with modern American liberalism, identity politics, and what has sometimes been called the ‘regressive left’. I imagine quite a number of Americans, and people in other English-speaking countries too, feel that way as well.