Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

[friendofdorothy]

Perhaps you could start by quoting one or more posts from this thread which support your claim

no. This thread is 20 pages LGBT+ forum thread is 28 pages and theres 23 pages of the Cis thread - so I simply can't be arsed.

 

[redsquirrel]

its has been implied by various posters on this and other related threads.

I'm sorry but it really hasn't. Nobody on this thread has made such an implication (in fact I can't remember ever seeing such an implication on any thread on U75), on the contrary people have repeatedly stressed that the fight against racism/sexism/homophobia are at there most effective when embedded within the class framework.

 

[redsquirrel]

no. This thread is 20 pages LGBT+ forum thread is 28 pages and theres 23 pages of the Cis thread - so I simply can't be arsed.

Right well why should anybody take your claim seriously then.

This is pretty poor, you've made a specific claim, one that has been challenged by numerous posters and you aren't willing to defend it. This thread is only 20 pages it's not like it would be hard to search through it and produce evidence if your claim was true.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I'm sorry but it really hasn't. Nobody on this thread has made such an implication (in fact I can't remember ever seeing such an implication on any thread on U75), on the contrary people have repeatedly stressed that the fight against racism/sexism/homophobia are at there most effective when embedded within the class framework.

As I understood it some posters have insisted they are only effective when embedded within the class framework and everything else seems to be dismissed as ID politics.

 

[redsquirrel]

As I understood it some posters have insisted they are only effective when embedded within the class framework and everything else seems to be dismissed as ID politics.

Hang on (1) that's a different claim to the one you made previously - that some posters on this thread have said that people should 'wait until the complete overthrow of the capitalist system', and (2) I still not sure it's true, who has argued such a position?

 

[seventh bullet]

As I understood it some posters have insisted they are only effective when embedded within the class framework and everything else seems to be dismissed as ID politics.

So, something else entirely and that you can back up?

 

[andysays]

no. This thread is 20 pages LGBT+ forum thread is 28 pages and theres 23 pages of the Cis thread - so I simply can't be arsed.

If you "simply can't be arsed" to provide one simple example back up this claim (not the first time you've done this if I remember right) then I'm afraid I'll continue to regard you, like many of the most vocal supporters of ID politics here, of talking complete nonsense which you're utterly unable to back up, and of effectively smearing those with a different position to you.

I genuinely wonder why so many supporters of ID politics seem to repeatedly behave like this; it's as if dishonesty and misrepresentation is their normal position.

 

[emanymton]

As I understood it some posters have insisted they are only effective when embedded within the class framework and everything else seems to be dismissed as ID politics.

So when pulled up because you made up claim you can't substantiate, you just make up a different one. What is you next move? Report everyone who calls you on your made-up bullshit?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I'll continue to regard you, like many of the most vocal supporters of ID politics here, of talking complete nonsense which you're utterly unable to back up, and of effectively smearing those with a different position to you.

that comes across as pretty much what you're doing...

i have followed most of the threads on here, and i'm still little the wiser as to what 'identity politics' means (or whether it's like 'political correctness' and is just a phrase used to try and shut minorities up) or whether i support it or not.

if it's believing that people who are in a minority are entitled to a view, to challenge discrimination, and to put that view across themselves rather than wait for the 'mainstream' to put it across for them, then maybe i am...

 

[andysays]

that comes across as pretty much what you're doing...

i have followed most of the threads on here, and i'm still little the wiser as to what 'identity politics' means (or whether it's like 'political correctness' and is just a phrase used to try and shut minorities up) or whether i support it or not.

if it's believing that people who are in a minority are entitled to a view, to challenge discrimination, and to put that view across themselves rather than wait for the 'mainstream' to put it across for them, then maybe i am...

More misrepresentation.

Maybe you can provide examples of anyone, on this thread or any other, suggesting that people who are in a minority are not entitled to a view, not entitled to challenge discrimination, or not entitled to put that view across themselves rather than wait for the 'mainstream' to put it across for them

 

[Treacle Toes]

'The most vocal supporters of identity politics' ...I can't remember a time that I heard anyone claim to be that. I see a lot of broad brush labeling of people or opinions though. Many of these opinions represent opposite ends or different places on a spectrum which, through these discussions, it has been acknowledged is not all 'id politicking' in the harmful and separatist sense. It IS legitimate care and attention, activism, exploration and support around x, y, z issue in the first instance. I think the rub is what different people decide those legitimate issues to be and how people should go about it.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

and theres 23 pages of the Cis thread

although a fairly high proportion of that seems to be one individual hounding one trans urbanite

More misrepresentation.

Maybe you can provide examples of anyone, on this thread or any other, suggesting that people who are in a minority are not entitled to a view, not entitled to challenge discrimination, or not entitled to put that view across themselves rather than wait for the 'mainstream' to put it across for them

OK, what are you arguing for / against then?

All I'm seeing here is you trying to shout people down...

 

[ska invita]

this is a post responding to Danny really, and moved over from conversation on the LGBT forum? thread, as its a bit of a derail from there I think, and as Danny quotes a post from this thread.

I don't want to intervene in your discussion with Athos, but I think impasse is a fair word to use if you can read posts like this of mine from that thread (linked below) and still say what you've said.

Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

Yeah Impasse is a fair word, i never disagreed on that. Maybe I wasn't clear. Yes, with certain people and at certain times theres an impasse. I was saying I've not experienced these extreme cases (where dialogue is shut down) of essentialist identity politics personally or first hand, maybe as I'm not on twitter or at university! Seems to me thats where this really plays out.

Theres a self-righteousness thats being associated with the shit side of ID politics that seems to me to be part of a wider pattern of recent behaviour that shows itself with such things as twitter pile ons, no platforming, vampire castle etc and other depressing actions. That is something I have personally experienced and been on the end sharp end of, and feels like a much more common problem than the kind of crap behaviours named by Brainaddict and others.

As to your post that you linked, case 1 seems very extreme, case 2, i can see both sides and think people should have talked directly with her on twitter first rather than argue on urban about it.

Anyhow we've listed many behaviours that are symptomatic of some ID politics that create problems and impasses - in general I'm not arguing with any of that - but I think its important to recognise that there is also an impasse that comes from some of those who are strongly critical of identity politics, and you mention the issue in your post:

It has become common to see the formulation “you can’t understand my experiences because you don’t share my skin colour/chromosomes/mDNA/brain chemistry* etc”. Well, OK, maybe. But you can tell us.
As it happens in some ways I do sympathise with the argument that far.
.

You are able to sympathise with it, but many can't, especially when what they then hear contradicts something they think to be self-evidently true or makes them feel uncomfortable personally. The reaction can be to dismiss what they're hearing as ID-politics-gone-mad and on some occasions try and reduce such complexities away to a much simpler issue of class analysis. That reaction to hearing something the ID critic doesn't like can also lead to an Impasse, to an othering, to a tribalism of Us V Them etc. We've seen it on the threads.


(*Fingers crossed no one quotes me so i can have an evening in peace! Takes me ages to write a post and life is too short)

 

[andysays]

OK, what are you arguing for / against then?

All I'm seeing here is you trying to shout people down...

It's really quite bizarre that a request that posters back up their assertions/misrepresentations with evidence is portrayed as an attempt to "shout people down"...

 

[BigTom]

although a fairly high proportion of that seems to be one individual hounding one trans urbanite



OK, what are you arguing for / against then?

All I'm seeing here is you trying to shout people down...

That a class / materialist analysis gives a better understanding of the socio-political world than the individualist/Liberal analysis of identitypolitics.
It's depressing to be cast as seeking to deny minorities a view, to be uninterested in challenging discrimination etc. because you disagree with a political view and think there's a better way to look at, understand and go about these things.

This is from danny la rouge OP, it says it well:

Furthermore, because of the pervasiveness of this model [identitypolitics], it is now the widespread common sense that the only way to respect the struggles of marginalised people is through this model. In this now dominant common sense, identitypolitics is just a synonym for anti-racism, for feminism, for opposition to homophobia and transphobia and so on. Just as top down Multiculturalism is seen by so many as just a synonym for respecting diversity and inclusivity. And so, if one criticises identitypolitics, one is seen by many as opposing anti-racism, as opposing feminism, and so on, because identitypolitics has become seen as the only way of doing those things.

In this thread I hope we can discuss yes whether identitypolitics is the only way of doing these things, and whether, in fact, it really does those things, but more importantly whether there are other, better, ways of doing them.

And here we will hit another issue these debates often hit. There is a category error that invariably comes up. It is often assumed by identitypolitics practitioners that critics are arguing that “class is more important than race (or gender, or sexuality, or whatever)”. This is a misrepresentation that comes about because people have become so used to seeing identity as the basis for politics that they can only see competing identities, nothing else.

but despite all that being laid out in the OP, here we are, 21 pages later and the same stuff is being said back.

identitypolitics leads to some really shitty outcomes. Couple of days ago on twitter saw Owen Jones was talking about Labour targetting Amber Rudd in the next GE, as she has a majority of around 300, and being told that he's not progressive because he's saying labour should target a women. Never mind that she's a tory in one of the most marginal seats in the country.

It's privileging one identity above all others, it's so far away from intersectionalism, it's sometimes bizarre that that's where this started. Personally I've got a problem with politics that say we should elect tories because they are women/poc/etc. That's not because I don't think we should be electing more minorities, or because I want to deny minorities a view or because I'm unconcerned about discrimination, it's because tories will fuck us over because they are tories. I'm not going to campaign to get tories with mental health issues elected, though I like to see MPs open about such things and think that it would be good to have MPs who've personally experienced the underfunded mess that is the NHS mental health services (no disrespect to the people who work in this but they are madly overworked and underresourced and undersupported) I would never support the election of an MP who will seek to privatise and defund the NHS because they are a tory.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

i have followed most of the threads on here, and i'm still little the wiser as to what 'identity politics' means (or whether it's like 'political correctness' and is just a phrase used to try and shut minorities up) or whether i support it or not.

How can you not understand it?
Do you understand how white supremacy isn’t a thing (or could be one, if we divide by identities)?
Then you understand it ffs.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

I know that. However there are those who, whilst still have issues with gaining equality with the rest of society, have it much, much better than they had it 30, 20, or even 10 years ago, and will probably have it even better still 10 years from now. However there is a strand of IDpol which basically says that everyone not in the in-group is participating, consciously or otherwise, in a conspiracy to keep them down, and this will only end when they achieve some abstract notion of 'liberation'. That is what my comment was aimed at.

I think any kind of conspiritorial talk is suspect, not just from idpolitikers - and of course in its most overt and nastiest form it can directly be a tool of antisemitism, islamophobia, resurgent fascism and antiblackness (though I concede I'm not as knowledgeable on that one...) I think this is the way to challenge such things. Of
course the problem is despite thinking we live in a liberal tolerant society these attitudes boil under and from my own perspective as a visually impaired child of immigrants (admittedly from a now upwardly mobile middle class family) the general insulation of post-1980s immigrants creates this weird kind of double consciousness where you might be labourite in the UK because they tend to be less overtly islamophobic but as concerns back home, it is nationalism as usual. When said countries foster these methods of conspiritorial thinking for their own interests it becomes a ballache and a half presenting anything counter to that. I think with my generation, the post-2010s university generation that is, they feel estranged (rightly) from their parents still latent 'make enough money and then return/invest back home' perspective but heavy atomisation means that they see the way to approach politics as the outsider. There's a difference ime between that and blatant careerists who you get in unis. I mean, do we approve of blatantly entryist Oxbridge trotskyists who say nice things about workers and freedom of movement but then remain utterly silent when labour councils like haringey and Lewisham sell off public housing? When it was under labour rule that atos work capability assessments were established (and predecessor the benefits integrity project of 98.) When it was the lp that were the flag bearer of detention centres. Personally, Give me someone who is just a pissed off non-white person over these sorts of hacks any day (and i fully acknowledge that PoC is more a sociological category than a meaningfully political one...)

If people are not able to make use of those rights (and I consider the latter three to be of great importance), then they essentially they do not have them, regardless of whatever words appear in the statue books. Therefore the fight for said rights needs to continue.

Glad we agree on that.

I personally think that capitalism is going to be around in one form or another for some time to come, and the best I feel I can do is try and force capitalism to take a slightly less nasty form than it is presently. I certainly have long stopped believing that we can have a "revolution" as one single event to wipe the slate clean and then it's socialism from there on in.

Who argues this? Revolutions, like class are messy, contradictory affairs that whilst being cataclysmic aren't just some neat godly providence of history affair where we achieve the kingdom of heaven. I don't think anyone has argued that capitalism won't be around for a while.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

How can you not understand it?
Do you understand how white supremacy isn’t a thing (or could be one, if we divide by identities)?
Then you understand it ffs.

What? Don't you think there are material antagonisms in the proletariat? Between skilled and unskilled, between new immigrants and established immigrants and natives, between the waged and the wageless? between the precarious and the aspirationally bourgeois and pb? don't give me that oh it's a ruling class conspiracy plz.

Sorry if i read your post wrong but you don't need to subscribe to identity politics to acknowledge the existence of white supremacy.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

What? Don't you think there are material antagonisms in the proletariat? Between skilled and unskilled, between new immigrants and established immigrants and natives, between the waged and the wageless? between the precarious and the aspirationally bourgeois and pb? don't give me that oh it's a ruling class conspiracy plz.

Sorry if i read your post wrong but you don't need to subscribe to identity politics to acknowledge the existence of white supremacy.

Perhaps you could explain why you don’t think skin colour is an identity that some people seek to organise around politically instead of talking about antagonisms within the proletariat?

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Perhaps you could explain why you don’t think skin colour is an identity that some people seek to organise around politically instead of talking about antagonisms within the proletariat?

Because it isn't solely about pigmentation is it? In the united states for instance, Asian indicates East Asian. Everyone else on the asian continent is .. technically white.

To complicate matters, you will have pale middle easterners, south asians, white skinned black mixed race, etc. All of these are subsumed under the category of People of Colour.

To complicate things even further, you will have a division between african american blacks and african blacks, the caribbean, and as a friend told me last year, between say the Nubian predominantly islamic regions and cultures, and west Africa. What we're talking about here are myriad histories, patterns of immigration and migration.

So I don't understand your point if I'm being honest.

And of course those antagonisms are relevant, it's not a question of me moralising, it's the whole deal of social production essential to class analysis.

 

[BigTom]

Because it isn't solely about pigmentation is it? In the united states for instance, Asian indicates East Asian. Everyone else on the asian continent is .. technically white.

To complicate matters, you will have pale middle easterners, south asians, white skinned black mixed race, etc. All of these are subsumed under the category of People of Colour.

To complicate things even further, you will have a division between african american blacks and african blacks, the caribbean, and as a friend told me last year, between say the Nubian predominantly islamic regions and cultures, and west Africa. What we're talking about here are myriad histories, patterns of immigration and migration.

So I don't understand your point if I'm being honest.

And of course those antagonisms are relevant, it's not a question of me moralising, it's the whole deal of social production essential to class analysis.

His point, i think, is that white supremacism is identitypolitics and that any politics which lends itself so wholely to white supremacist positions is clearly wrong.

And i would agree, the alt right & mra are part of a world of identitypolitics, and it's a red flag to me that the idpol analysis of the world can lead to such outcomes. Fascism has borrowed from socialism before but not in such a wholesale way

 

[ManchesterBeth]

His point, i think, is that white supremacism is identitypolitics and that any politics which lends itself so wholely to white supremacist positions is clearly wrong.

And i would agree, the alt right & mra are part of a world of identitypolitics, and it's a red flag to me that the idpol analysis of the world can lead to such outcomes. Fascism has borrowed from socialism before but not in such a wholesale way

Oh, yes, I can see that now.

I would agree with that but i would also add that in liberal circles there is often this kind of muted dialogue of white people - how do we deal with our BAME friends/coworkers/etc? and hackshot articles in places like the grauniad which are just so obviously rooted in racism as a consumer choice Which is very dangerous to seeing us as untamed animals even if the intentions are well meaning. It kind of rehashes 19th c victorian conceptions of race to the 21st c. If you're not a well meaning (ugh fuck it can't think of a better term) liberal its not hard to extrapolate from that to construct a white identity.

I think spiney upthread had the best post on the subject.

 

[redsquirrel]

i have followed most of the threads on here, and i'm still little the wiser as to what 'identity politics' means (or whether it's like 'political correctness' and is just a phrase used to try and shut minorities up) or whether i support it or not.

if it's believing that people who are in a minority are entitled to a view, to challenge discrimination, and to put that view across themselves rather than wait for the 'mainstream' to put it across for them, then maybe i am...

For my part I think most posts on this thread have been pretty clear what they are talking about and with people giving numerous examples but you disagree - ok fine enough then why don't you tell us exactly what you find unclear so we can explain it better.

Asking people to explain further is no problem, but making the sort of vague accusation that you do in your second paragraph is just rubbish. No-one has said anything to that would imply the contrary position, so it just comes across as you have not bothered to read the thread properly.

 

[redsquirrel]

Yeah Impasse is a fair word, i never disagreed on that. Maybe I wasn't clear. Yes, with certain people and at certain times theres an impasse. I was saying I've not experienced these extreme cases (where dialogue is shut down) of essentialist identity politics personally or first hand, maybe as I'm not on twitter or at university! Seems to me thats where this really plays out.

Does U75 not count as first hand? There's a least one poster that uses the (racist) denominator 'white working class', I can give multiple examples of people being called racists for criticising liberal/social democratic politics from the left, there was the casual dismissal of those who voted Leave in the EU referendum as racists.

If we want to go further afield then look at how identitypolitics was used to attack Sanders/Corbyn/Melachon.

EDIT: In fact this piece today is perfect example of both how dominant identitypolitics has become and how harmful it is.

Let’s free education from the hands of the stale, pale male

We have a headline that immediately places identity at the front, despite the fact that the piece itself makes a very different argument. However, while the arguments in the piece are a lot less stupid than the headline there's still this

It would take a bold politician to do it, but what if she or he committed to a cross-party group to look at the evidence and solutions on the most intractable issues, such as white British underachievement, and then implement the findings?

again no mention of class but race dead centre. Another example of the class being racialised.

 

[danny la rouge]

this is a post responding to Danny really, and moved over from conversation on the LGBT forum? thread, as its a bit of a derail from there I think, and as Danny quotes a post from this thread.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

For those not following the cross-thread discussion, the post I was responding to was this:

Danny's ID thread talks about an impasse. I haven't really experienced this impasse in the real world, but based on testimony it seems one of the key dynamics of the impasse is people with oppression experiences being told they're doing it wrong by people who aren't experiencing those things, and vice versa. That dynamic seems to be at the heart of the problem and breaks down dialogue and respect. If you want to see an end to that impasse please cut out this Us v Them crap. Its divisive and comes across as patronising and self-aggrandising IMO.

I was saying I've not experienced these extreme cases (where dialogue is shut down) of essentialist identity politics personally or first hand, maybe as I'm not on twitter or at university! Seems to me thats where this really plays out.

Well, in the post I linked you to, "Case 3" was one from my own experience (in the real world pre-Twitter, and not at university).

This is what I said:

On and off for many years I was involved in disability activism. However, in the early ‘00s, in a group I was involved in, some members started to challenge whether I was “really” disabled. These were people with physical disabilities who didn’t see mental ill-health as a “proper” disability. People I’d known for years started referring to me as “the TAB man”, and challenge my right to speak at meetings. “Will the TAB* man stop speaking?” And so on. (*temporarily able bodied). They were trying to split into ever smaller interest groups, and saw “their” section of the existing group as having competing interests to “my” section. This is a group where six people at a meeting was a great turnout. I left, but it also shook my confidence at the time. I was questioning whether I had been dominating meetings, whether I had the right to call myself disabled, and so on. It wasn’t pleasant at all. But the saddest thing is that a group that was already tiny was making itself smaller and cutting itself off even from alliances that had founded the group! This same tendency could be seen in the recent thread about feminists and trans women.

If we do that, if we retreat into mutually suspicious ghettos, we weaken any capacity for fightback. If we see all outsiders as oppressors, and disallow them, then how do we win them over? If only the “right” people can be pure fighters against disablism (or transphobia, sexism, racism or whatever), then how can it ever be defeated?

My question is whether you'd say my criticism of that group counts as "people with oppression experiences being told they're doing it wrong by people who aren't experiencing those things"? And the supplementary question is if not, who gets to criticise it? Only me? Only disabled people? Only people who can lay claim to some sort of "badge of resistance" from somewhere on the "wheel of oppression", with the criticism being more credible the closer it sits to 6 o'clock?

This was the point of my raising what you call "case 1". It's the logic behind essentialism. If you say that by being white you bear responsibility for slavery, then it follows that by being mixed race you sometimes do.

Theres a self-righteousness thats being associated with the shit side of ID politics that seems to me to be part of a wider pattern of recent behaviour

I agree. But I think it's a bit more than just earnest moral-high-ground-ism, I think it's directly related to essentialism and especially to biological essentialism, as described elsewhere in this thread. It is a reactionary ideology; an ideology of the far right.

case 2, i can see both sides and think people should have talked directly with her on twitter first rather than argue on urban about it.

Well, urban, being in the world as it is today, sometimes discusses what people have said on twitter, from Donald Trump to Penny Laurie. If you're saying that anyone with any views on those things should only ever take them up with the person in question and on twitter, then a lot of newspaper, journal and blog copy would be wiped out over night. (And I'd have some sympathy with the ruling!). But what happened was that the tweet was quoted approvingly on urban by an urbanite. I don't think it was out of order for other posters to enquire as to why they approved of it.

You are able to sympathise with it

What I was specifically sympathising with was the argument that we need to hear more diverse voices. I'm sympathising with where this was coming from in the first place. What I'm saying, though, is that there are better ways to do that than where we've ended up; that we've been led down a dead end into actually reactionary politics, albeit as the long term result of what were initially decent motivations.

 

[doodlelogic]

Feminists* would say, correctly, that equality and freedom from exploitation can only be achieved in a feminist context; otherwise any left approach will necessarily exclude 50% of the population.

Socialists would say, correctly, that women's equality and liberation cannot be achieved solely by equal opportunities with men; that would leave exploited women in this country and round the world (classic example is the liberation of professional women via hiring migrant cleaners). So a class context is essential to any effective (i.e. radical) feminist approach. Radical feminism holds out the prospect of a better life for men, too: "we do not wish to liberate women only to lead the lives of unfree men".

Modern identity politics generally seeks to synthesise these strands through intersectionality - the recognition that while groups are mostly focussed on sectional objectives; they will only be effective for all (and not just the more privileged within their group) if they take into account multiple overlapping schisms in society.

*This probably holds for most disadvantaged groups, but no-one likes a monster post.

 

[doodlelogic]

that we've been led down a dead end into actually reactionary politics

Agree 100% that this is the risk with a multifactorial approach. Divide and rule, set blacks against whites, men against women, some disabled people against other disabled people and no-one achieves anything. There has to be unity and solidarity to get things done.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Does U75 not count as first hand? There's a least one poster that uses the (racist) denominator 'white working class', I can give multiple examples of people being called racists for criticising liberal/social democratic politics from the left, there was the casual dismissal of those who voted Leave in the EU referendum as racists.

If we want to go further afield then look at how identitypolitics was used to attack Sanders/Corbyn/Melachon.

EDIT: In fact this piece today is perfect example of both how dominant identitypolitics has become and how harmful it is.


We have a headline that immediately places identity at the front, despite the fact that the piece itself makes a very different argument. However, while the arguments in the piece are a lot less stupid than the headline there's still this
again no mention of class but race dead centre. Another example of the class being racialised.

On a similar note...I have been thinking about how the publishing of this report/data will be used given that TM is positioning herself as some kind of champion of anti-discrimination.

Theresa May vows to tackle race divide after report reveals extent of UK's racial inequality

 

[butchersapron]

Feminists* would say, correctly, that equality and freedom from exploitation can only be achieved in a feminist context; otherwise any left approach will necessarily exclude 50% of the population.

That would depend on the content of that feminism surely? There clearly is a strand that believes that legal equality alone is feminism and that this is possible under capitalism - even that capitalism is best situated (or solely situated ) to provide this.

 

[doodlelogic]

Yes, I agree that a radical feminist approach is required and a focus on legal equality alone is insufficient.