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

[Steel Icarus]

If anybody wants an illustration of how toxic identity politics can be, here is an illustration of an exchange I just had in an intersectional Facebook page (incidentally I think intersectional theory has many valid incites into how discrimination and oppression works, but many of its supposed adhrents have a crude grasp on these).

So the OP (a white woman) posted up a discussion she had with an East European man in which he was defending some racially insensitive comments made by another person. He said that he didn’t think the comments were racist, merely poorly phrased. The OP said ‘as a white man you don’t get to say what is and isn’t racist’ and he replied ‘as an Eastern European man living in Germany, believe me I have experienced racism myself’. The OP then told him it he could never experience racism and blocked him.

In the subsequent discussion somebody said that while he thought the east-European was wrong to defend the racist comments, the OP was also wrong to reject the notion that east Europeans could experience racism and he posted up a bunch of links about the discrimination and violence many EEs experience in Western Europe. The OP and others respond that this is ‘xenophobia not racism’.

I then argue that the discrimiantion and prejudice that east Europeans experience cannot simply be described as xenophobia in all cases, I point to the history of anti-slavism in Europe and the ways in which Slavic people have been racialised and regarded as inferior, in much the way Irish people, Jews and the Roma have been. I posted a link to a short Wikipedia entry on the subject.

She responds instantly with *sigh*. When I pressed her to explain her response she said she didn’t need to read the link to know it is not racism, and said that she didn’t owe any ‘emotional labour’ to me as a white man. Others then jump in accusing me of derailing the conversation and decentering the racism black people experince. The OP says she ‘is so done with white people’.

And then it goes full circle. Another non-white poster has a go at the OP for calling out white people as if she is not white herself. He says she can’t do that because it de-centres her own whiteness and of course she starts apologising and what not.

I generally don’t bother engaging in this group but every few months I have a go and then remember why I don’t bother.

Exactly this shit is why I couldn't hack Twitter in the end. Saw an argument like this two or three times a week and nobody learns a damn thing.

 

[danny la rouge]

Exactly this shit is why I couldn't hack Twitter in the end. Saw an argument like this two or three times a week and nobody learns a damn thing.

My feelings precisely.

 

[Athos]

Good post, generally. And, in particular, the bit about the misunderstanding/misuse of intersectionality.

... She responds instantly with *sigh*. When I pressed her to explain her response she said she didn’t need to read the link to know it is not racism, and said that she didn’t owe any ‘emotional labour’ to me as a white man. Others then jump in accusing me of derailing the conversation and decentering the racism black people experince. The OP says she ‘is so done with white people’.

These are some of the classic ID pol tactics to avoid having to construct an argument/political position that might withstand the slightest scrutiny. I've seen them all used here, increasingly, recently.

I've noticed the ID pol fans seem to like to: i) adopt an air of dismissive superiority (and imply that anyone who disagrees must be a bigot) and, ii) dress up their nonsense in this sort of jargon.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Good post, generally. And, in particular, the bit about the misunderstanding/misuse of intersectionality.



These are some of the classic ID pol tactics to avoid having to construct an argument/political position that might withstand the slightest scrutiny. I've seen them all used here, increasingly, recently.

I've noticed the ID pol fans seem to like to: i) adopt an air of dismissive superiority (and imply that anyone who disagrees must be a bigot) and, ii) dress up their nonsense in this sort of jargon.

Totally this. If you challenge their position then what’s called into question isn’t your politics, but your identity.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Also saw a tremendous taste for the phrase lived experience trotted out by young white m/c students - but only if they seemed this experience exotic enough. It wasn't as much about fighting for oppressed groups' rights as a weird sort of wheel of oppression Pokémon. Was asked once by an IdPol twitterer to go through the list of people I followed and report back with numbers of PoC, queer and trans people I followed if I was really interested in an equal society.

 

[Athos]

Also saw a tremendous taste for the phrase lived experience trotted out by young white m/c students - but only if they seemed this experience exotic enough. It wasn't as much about fighting for oppressed groups' rights as a weird sort of wheel of oppression Pokémon. Was asked once by an IdPol twitterer to go through the list of people I followed and report back with numbers of PoC, queer and trans people I followed if I was really interested in an equal society.

'Lived experience' is very much on-trend at the moment. It's a shortcut to closing down debate; by conflating the ideas of disagreeing with the political conclusions someone reaches based on their experience, and denying or invalidating that experience (out of bigotry).

 

[Steel Icarus]

'Lived experience' is very much on-trend at the moment. It's a shortcut to closing down debate; by conflating the ideas of disagreeing with the political conclusions someonr reaches based on their experience, and denying or invalidating that experience (out of bigotry).

And yet my own was dismissed as naive by a student who had a conversation with me about why I shouldn't have enjoyed working in a factory.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'll be your mirror, reflect what you are.

 

[chilango]

OTOH I think “lived experience” is really important in testing/shaping your own views.

 

[Athos]

OTOH I think “lived experience” is really important in testing/shaping your own views.

If course it is. Nobody would deny that.

The issue is how it's deliberately dishonestly misused.

 

[chilango]

If course it is. Nobody would deny that.

The issue is how it's deliberately dishonestly misused.

Agreed.

 

[ska invita]

glad to have real world example to talk about rather than just abstract.

Totally this. If you challenge their position then what’s called into question isn’t your politics, but your identity.

In this case the facebook OP woman was definitely wrong to shut down the conversation in such a way, as you describe. Its why people like Kenan Malik end up writing big defences of the Enlightenment, as a way to reinstate the notion there are objective truths and we have to have a system to get to those truths.

But as has already been said above, there are times when personal experience 'trumps' everything, namely in subjective matters, and in the wider lessons and outcomes of those subjective truths.

Its right that there is a new culture (born from identity politics i expect) of wanting to give more space and respect to marginalised experiences. The #metoo thing is a very public and positive example of that culture biting. But when that leaks into objective discussions, such as the very interesting topic of "whats the difference between xenophobia and racism (and their relationship to one another)", thats fucked up. Hopefully people who act that way will over time be able to fine tune to the difference between the two things.

 

[ska invita]

The issue is how it's deliberately dishonestly misused.

Why Dishonest? Deliberate? not words i would use. I think people are confused

 

[Athos]

Why Dishonest? Deliberate? not words i would use. I think people are confused

Experience.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

OTOH I think “lived experience” is really important in testing/shaping your own views.

Indeed, here I have great sympathy with ID Pol in that identity is shaped by experience and experience matters to politics. Stuff like 'mansplanning' and ignoring the testimony and lived reality of people of colour and working class people are real problems. The stark contrast between many women and many men's reactions to #metoo is illustrative of this. Most women are not surprised at all whereas loads of guys are - at best - saying they are shocked and at worst accusing women using the hashtag of 'lying' or 'hating men'. If men were better at listening to the testimony of women we wouldn't be in the situation where sexual assault was so common place.

The problems begin when all nuance goes out the window. It's one thing saying that we ought to listen and give due deference to the accounts and views of people with different experiences, and to alter our viewpoints when we get new perspectives. It's quite another to say that we ought to uncritically defer to whatever someone of a particular identity says or that somebody's opinions and views on a topic are completely irrelevant purely because of their identity (independently of the strength of their argument). Then the whole discourse just collapses into relativism and no meaningful discussion can be had. This is particularly the case when two people with the same 'identity' disagree on something. Crude ID Polers simply have no methodology for adjudicating what the correct 'line' is when people of oppressed group X have different views on the matter.

 

[ska invita]

Crude ID Polers simply have no methodology for adjudicating what the correct 'line' is when people of oppressed group X have different views on the matter.

You've called it a "crude" form, and thats what i mean by its a problem of "behaviours". I think the adjucating "rule" is whether the discussion is about objective truths or subjective truths. That can be a complicated thing to work out, and im sure there are examples with grey areas and overlap to further confuse. I don't think people are being "deliberately dishonest" if they get that wrong.

Experience.

i expect you mean urban. im not going to rehash that, but i would say you've had a big role to play in those experiences

 

[Jeff Robinson]

You've called it a "crude" form, and thats what i mean by its a problem of "behaviours". I think the adjucating "rule" is whether the discussion is about objective truths or subjective truths. That can be a complicated thing to work out, and im sure there are examples with grey areas and overlap to further confuse. I don't think people are being "deliberately dishonest" if they get that wrong.

As a general rule, in my experience I don't think that problematic ID Polers are being deliberately dishonest, I think they believe they are fighting the good fight. But their tendency towards essentialism and relativism - as well as their intolerance and inability to discuss ideas - are actually stumbling blocks to achieving the more socially just world they are striving for.

 

[Athos]

i expect you mean urban. im not going to rehash that, but i would say you've had a big role to play in those experiences

Including, but by no means limited to Urban (and less important here than in real world stuff).

Yes, I daresay you're right that my attitude to the ID pol fans affects the way they behave towards me, and so shapes my experience.

 

[Athos]

I don't think people are being "deliberately dishonest" if they get that wrong.

What, never? Honestly?

Because I can think of a few here who definitely fall into that category. Though I accept that for others, it's just sloppy thinking.

 

[andysays]

You've called it a "crude" form, and thats what i mean by its a problem of "behaviours". I think the adjucating "rule" is whether the discussion is about objective truths or subjective truths. That can be a complicated thing to work out, and im sure there are examples with grey areas and overlap to further confuse. I don't think people are being "deliberately dishonest" if they get that wrong...

In my experience (sic), there are a number of posters here on Urban* who simultaneously

1. elevate their own experience above that of anyone else, whether that experience is actually relevant to the subject under discussion,
   
2. complain about others "denying their experience" if anyone has the gall to disagree with them or express an opinion which differs from theirs and
   
3. dismiss or even deny the reality of other people's experience when it differs from theirs.

I'm increasingly convinced that what attracts many people to IDpol is the opportunity to behave in this way, to act out their own insecurities around their identity or fragile sense of self. It becomes less politics as a group or collective activity, and more as a personal or individual form of therapy.

It's (just about) possible to be sympathetic to the insecurities which lead people to do this, while also recognising that this sort of behaviour makes it more or less impossible to have any sort of meaningful dialogue or collective action beyond a handful of people who view each other as being fellow members of one or more oppressed groups. Anyone outside of that narrow self-selecting identity is suspect at best and actively oppressing them at worse, often for nothing more than expressing a slightly different opinion, perspective or experience.

When this sort of IDpol thinking takes hold, it ceases to matter whether the actions are deliberately dishonest or the result of honestly held delusions, the result is the same. And many threads on Urban are so effected by this shit as to be utterly pointless, IMO.

*not going to bother mentioning names. I've got most of them on ignore now so I won't be reading or replying to the responses some will doubtless make.

 

[Casually Red]

A decent critique here , from a Marxist whos frequently accused of being white . A crime in itself . Explains how the original idea of "white privilege " was perverted by the ID crew . Originally it was used by Marxists as a means of explaining to white workers in the US they'd been bribed by the capitalist class, and this " privilege " was a means to their own oppression, harmful to them as it ensured they'd never build a cross racial movement to emancipate the working class . Now it's just used to tell people to shut up , and to justify not having a cross racial working class effort . Worth a read . A lot of background there as regards its origins and how it's been co opted by the capitalist system and diverted into the opposite of what the original ideas were about .

" identity politics is the Reaganite version of cultural nationalism "

A Marxist Critiques Identity Politics : The Pensive Quill

 

[butchersapron]

It might be useful to explore where identity politics emerged from in the U.K.

Very briefly, EP Thompson and other Marxist thinkers who left the CP over the invasion of Hungary went on to form a journal called the New Left Review.

Their experience of the CP and Stalinism led them to attempt to rethink left/Marxist politics and coincided with an academic movement that questioned linear empirical history and focusssed instead on language and power and privilege within texts.

5 years later Stuart Hall's introduction in NLR condemned all 'top-down' politics and told us all to look for resistance in cultural identity.

The reasons for this turn are manifold but whatever the reasons it was the beginning of an - in my view disasterous - turn away from economically interventionist politics and towards the politics of identity.

I'll post more on this later but I think it's important to note where and why identity politics emerged.

This is massively unfair and inaccurate towards Stuart Hall. He never once never argued that there was no material determination only culture - he, in fact, argued against the idea that there could only ever be cultural resistance and common misreadings of his work that suggested that he did. Not even at the height of his support for cultural-based ideas (around the time of Gramsci and Us in the mid-late 80s) - even then he problematised simplistic ideas of culture. What he did when he was editor of NLR (he was the first one btw not later introduced) was argue - in line with E.P Thompson's work - that the w/c are ongoing participants in the making of their own culture and history, rather than the more common left-wing view that they were either simply passive recipients of culture they were easily manipulated through - TV, popular newspapers and mass entertainment etc (still the dominant idea on the left today i'm afraid) or observers of a high culture they did not have the tools to appreciate and engage in. In this he was miles ahead of nearly everyone else.

I'd also suggest that you're over-emphasising the break many of the people involved in The New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review which merged to form NLR actually broke with the politics of stalinism and the old left and on what grounds some of them actually did. I also think that the 'challenging of linear empirical history and language and power within texts' that you identify as staring/happening within this NLR group actually took place 30 years later than you place it and most def outside of the remains of this group - who on the whole rejected this sort of approach. I think the idea that Identity politics was birthed from this tiny and materially un-influential group (they have long argued that their role is to take intellectual leadership) rather the real life experiences of people and the reactions of the labour movement, the state etc to them is miles off.

 

[J Ed]

If anybody wants an illustration of how toxic identity politics can be, here is an illustration of an exchange I just had in an intersectional Facebook page (incidentally I think intersectional theory has many valid incites into how discrimination and oppression works, but many of its supposed adhrents have a crude grasp on these).

So the OP (a white woman) posted up a discussion she had with an East European man in which he was defending some racially insensitive comments made by another person. He said that he didn’t think the comments were racist, merely poorly phrased. The OP said ‘as a white man you don’t get to say what is and isn’t racist’ and he replied ‘as an Eastern European man living in Germany, believe me I have experienced racism myself’. The OP then told him it he could never experience racism and blocked him.

In the subsequent discussion somebody said that while he thought the east-European was wrong to defend the racist comments, the OP was also wrong to reject the notion that east Europeans could experience racism and he posted up a bunch of links about the discrimination and violence many EEs experience in Western Europe. The OP and others respond that this is ‘xenophobia not racism’.

I then argue that the discrimiantion and prejudice that east Europeans experience cannot simply be described as xenophobia in all cases, I point to the history of anti-slavism in Europe and the ways in which Slavic people have been racialised and regarded as inferior, in much the way Irish people, Jews and the Roma have been. I posted a link to a short Wikipedia entry on the subject.

She responds instantly with *sigh*. When I pressed her to explain her response she said she didn’t need to read the link to know it is not racism, and said that she didn’t owe any ‘emotional labour’ to me as a white man. Others then jump in accusing me of derailing the conversation and decentering the racism black people experince. The OP says she ‘is so done with white people’.

And then it goes full circle. Another non-white poster has a go at the OP for calling out white people as if she is not white herself. He says she can’t do that because it de-centres her own whiteness and of course she starts apologising and what not.

I generally don’t bother engaging in this group but every few months I have a go and then remember why I don’t bother.

One of my first interactions with identity politics irl, it was around 2010 I think, was someone disagreeing with something I had to say one day and then literally the next day smugly and tbh quite rudely telling someone else the exact thing that I had told him. I asked him later on what was going on, why he had changed his mind. He told me that someone from a more oppressed group told him that it was true so he now believed it.

The example you have cited here, and my own experiences, tell me that privilege theory etc serves as a toolkit for people who aren't very nice to behave in ways that aren't very nice. Very easy to imagine the same people in different societies doing similar things and behaving in identical ways but justifying them through say strict religious frameworks or even things like fascism.

 

[J Ed]

Crude ID Polers simply have no methodology for adjudicating what the correct 'line' is when people of oppressed group X have different views on the matter.

Of course they do, they just ignore whoever it is convenient to ignore and point to whoever it is convenient to point to.

 

[brixtonscot]

A very good example of where "identity politics" has been apppropriated by conservatives is looking at beginning of Gay Liberation Front ....
"The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) advocated for sexual liberation for all people; they believed heterosexuality was a remnant of cultural inhibition and felt that change would not come about unless the current social institutions were dismantled and rebuilt without defined sexual roles"
Gay Liberation Front - Wikipedia
From there - after the Stonewall riots led mainly by black & Latina Trans* - it was taken over by mainly well off white men and their commercial ghetto , with their aims of getting assimilated into conservative establishment institutions...like the military & marriage.

 

[kabbes]

This is massively unfair and inaccurate towards Stuart Hall. He never once never argued that there was no material determination only culture - he, in fact, argued against the idea that there could only ever be cultural resistance and common misreadings of his work that suggested that he did. Not even at the height of his support for cultural-based ideas (around the time of Gramsci and Us in the mid-late 80s) - even then he problematised simplistic ideas of culture. What he did when he was editor of NLR (he was the first one btw not later introduced) was argue - in line with E.P Thompson's work - that the w/c are ongoing participants in the making of their own culture and history, rather than the more common left-wing view that they were either simply passive recipients of culture they were easily manipulated through - TV, popular newspapers and mass entertainment etc (still the dominant idea on the left today i'm afraid) or observers of a high culture they did not have the tools to appreciate and engage in. In this he was miles ahead of nearly everyone else.

I'd also suggest that you're over-emphasising the break many of the people involved in The New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review which merged to form NLR actually broke with the politics of stalinism and the old left and on what grounds some of them actually did. I also think that the 'challenging of linear empirical history and language and power within texts' that you identify as staring/happening within this NLR group actually took place 30 years later than you place it and most def outside of the remains of this group - who on the whole rejected this sort of approach. I think the idea that Identity politics was birthed from this tiny and materially un-influential group (they have long argued that their role is to take intellectual leadership) rather the real life experiences of people and the reactions of the labour movement, the state etc to them is miles off.

I find Stuart Hall a fascinating a quite brilliant man to read and hear, and I regret that I only came to discover him after he had already died. This is an interesting interview with him in which he reviews how “culture studies” developed and changed. I think it is quite clear from listening to him that he is no “identity politics” proponent. For him, it is all about society as a whole and how the parts of it that have control are able to set the terms of acceptability for those without control. As he says in this interview, race is just one lens that allows you to explore that control.



He even specifically mentions about the interlinking of race issues and and class issues and the importance of understanding the social structure as a whole.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

This is massively unfair and inaccurate towards Stuart Hall. He never once never argued that there was no material determination only culture - he, in fact, argued against the idea that there could only ever be cultural resistance and common misreadings of his work that suggested that he did. Not even at the height of his support for cultural-based ideas (around the time of Gramsci and Us in the mid-late 80s) - even then he problematised simplistic ideas of culture. What he did when he was editor of NLR (he was the first one btw not later introduced) was argue - in line with E.P Thompson's work - that the w/c are ongoing participants in the making of their own culture and history, rather than the more common left-wing view that they were either simply passive recipients of culture they were easily manipulated through - TV, popular newspapers and mass entertainment etc (still the dominant idea on the left today i'm afraid) or observers of a high culture they did not have the tools to appreciate and engage in. In this he was miles ahead of nearly everyone else.

I'd also suggest that you're over-emphasising the break many of the people involved in The New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review which merged to form NLR actually broke with the politics of stalinism and the old left and on what grounds some of them actually did. I also think that the 'challenging of linear empirical history and language and power within texts' that you identify as staring/happening within this NLR group actually took place 30 years later than you place it and most def outside of the remains of this group - who on the whole rejected this sort of approach. I think the idea that Identity politics was birthed from this tiny and materially un-influential group (they have long argued that their role is to take intellectual leadership) rather the real life experiences of people and the reactions of the labour movement, the state etc to them is miles off.

I don’t think I have been ‘massively unfair’ to Hall. I’d accept that his ideas have become subsequently bent by others but my post was about where cultural theory and identity politics emerged from in the UK. In the case of Hall not only did his work at the Birmingham Centre for contemporary cultural studies introduce the concept of intersectionality, but his work was so important precisely because it introduced ideas of gender, race and so on into the field of enquiry.

The Guardian characterised him as the ‘godfather of multiculturalism’ and whilst you are right that his work was much more nuanced than that of some of those who cite him - and it is true that Thompson’s central point that the working class is present and can act in the making of its history is present in his work - you cannot understand how identity politics developed in the UK without examining the contribution of Stuart Hall.

I think you also underplay how influential the ideas of the NLR were. Although small and academic they were plugged into the heights of the labour movement, commentariat and cultural elites. Their ideas travelled far wider than their circle.

Finally, my post attempted to periodise the NLR and the thinkers around it. The realisation that the Soviet Union was a state dictatorship on behalf of the proletariat and that Stalin was persecuting Marxists and others and building socialism in one country is critical to understanding where attempts to rethink left politics and the turn towards culture and identity came from.

It is inarguable - and I know you don’t argue this - that the development of this thinking through the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s, as Britain began to deindustrialise and the cracks began to appear in the economic leverage of the unions, led the sections of the left away from the working class and the concept of change through the assertion of class economic interests and towards identity and culture as he primary locations of struggle.

 

[Pickman's model]

It is inarguable - and I know you don’t argue this - that the development of this thinking through the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s, as Britain began to deindustrialise and the cracks began to appear in the economic leverage of the unions, led the sections of the left away from the working class and the concept of change through the assertion of class economic interests and towards identity and culture as he primary locations of struggle.

Do you mean this happened while deindustrialisation went on, or happened because of deindustrialisation?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Do you mean this happened while deindustrialisation went on, or happened because of deindustrialisation?

I think both. Deindustrialisation and the fragmententing of the post war consensus gave impetus to those who believed cultural resistance was key.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I find Stuart Hall a fascinating a quite brilliant man to read and hear, and I regret that I only came to discover him after he had already died. This is an interesting interview with him in which he reviews how “culture studies” developed and changed. I think it is quite clear from listening to him that he is no “identity politics” proponent. For him, it is all about society as a whole and how the parts of it that have control are able to set the terms of acceptability for those without control. As he says in this interview, race is just one lens that allows you to explore that control.

He even specifically mentions about the interlinking of race issues and and class issues and the importance of understanding the social structure as a whole.

I'm not arguing that he was. I'm arguing that if you want to locate where idnentity politics emerged from in the UK the NLR of which Hall was editor is a critical starting point as far as I can tell. I think that if you are going to discuss an idea that has dominated left thinking over the last 40 years you can't start without tracing the ideas back.