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

[redsquirrel]

As I said on the other thread, some of the the noises coming from left (or at least some of the the white, straight male bits of it) seem to be saying that those pesky minorities should just shut up.

And that challenging racism / homophobia / trans-phobia and so on is 'divisive'

And then you get some people who claim to be 'left' celebrating Trump's election win over 'liberal identity politics' hilary clinton.

I'm sorry but can you give examples of these things?
I've not seen anyone claim that challenging racism or homophobia is divisive. People might criticise politics that claims to challenge oppression while actually reinforcing it (I'll use the example of the WEP again).

As for the Clinton thing, there's only one poster on U75 that would claim to be left and celebrated Trumps win and loads of P&P regulars have repeatedly criticised him for being a racist, sexist, homophobic wanker of the first order.

 

[inva]

The wider universal liberatory project isn't currently enough I agree.

But this isn't a mistake or something that's 'just happened', it's partly due to the form of identity politics taking its place in some ways. And this hasn't happened in some neutral vacuum, it's been encouraged by capital and complicit members of the left.

I think you're also creating a bit of a straw man case there, not sure anybody has said those examples (homophobia/police prejudice) you give are 'bad' per se, but limited and sometimes problematic (depending on what they do) if you're coming from a wider revolutionary perspective.

What the fuck is all this talk about fault too? That's one of my bugbears, loads of people in the identity politics scene are basically moralists.

the pre-80s (or whatever) universal liberatory project wasn't enough either. the working class rightly rejected our shit organisations and shit ideology as well as pretty much destroying the basis on which they functioned. that the 'new politics' repeats much of those old failings while maybe contributing some different ones of its own is something that we can and should criticise without trying to reconstruct the decrepit politics of the past.

 

[bimble]

Magnus McGinty posted this the other day on another thread:
Sex, race and class - Selma James

I've just noticed that it was written back in 1973 - and she seems to be working to translate between / reconcile these issues already back then, from within a marxist framework.
She concluded (44 years ago):
"How the working class will ultimately unite organizationally, we don't know. We do know that up to now many of us have been told to forget our own needs in some wider interest which was never wide enough to include us. And so we have learnt by bitter experience that nothing unified and revolutionary will be formed until each section of the exploited will have made its own autonomous power felt."
That doesn't seem dated at all, rather prescient.

 

[alsoknownas]

I'm sorry but not only this quite clearly false (you really think the WEP are the best placed to help create a culture of change w.r.t. sexism - give me a break) it also attacks the idea of solidarity - that an attack on one is an attack on all.

You say "but surely it has to be acknowledged that no lefty organisation was about to take up the fight at Stonewall", I think you should watch this. 'Lefty' organisations did take up the fight for gay rights - yes they were too slow about it - but they did fight and fight because of solidarity.

In my post I acknowledged both the importance and history of

...fantastic cross-cultural support and activism over the years...

but there it is - right there in your line 'yes they were too slow about it' - that the problem lies.
To go back to the Black Lives Matters thing - Black people in the US were being disproportionately targetted by the police in attacks that in many cases lead to their deaths. The BLM thing came out of a grassroots movement led most visibly by Black women. It's been pretty successful - it's now much, much harder for racist police to hide behind the mechanisms of departmental indifference and protection (of course the problem hasn't gone away).
So how would the anti-identity left have had things played out? Should those Black communities have waited for the great rallying call of the Party? Or should they have sought guidance from the enlightened on how to protest properly with a focus on class or what?
These are real issues affecting people in the here and now, and as I stated it's ALWAYS the people affected who are most keenly tuned to identifying what needs to be done to resist. It's actually because other people often don't understand this, or miss the nuances, that identity becomes such an important rallying point.

 

[crossthebreeze]

If you're a member of a group that's being oppressed in a particular way you probably (if you're fairly enlightened) want two things - the eventual destruction of the system that sustains that oppression, and two - as much resistance, breathing room, and progress as you can muster in the meantime. Always (ALWAYS!) it's the people suffering alongside you in that particular manner who are keenest to the needs of the situation, most willing to take action, and best placed to help create a culture of change that's effective in the here and now, not just some theoretical future.
I've seen some fantastic cross-cultural support and activism over the years, but surely it has to be acknowledged that no lefty organisation was about to take up the fight at Stonewall, or urgently remind the world that Black Lives Matter or whatever.
I'm suspicious of the whole opposition to identity as a tool for resistance. It feels a lot to me like people feel uncomfortable replacing their existing model, in which there is a clear outside enemy oppressing the group they belong to, with a more complex model in which we all have to deal with our own small (or otherwise) part in facilitating other people's oppression.

I'm sorry but not only this quite clearly false (you really think the WEP are the best placed to help create a culture of change w.r.t. sexism - give me a break) it also attacks the idea of solidarity - that an attack on one is an attack on all.

You say "but surely it has to be acknowledged that no lefty organisation was about to take up the fight at Stonewall", I think you should watch this. 'Lefty' organisations did take up the fight for gay rights - yes they were too slow about it - but they did fight and fight because of solidarity.

Surely people who experience a particular form of oppression are best placed to identify that oppression is occurring and to take action against it - but not everyone who fights against their oppression has the same analysis, and some analyses lead only to a fight for breathing room (or progress for some people) not to the destruction of the system that sustains the oppression - and not everyone who experiences oppression has the same class interests. Solidarity is essential for change to happen, but lefty/radical/working class organisations are not the class itself - so as new struggles are identified by parts of the working class those organisations may or may not be structured to include them and the effectiveness and speed of the solidarity response can vary. The struggle against oppression often includes the struggle for solidarity and changes in structure of these organisations (or forming new working class organisations) and change in the analysis of how society is structured to facilitate that oppression. But thats very different to individualising oppression or divorcing it from class struggle which is what identity politics does.

 

[ska invita]

I might have this wrong, but I don't think the attack on id politics is about attacking those fighting homophobia or police prejudice. But there is certainly a danger of campaign groups being coopted into the state structure in a way that supports it rather than challenging it, an obvious example being the corporate event that is Gay Pride nowadays.

I think the problem for The Impasse of the thread title is that there are a whole bunch of things being talked about understood differently within the the label identity politics. The lack of clarity causes a lot of fights.

Heres a list of negative things that get used against "identity politics" (brainaddicts points verbatim) that have come up
1. That you know how 'oppressed' someone is by their stated identity (even worse, it sometimes comes down to their visible identity)
2. That the most oppressed person in the room knows the most about fighting oppression
3. That focussing on the specific oppressions is the core of liberatory thinking. This implicitly contains a rather liberal negative view of freedom and offers no positive vision of what a different world might look like.
4. Community brokering - where an individual can claim to represent a community because of a shared identity (even though not having shared politics) - and the bigger political system that supports that.
5. Offer other degrees of weak, tokenist, ineffective, if not counterproductive, solutions to deeper problems

But here's where the problem comes in from the other side. Take Chilango's facebook friend from page 1. All she posts about is stuff that relates to her ethnic minority status and affects her as a woman. This is effectively laughed at because Where's the (self) class analysis. Chilango suggests she comes from a privileged financial background. And this is the problem. Lots of posters here liked that post and seem to agree. And from the picture painted she is probably a little naive, and we've all seen people posturing on the internet (surely not!).

But she probably has experienced a lifetime a racism and sexism. Its a good thing she is challenging that. If she isn't doing one of the five things above then is there a problem? Yes, it would be great if she had the correct class analysis and was helping to rebuilding the wider class struggle. But if she isn't is she necessarily part of the problem? LDC above suggests that kind of activity is actively to blame:

"The wider universal liberatory project isn't currently enough I agree.
But this isn't a mistake or something that's 'just happened', it's partly due to the form of identity politics taking its place in some ways"

It reads that political activity challenging racism and sexism is getting in the way and "taking the place" of proper (class) struggle. That's how it comes across. Do you see what I'm getting at? I reckon that is the heart of the antagonism and hence the impasse...the overlap of those arguments.

Now Chilangos friend may well be doing #3...no wider vision/understanding. But if not committing the other faults that in itself isn't necessarily a problem...there are lots of examples of people standing up for themselves without having #3 and not doing the other things. I've given some already.

Interesting thread, hopefully i can get some clearer understanding out of it. Not going to be able to post much the next week after today but look forward to reading it.

 

[redsquirrel]

If a Palestinian worked effortlessly to stop illegal settlements in what they understood to be Palestinian lands, that would fall under identity politics.

Would it? Necessarily? On what basis are you making this claim?

But whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that wider universal liberatory project isnt there enough? Is it the fault of gay men who continue to campaign against homophobia? Is it the fault of black communities who are fighting police prejudice?

Of course not, but nobody has made any such claim

To me those are two examples of identity politics - people responding politically to oppression that they experience directly due to their identity - an identity they have no choice about.

Well I think that's the problem, no offence but you seem to be tilting at windmills. I certainly don't see those as examples of indentitypolitics, and from what others have posted I don't think they would either.

I've not seen anybody ever claim that 'gay men who continue to campaign against homophobia' or 'black communities who are fighting police prejudice' are identity politics. I don't think such statements even make much sense. It's possible the the political response of particular individuals/groups might fall into the category of identity politics but that's a very different thing.

 

[LDC]

ska invita you're mixing all sorts of things up. Identity politics isn't just any people fighting against specific concerns under capitalism. It has a particular form and outlook that we're getting at here.

Within BLM, for example, there's a whole host of perspectives, some I would consider identity politics, some not.

 

[redsquirrel]

To go back to the Black Lives Matters thing - Black people in the US were being disproportionately targetted by the police in attacks that in many cases lead to their deaths. The BLM thing came out of a grassroots movement led most visibly by Black women. It's been pretty successful - it's now much, much harder for racist police to hide behind the mechanisms of departmental indifference and protection (of course the problem hasn't gone away).

Well I don't can't speak for others but I don't see BLM as an example of the identitypolitics that is being criticised so your following questions start from a false premise.

These are real issues affecting people in the here and now, and as I stated it's ALWAYS the people affected who are most keenly tuned to identifying what needs to be done to resist.

I don't disagree at all. But that doesn't mean that the political response has to be one that is based on identitypolitics or that such a response based on identitypolitics is not problematic.

 

[killer b]

Take Chilango's facebook friend from page 1. All she posts about is stuff that relates to her ethnic minority status and affects her as a woman. This is effectively laughed at because Where's the (self) class analysis. Chilango suggests she comes from a privileged financial background. And this is the problem. Lots of posters here liked that post and seem to agree. And from the picture painted she is probably a little naive, and we've all seen people posturing on the internet (surely not!).

But she probably has experienced a lifetime a racism and sexism. Its a good thing she is challenging that. If she isn't doing one of the five things above then is there a problem? Yes, it would be great if she had the correct class analysis and was helping to rebuilding the wider class struggle. But if she isn't is she necessarily part of the problem? LDC above suggests that kind of activity is actively to blame:

"The wider universal liberatory project isn't currently enough I agree.
But this isn't a mistake or something that's 'just happened', it's partly due to the form of identity politics taking its place in some ways"

It reads that political activity challenging racism and sexism is getting in the way and "taking the place" of proper (class) struggle. That's how it comes across. Do you see what I'm getting at? I reckon that is the heart of the antagonism and hence the impasse...the overlap of those arguments.

Now Chilangos friend may well be doing #3...no wider vision/understanding. But if not committing the other faults that in itself isn't necessarily a problem...there are lots of examples of people standing up for themselves without having #3 and not doing the other things. I've given some already.

Interesting thread, hopefully i can get some clearer understanding out of it. Not going to be able to post much the next week after today but look forward to reading it.

It isn't that it is 'getting in the way', but that some ways of challenging oppression which don't include a class analysis - more women in the boardroom, for example - actively reinforce wider class-based oppression.

 

[LDC]

As I stated it's ALWAYS the people affected who are most keenly tuned to identifying what needs to be done to resist.

I think this is often a load of bollocks actually, although it often gets repeated so much it gets taken as unquestionable fact. People come up with all sorts of complete shit as to what to do to challenge their own oppression, and that includes situations outside the 'political sphere'.

It's also actually one of the cornerstones of identity politics I think as it means any challenge from outside the identified 'group/identity' can be dismissed as not valid. And often challenges from more radical elements within the group get dismissed as well as 'not the correct XXXXX' view.

I'd actually add that I think that view is quite dodgy and can be borderline racist as it assumes that everyone from a certain group (whose boundaries are often policed quite ruthlessly) has the same perspective. And that's one of the odd contradictions with identity politics, it's quite a reactionary perspective at heart.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

It isn't that it is 'getting in the way', but that some ways of challenging oppression which don't include a class analysis - more women in the boardroom, for example - actively reinforce wider class-based oppression.

Under the banner of equality!

 

[killer b]

If instead of working together to abolish the boardroom, we work to ensure there's better representation of women and minorities in the boardroom, we're actually endorsing the boardroom.

 

[bimble]

I am really surprised to see how narrow the definition seems to be here, it looks like people are talking about a particular kind of tokenism (more women / black people on the board/ as bosses etc).
Is that really all that is generally understood as identity politics? Thought it was a whole lot broader than that.

 

[chilango]

I think the problem for The Impasse of the thread title is that there are a whole bunch of things being talked about understood differently within the the label identity politics. The lack of clarity causes a lot of fights.

Heres a list of negative things that get used against "identity politics" (brainaddicts points verbatim) that have come up
1. That you know how 'oppressed' someone is by their stated identity (even worse, it sometimes comes down to their visible identity)
2. That the most oppressed person in the room knows the most about fighting oppression
3. That focussing on the specific oppressions is the core of liberatory thinking. This implicitly contains a rather liberal negative view of freedom and offers no positive vision of what a different world might look like.
4. Community brokering - where an individual can claim to represent a community because of a shared identity (even though not having shared politics) - and the bigger political system that supports that.
5. Offer other degrees of weak, tokenist, ineffective, if not counterproductive, solutions to deeper problems

But here's where the problem comes in from the other side. Take Chilango's facebook friend from page 1. All she posts about is stuff that relates to her ethnic minority status and affects her as a woman. This is effectively laughed at because Where's the (self) class analysis. Chilango suggests she comes from a privileged financial background. And this is the problem. Lots of posters here liked that post and seem to agree. And from the picture painted she is probably a little naive, and we've all seen people posturing on the internet (surely not!).

But she probably has experienced a lifetime a racism and sexism. Its a good thing she is challenging that. If she isn't doing one of the five things above then is there a problem? Yes, it would be great if she had the correct class analysis and was helping to rebuilding the wider class struggle. But if she isn't is she necessarily part of the problem? LDC above suggests that kind of activity is actively to blame:

"The wider universal liberatory project isn't currently enough I agree.
But this isn't a mistake or something that's 'just happened', it's partly due to the form of identity politics taking its place in some ways"

It reads that political activity challenging racism and sexism is getting in the way and "taking the place" of proper (class) struggle. That's how it comes across. Do you see what I'm getting at? I reckon that is the heart of the antagonism and hence the impasse...the overlap of those arguments.

Now Chilangos friend may well be doing #3...no wider vision/understanding. But if not committing the other faults that in itself isn't necessarily a problem...there are lots of examples of people standing up for themselves without having #3 and not doing the other things. I've given some already.

Interesting thread, hopefully i can get some clearer understanding out of it. Not going to be able to post much the next week after today but look forward to reading it.

To look at the example of my FB friend a little more (and I'll leave out some specifics - such as how I know that she hasn't suffered racism for example - if thats ok, cause it's not fair on her, and it is very individual) the general point about her, and others like her that I've encountered, and I'm guessing (though of course I could be wrong) others have too, is that she has already had a more privileged life than me (who happens to be a whitecishetman) and will go on to reap the rewards of those throughout her life and yet was (re)posting stuff denouncing the privilege of others (men, whites) many of whom (the majority of whom?) will have far less life chances than her.

But it was just an example, an illustration. As I said it doesn't "prove" anything.

Another example (we like real examples don't we?) from my life is back when I first started teaching, I had a woman colleague who suddenly started treading all over her friends in the workplace and and acting with a real lack of solidarity in order to get a promotion to management. Her justification when challenged was that she was a woman and it was important to have women bosses (and I remember this bit vividly) a glare at her male friends and a support seeking glance at her female friends.

Now, again, that doesn't prove anything. And isn't necessarily ID politics per se. But it's an illustration of how sometimes things are playing out, in my life at least.

 

[LDC]

I am really surprised to see how narrow the definition seems to be here, it looks like people are talking about a particular kind of narrow tokenism (more women / black people on the board/ as bosses etc).
Is that really all that is generally understood as identity politics? Thought it was a whole lot broader than that.

For me it's a cluster of identifiers and perspectives, and yes it's much wider than that IMO.

 

[killer b]

I am really surprised to see how narrow the definition seems to be here, it looks like people are talking about a particular kind of tokenism (more women / black people on the board/ as bosses etc).
Is that really all that is generally understood as identity politics? Thought it was a whole lot broader than that.

It is broader, but that's the area where class & identity politics clash most significantly, so it's unsurprising that it's come up a few times.

 

[alsoknownas]

Well I don't can't speak for others but I don't see BLM as an example of the identitypolitics that is being criticised so your following questions start from a false premise.

Fair enough. There are a lot of ideas being conflated here, so that might be a part of it.

 

[redsquirrel]

I am really surprised to see how narrow the definition seems to be here, it looks like people are talking about a particular kind of tokenism (more women / black people on the board/ as bosses etc).
Is that really all that is generally understood as identity politics? Thought it was a whole lot broader than that.

It is, it's just a good, simple and very common example of how identitypolitcs manifests.

But of course it's much broader than that and linked in with multiculturalism, so other examples are (for me at least) would include things like
- trying to equalise pay of male/female directors/CEOs (while ignoring the differences at the bottom of the scale)
- the promotion/creation of 'community leaders' and their establishment with political power structures
- the creation of faith schools or other schools based on some type of identity.
- making class into an identity

 

[belboid]

ska invita you're mixing all sorts of things up. Identity politics isn't just any people fighting against specific concerns under capitalism. It has a particular form and outlook that we're getting at here.

Within BLM, for example, there's a whole host of perspectives, some I would consider identity politics, some not.

It does sound rather like any anti-oppression politics that you (the general 'you') don't like is written off as 'identity politics' but anti-oppression politics you approve of is...something else.

 

[LDC]

It does sound rather like any anti-oppression politics that you (the general 'you') don't like is written off as 'identity politics' but anti-oppression politics you approve of is...something else.

You could say 'don't like' or 'approve of' but it'd be better to understand it as fitting in with a political perspective (or not) rather than trying to make it about personal likes or approval surely?

 

[killer b]

It does sound rather like any anti-oppression politics that you (the general 'you') don't like is written off as 'identity politics' but anti-oppression politics you approve of is...something else.

Sounds about right. I don't think there's a problem with this is there?

 

[bimble]

To help clarify, can someone maybe give an example of feminist activism which would be seen as definitely not what you'd call identity politics?

 

[inva]

is identity politics distinguishable from liberalism? for example how should radical left wing class-based (nominally anyway) groups who adopt intersectionality be labelled? or is that something different?

 

[Idris2002]

To help clarify, can someone maybe give an example of feminist activism which would be seen as definitely not what you'd call identity politics?

This, from a few days ago outside Dáil Eireann:

(The 8th amendment to the Irish constitution prohibits abortion)

 

[kabbes]

Is it even possible to discuss the types of politics in a society without including a discussion of the nature of that society itself?

From some point post industrial revolution until up until some time in the 1970s, Britain was an industrial society. One of the features of industrial societies is that people tend to define themselves by what they do, and the most important freedoms are political in nature (such as the right to unionise or to vote). It is therefore unsurprising that the chief politics coming out of an industrial society would be those relating to class analysis.

At some point from the 1970s onwards, however, Britain has moved towards being a consumer society. In consumer societies, people tend to define themselves by what they are into, which is associated with the consumption of goods and services being extensions of the self and identity being created via a magpie accumulation of these extensions. The most important freedoms derive from this identity-creation, meaning they are market freedoms (such as the right to choice). It is therefore unsurprising that the politics coming out of a consumer society would be those relating to identity analysis.

I'm not sure any of that clears any of the roadblocks discussed in this thread, but it is important context in understanding why those who have entirely grown up in a consumerist society might be dominated in thought by identity rather than class. It's axiomatic to their whole social ordering.

 

[kabbes]

As a separate point, it seems pretty clear that the explosion of identity politics we are now seeing could not have happened without the connecting force of the internet and its ability to allow individuals facing similar issues to find each other in a way that had never been possible before. That's great, but it also makes those finding each other extremely vulnerable to groupthink and other classical group biases. The more that groups segment, the bigger the problems when the assumptions underlying each side's groupthink come into conflict with each other.

 

[chilango]

As a separate point, it seems pretty clear that the explosion of identity politics we are now seeing could not have happened without the connecting force of the internet and its ability to allow individuals facing similar issues to find each other in a way that had never been possible before. That's great, but it also makes those finding each other extremely vulnerable to groupthink and other classical group biases. The more that groups segment, the bigger the problems when the assumptions underlying each side's groupthink come into conflict with each other.

It also allows a greater "choice" about who one is active with. Instead of (or maybe as well as) your workmates and neighbours you can go online and find a bunch of people with whatever shared identity you like and be active online with them. Hence the twitter and tumblr type based stuff we see on these threads.

 

[emanymton]

On the other hand, counter to this idea of IDP being unnecessarily divisive, how do you avoid co-option, ownership and dilution of a cause? So to give a possibly unhelpful example, a black-led BLM turning into some primarily white-led 'all lives matter' thing through the integration of all comers? Is that acceptable or positive?

If you take any one type of oppression, as you already indicate, there's a spectrum in terms of the effect on individual people's lives that runs from severe & tangible detriment through to intangible big political picture stuff, and even potentially into deriving benefits from that oppression, intentionally or not. So why do you not need to recognise a parallel spectrum of organisation that includes allies, accomplices and even unwitting enemies?

I am absolutely not in favour of diluting cauaes, having an all lives matter campaign or whatever. The murder of black people by the police is an issue deserving of a campaign if ever there was one. In fact I am trying to suggest almost the opposite. Those campaigns have an impact wider than the specific issue.

Take BLM apart from anything else, any campaign against the murder of black people by the police that has any success will invariably make the police more accountable across the board, and make it harder for them to get away with murdering anyone regardless of their skin colour. And I know it has been said before, but this is also an issue that demonstrates the weakness of identity politics. If the police murder back and white people equally then identity politics would have nothing to say. Yet there could still be plenty of room for a campaign against Police violence.

 

[mauvais]

I am absolutely not in favour of diluting cauaes, having an all lives matter campaign or whatever. The murder of black people by the police is an issue deserving of a campaign if ever there was one. In fact I am trying to suggest almost the opposite. Those campaigns have an impact wider than the specific issue.

Take BLM apart from anything else, any campaign against the murder of black people by the police that has any success will invariably make the police more accountable across the board, and make it harder for them to get away with murdering anyone regardless of their skin colour.

Sure, but this is the easy bit - without doing anything, you're passively deriving a benefit from their campaign, so of course you are aligned to it, but that's a one way relationship. The difficult questions come once it's necessary to prod at whether and how you yourself might do anything useful towards that campaign, rather than the broader one you're talking about, without introducing dilution or other problems. If not, then you are outside it, even if working in parallel for the same higher level goal.

If the police murder back and white people equally then identity politics would have nothing to say. Yet there could still be plenty of room for a campaign against Police violence.

Yes. But that's a big 'if', and arguably only a situation that arises as the product of that identity-driven campaign. Y'know, effectively, 'IDP would have nothing left to say if it won'. Well, yeah.