What Is the Left Without Identity Politics?

[calinewarkwc69]

Four writers consider the question dividing the Democratic Party.
By Walter Benn Michaels, Charles W. Mills, Linda Hirshman and Carla MurphyIn the wake of last month’s shocking defeat, the Democratic Party, and the left more generally, is engaged in a new round of collective soul-searching into what went so devastatingly wrong. Some, like Mark

Comments

[blackjedii]

Have a sole definition and overall xonsensus on what dictates and does not dictate isentity politics dirst methinks. Is it politics solely on demographics regardless of wealth? What about geographical factors? Intersection of multiple needs? Luke when we duscuss idemtity politics what specifically does someone mean? That frames a lot of stuff right there.

[lightframes]

I know people use it to mean minority groups but every time someone says "white working class" technically they are playing identity politics. White working class is an identity. Hell, just "working class" is an identity, too.

That's why I get suspicious when people say we need to leave identity politics behind - what they really mean is leave "certain" identity politics behind.

[blackjedii]

Agreed. I guess my main question - and there's no real way to answer it is - given an article, conversation, explanation, etc. how is the so-called "identity politics" being framed. Bc to me the biggest indicator of life quality is wealth and even within subgroups (white, black, brown, purple-green), there is such a difference that it's hard for me to NOT see identity politics as a catch-all that doesn't really reflect a specific problem or give a specific solution. Because the variance is just so high.

[calinewarkwc69]

You know, I gotta admit this comment was great for me because I realized that the framing of "let go of identity politics" isn't what we should be thinking of, but rather "unifying identity politics...?" And I guess as we try to find unifying things that can bring us all together, economics is a good one because it is a common denominator. The problem is what we do about making social issues more easily unifying. That's a harder equation.

[blackjedii]

yes and yes

Like - it's something I see a lot and agree with wrt political or economic elites lip-servicing the idea of identity politics not to make people's lives better, but to generate Us vs Them so no one catches on that they're getting screwed over by the same people who claim to fight for them. It's definitely affected Feminism - or at least the white wealthy faction of it.

[lightframes]

Exactly.

It's not feminist for a woman to own a giant company that exploits female labor in other countries just because a woman is doing it.

[lightframes]

I don't think there's such a thing as completely unifying identity politics. Every time you name an identity, someone gets left out. But at some point people have got to be okay with that. Technically, "rich coastal elites" would be alienated if we focus on the working class, but they just have to deal with that