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

[lightframes]

I'm busy so

Walter Benn Michaels is wrong

Charles W. Mills is right

Linda Hirshman is right

I agree and disagree with Carla Murphy

[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.