Hacker News Reader

It seems to me the term identity politics and everything that comes with it is simply a backlash against groups that have been traditionally marginalized but who are now entering the political arena and making demands.

It would be one thing to make demands on the basis of unfair treatment with regards to universal principles. It's another thing to make demands merely on the basis of identity. People should be treated with fairly because of merit and the "content of their character." People should not be treated with because of their age, their sex, who they are attracted to, or their skin color.

What we should also recognize in 2018, is that tribalism itself is toxic. Tribalism can also be attached to life choices, political stances, and subculture, and those sorts of tribalism can be toxic to the same order of magnitude as older forms, such as those based on ethnicity. Tribalistic toxicity stemming from immutable characteristics is arguably worse, because people are trapped on a side. This is why identity politics should be avoided in general.

A politics that would be humane should be about principles and policy, not identity.

This is also why the association of principles like Free Speech with particular identities, even identities of choice, is also particularly corrosive.

> It would be one thing to make demands on the basis of unfair treatment with regards to universal principles. It's another thing to make demands * merely on the basis of identity.*

I think the problem with the term identity politics is that people have a very limited view of identity. Being white in America is apart of your identify, being gay is part of your identity, living in a big city is a part of your identity, being college educated is a a part of your identity. Each of these things and dozens more help to drive your political viewpoint and what you lobby for.

I think for the most part the political groups that have been branded as "identity politics" are all about fair treatment for all, these groups arise usually when fair treatment is not given to them specifically and so they lobby on their own behalf.

Look at Black Lives Matter, this is an organization / movement that sprung up after multiple killings of black men by police and is focused on police reform. You can call this identity politics if you want but then I would also say that Right to Life groups who protest abortion because of their Christian beliefs are also identity politics. So are PACs funded by wealthy individuals who would like to see their taxes cut. This is what I mean when I say all politics is identity politics.

This is what I mean when I say all politics is identity politics.

Our basic social instincts are designed around identity politics formed along ethnic lines. What we really need are politics around principles, however. It's the same general evolutionary lag as with our instincts around food. We are wired-up to eat as much fat and sugar as we can, whenever we can, which suited us just fine for most of our history. So too, are we wired-up to be nice to our own tribe and quite hostile to the other. In 2018, just giving into either set of basic instincts is likely to kill us, however.

Hopefully that's the case generally, but the problem is with the branch of identity politics that goes from "we've been mistreated and want that to stop" to "you share some physical trait with people from the past who did bad things, so you're bad too". The former is something that can unify (e.g. the civil rights movement of the 60's) while the latter is inherently divisive, which makes it really hard to accomplish anything.

BLM is a mixed bag as far as examples go - it's loose organization has resulted in a pretty broad message, and sometimes that message has gone well into the range of the bad type of identity politics (see e.g. https://torontosun.com/2017/02/11/black-lives-matter-co-foun... ).

I really wish I agreed with your characterization, but I don't. What I see as prototypical identity politics is something like the Why Can't We Hate Men article the Washington Post published (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men...).

The problem is that these people aren't arguing for fair treatment. They are arguing for unfair treatment, but just unfair treatment that now favors them, and this treatment is determined by group identity (i.e. men=bad so you can hate any man).

If that's the approach, then to me it reveals that any rhetoric about fair treatment is just that, rhetoric, and what is really wanted is power.

> I really wish I agreed with your characterization, but I don't. What I see as prototypical identity politics is something like the Why Can't We Hate Men article the Washington Post published (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men...).

The problem with this is that when you think of identity politics you think of the extreme end. Which is the main point of my original post. People equate identity politics with extremism -- my argument is that identity politics is actually at the core of all politics. You can utilize extreme rhetoric arguing any point. But if all you see is the extreme then well.. I can't help you.

But if all you see is the extreme then well.. I can't help you.

If you are indeed a part of a more moderate and nuanced politics, then I think you could help by calling out the extremists and speaking up for principles. Where people "on your side" are showing tacit approval to extremists, you should call them out.

If you can point out where the nuanced and more moderate politics are put forward from your side, then also point that out. From where I am sitting, it seems like the extreme part of "idpol" is the loudest and seemingly the most representative part.

>But if all you see is the extreme then well.. I can't help you.

I think everyone who isn't very interested in this matter is only seeing the extreme. At least that's all that seems to reach me. Maybe the identity politics people could do a better job of showing their reasonable side.

The Washington Post has sunk to a new low by publishing that despicable vile. I can't say that I'm surprised though.

> After the revolution only rich white land owners could vote, elections and governing were based on the wills of a single identity: rich, white, men. Not much has changed in America since then

TBH, it's hard to take anything else you say seriously when you claim that nothing much has changed in America since the revolution 240 years ago.

And, regarding your other points: the concept that people deserve certain inalienable rights because they are human, rather than because they belong to certain a group, is the moral foundation upon which women's suffrage, black emancipation, and the civil rights movement are all based. It would be really stupid to dismiss this idea in favor of a system where groups fight it out for political power. And it would be doubly stupid for members of less powerful groups to do so.

I think you are misconstruing what I've said. I'm all for inalienable rights based on the fact that people are human, what I'm trying to point out here is that there is an idealized view of politics and a realistic view. And you can look back throughout the history of this country and all countries and see that political movements are mostly driven by those whose stake is directly tied to their identity.

A majority of the civil rights leaders were African Americans. A majority of the women's suffrage movement were women. Just last year you had the investor class lobbying for special deals in the tax code so that the estate tax was lowered. What I'm saying is that you can look at any political issue today and find that the driving force behind it is usually driven by some ideology based on identity. NIMBYs drive NIMBY policy because they are homeowners. Young people are more concerned about policies that would alleviate student debt, rural farmers want their animals to graze on federal land. Everywhere you look identity politics are at play because fundamentally your identity (age, race, sex, profession, lifestyle) helps shape who you are and what you care about.

> What I'm saying is that you can look at any political issue today and find that the driving force behind it is usually driven by some ideology based on identity.

I think if you look closer you'll find that more are motivated by values rather than immutable characteristics.

And that's the problem with identity politics - it elevates immutable characteristics over shared values and assigns a type of original sin ("white privilege") to the identity it sees as the cause if its woes ("old white men").

It's disgusting.

A majority of the civil rights leaders were African Americans. A majority of the women's suffrage movement were women.

There were thought leaders in both groups who rose above the crude politics of identity, and were able to promulgate a politics of principles. A problem with leaderless movements is that the philosophy can devolve to a Least Common Denominator of crude identity. Even wholly ideological movements can devolve in this way to become identity politics.

Like I mentioned, I don't think you're looking at this in a realistic view. The original constitution was a very principled document, and yet it excluded many rights to women, poor white folks, and had no protections for Native Americans or African Americans, and wouldn't you know it.. the whole thing was written by rich white landowners.

In internet discussions too often do people want to drop the history of hundreds of years of identity based politics, and I think it's because now identity politics are being used in a way that they feel threatened by.

The original constitution was a very principled document, and yet it excluded many

The proper way to fix that, is to become better at applying the principles. That would be a step forward. It would be a step backwards to start saying one group is bad and another group should be elevated due to characteristics.

In internet discussions too often do people want to drop the history of hundreds of years of identity based politics

There are many views of history, and the way that minority groups lift themselves up is not well represented in the public discourse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w0X71d9Z08

I think it's because now identity politics are being used in a way that they feel threatened by.

If identity politics are being used to divide people and devolve public discourse into toxic in-group/out-group, then I think there is indeed a threat there. If identity politics are being used as a substitute for principles, then there is indeed a threat to society.

> The original constitution was a very principled document

I know that's an article of faith in the American civic cult, but it's not at all grounded in fact. The original Constitution is a pile of pragmatic compromises between competing factions faced with an immediate practical crisis, which they approached from radically different viewpoints and sets of principles.

> I think it's because now identity politics are being used in a way that they feel threatened by.

On the contrary, white people are so not okay with white identity politics that the mere accusation of racism is a stain which will taint a public figure for the rest of their life. And actual, documented racism is usually a career ending event.

Of course black Americans were more interested than white Americans in emancipation and civil rights for black Americans. And of course women were more interested than men in women's suffrage.

But all of those things—women's suffrage, black emancipation, and equal rights for blacks—were won not by appealing to group identity, but by appealing to the universality of being human. After all, it is men who voted to give women the franchise. And it was whites who went to war for black emancipation and then voted for universal civil rights. Those are all examples of people going against their group interests.

> But all of those things—women's suffrage, black emancipation, and equal rights for blacks—were won not by appealing to group identity, but by appealing to the universality of being human.

It was both, and I think you need to do some research on the different methods of outreach that each of these movements utilized. Susan B Anthony organized conferences for all women and she launched a magazine for women. These types of movements are two sided, you need to gather the "oppressed" on one side and the folks who are progressive and can be persuaded on the other, you're looking at this without enough nuance IMO.

>All politics is identity politics

If your definition of the two terms is identical, perhaps you should look for some subtlety that you might be missing but causes other people to differentiate.

For example, maybe there is an attitude that acknowledges political interest groups tend to be made up of constitute group(s) that share more-visible property(s) than a political goal. But wants to de-emphasize those other properties compared to the political interests of the group and raise the importance of principled policy reasoning above surface-level characteristics. I dunno... just spitballing here.

>Even throughout the 2016 election and the postmortem most news outlets focused on the "identity" of ...

Election reporting is disappointingly focused on hot takes and the horse race. Does anybody actually find utility in the focus on the stories about Little Timmy falling down a well rather than a more systematic analysis?