Why Identity Politics Fails

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Clarissa

December 23, 2016

The reason that identity politics fails so badly is because people know that discrimination today is all about access to resources. Anti-racist and anti-sexist rhetoric is empty and meaningless if it’s not accompanied by a clear plan insuring a more equal access to resources. The anti-women reality is not that somebody says I’m fat or interrupts me but that access to abortion is problem-free for those who have money and very hard for those who don’t. Free healthcare and lack of workplace discrimination would do more for LGBT rights than years of observing the toilet circus on TV.

Identity politics is toothless because it doesn’t threaten anybody’s financial interests. All of these toilets, mansplainings and Co are distraction tactics that make us feel vindicated while we are being robbed.

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14 responses to “Why Identity Politics Fails”

Stringer Bell

December 23, 2016

Hear! Hear!

The one minor quibble I have is with the term ‘Identity politics’ itself in that it is only used only in the context of minorities. The republican party has been running on white identity politics and stoking white racial resentments for decades now. We have a President-elect who couldn’t have been more explicit about it during his campaign. But for some reason that’s never called ‘Identity politics’. It’s just politics.

But a bunch of ‘Black lives matter’ people march on the street, and suddenly the narrative becomes ‘THEY’RE PLAYING THE RACE CARD!”.

That aside, I couldn’t agree more. I’m going to sound like a broken record, but Bernie and his supporters were called racist and sexist for making this very point.

“Identity politics is toothless because it doesn’t threaten anybody’s financial interests. ”

Yup. So easy for Apple to slap a transgender sign on their restroom doors, while refusing to repatriate the hundreds of billions stashed away in off-shore tax havens. That Tim Cook, he’s such a progressive!

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1. Clarissa
  
  December 23, 2016
  
  If big companies truly want to help the transgender community, why aren’t they starting an employment program for them? Many transgender people live in incredible poverty and their lifespan is shortened as a result.
  
  Or take the issue of the Confederate flag. Let’s get it removed, by all means. But let’s not pretend that this symbolic gesture is enough without addressing housing and employment discrimination. But these days all we get are symbolic gestures.
  
  It kills me that the dumb slutwalk in Toronto brought out more people than the real tragedy of the murder of the indigenous women in Canada. The last thing anybody is prevented from doing in Toronto is screwing whomever one wants. But the slutwalk is a feminist issue while the murdered indigenous women from very poor communities are not.
  
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  1. matt
    
    December 23, 2016
    
    You are smart enough to know why (and you pretty much say it in your post). Its easier, that’s why people do it.
    
    Just like pretty much everyone knows smoking is bad, yet many don’t change. Just like everyone knows how to lose weight (less calories in, perhaps a little more exercise). We instead choose to focus on crazy theories / boogeyman excuses because its easier. That is human nature 101. Not sure its changing anytime soon!
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      December 23, 2016
      
      “Its easier, that’s why people do it.”
      
      Absolutely. That’s exactly the problem.
      
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  2. Clarissa
    
    December 23, 2016
    
    As for Bernie, the problem was that he never fully departed from the “trickle down economy for the poor”, or the idea that if you give good manufacturing jobs to white men, the wealth will trickle down to their wives and non-white cleaning ladies, waiters, and lawn-mowers. And that’s an outdated mentality. It’s not going to work. Besides, there is a whole other party for this way of thinking.
    
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Evelina Anville

December 23, 2016

I agree with everything you say with minor quibble in regards to abortion access. In some states, (my state for example–though it’s hardly the most egregious) an abortion is difficult to attain for even a wealthy woman. I think the assault on our reproductive freedoms actually goes beyond class.

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1. Stringer Bell
  
  December 23, 2016
  
  “..an abortion is difficult to attain for even a wealthy woman”
  
  I think the idea is that wealthy women can afford to travel across state lines to get an abortion, while poor women can’t.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    December 23, 2016
    
    “I think the idea is that wealthy women can afford to travel across state lines to get an abortion, while poor women can’t.”
    
    Exactly. I know it would never be even a tiny bit of an issue for me, so I can afford not to think about it. But for somebody who can’t afford even a car ride to a neighboring city? It’s a total disaster!
    
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2. Clarissa
  
  December 23, 2016
  
  If I needed an abortion in an anti-woman state, I’d simply get on a plane to Canada or to a less restrictive state. And I’m not that wealthy.
  
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Evelina Anville

December 23, 2016

Well abortion is time sensitive and one must be quite wealthy to have the means to buy an emergency plane ticket. I’m solidly middle class and that would be a difficult expense for me to absorb. Add hotel, the actual cost of the abortion, and all the incidental travel expences and the total cost really start soaring. We are talking about a problem that extends well beyond the poor.

But apart from expense, I think that buying an emergency/last minute plane ticket plus booking and staying in a hotel sounds really stressful and awful when you are already going through a difficult time emotionally.

I understand that being poor makes it all worse, of course. But I think abortion rights affect women of all classes

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1. Clarissa
  
  December 23, 2016
  
  Even all this is becoming unnecessary because one can simply ask one’s friend in another country to buy a pill online and overnight it. And as soon as these pills inundate the market, there will be nothing anybody can do about it.
  
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Fie upon this quiet life

December 30, 2016

I read this post when you originally wrote it, but I read it aloud to my husband this morning while we were talking about identity politics. He said, “I agree with everything she says. That’s where liberals have gone wrong — focusing on symbolic gestures instead of actually helping, like they used to.” I’m guessing he means the new deal and things like that. We’ll never do any good as liberals until we get concrete instead of symbolic.

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1. Clarissa
  
  December 30, 2016
  
  Exactly. Enough already with beautiful gestures. Let’s do something practical.
  
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Tesla

January 23, 2017

Agree with you a lot

Identity politics is like, black is oppresed, so white is bad

Instead of, Black, White, and Green are not good our bad, a colour is Just a colour

Same with man/woman

Woman are being oppressed, so man are Bad, reducing men to an identity. Nobody wants to be reduced to something they might not even care about.

Identity politics talks about the trans, fat, lesbian Black woman VS the White hetero seksual man, but Nobody cares.

Its All a puberty thing, thinking that much about identity etc

Its All made by College kids Who want to fit in in the whole Program of middle class corectness

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