For example, a Democratic party chair from Ohio said of the national party, “While Trump is talking about trade and jobs, they’re still obsessing about which bathrooms people should be allowed to go into.”[1] But when it comes to things like the Muslim ban, transgender bathroom bills, etc. it seems like the GOP is trying to use identity as a wedge--the Dems and the left in general are just responding. It would probably be a mistake for Dems to give up on civil rights issues and just focus on economic issues.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/democrats-are-still-...
Mind you, the GOP and Trump aren't models of virtue. The message isn't "the Dems should be more like the Reps", it's "be compassionate and nuanced and stop abusing the innocent people you depend on".
What most white dudes critique as "identity politics" is people talking about and trying to remedy historical identity-based oppression. But they don't like these things being explicitly talked about, because sweeping the historical oppression under the rug is one of the mechanisms by which that oppression is maintained.
If you really don't like identity politics, you too should work to help undo America's long history of pro-white, pro-male, pro-upper-class identity politics.
But if you're claiming that historical oppression totally ended at some point, what date do you believe that was?
As a white dude, I disagree with your reading of the American left. I don't think I've ever experienced a personal hate for myself. They do take issues with a lot of the behaviors of a group that has benefited from and sustains oppression. But I object to that too.
I would be surprised of slavery deniers or any comparable entity comprised more than a tenth of a percent of the U.S. population, but I'm happy to be disproven.
> But if you're claiming that historical oppression totally ended at some point, what date do you believe that was?
It depends on how you precisely define "historical oppression". The most common definition I'm aware of refers to slavery, Jim Crowe laws, lynchings, etc. Those things largely ended in the 70s in most places in the U.S., but I'll go so far as to say the 90s.
> They do take issues with a lot of the behaviors of a group that has benefited from and sustains oppression. But I object to that too.
This is sort of my point. I have no idea what you possibly mean by "oppression" or "benefited from" or "sustains". Team "identity" has watered the term down such that I have no idea if you're talking about real oppression (probably not, since that would be newsworthy) or merely women having different career priorities than men. I'm inclined to think if you were talking about meaningful oppression, you could call it by name and wouldn't need to rely on the shock value of the word 'oppression' to advance your position.
If you want to (for example) make things better for inner city black communities, come grab a shovel. But no one is oppressing these communities nor do they have an incentive to do so--poor communities are expensive. If poverty were an easy problem, it would be solved. People who talk about "oppression" and "structural racism" seem to think that wealth is the default state of man, and that poverty can only be explained by oppression.
That rhetorical tactic works wonderfully at any point in American history. "Why don't you [group name] just shut up and enjoy this now perfectly fair society we white men have built for you? Why keep dwelling on the past?"
I believe that you don't know what I mean. But that's because you don't understand the history. If you'd like to understand, try taking a course. It's not an easy subject, but it's worth the time. Your local college surely offers something. Mine does: https://www.usfca.edu/catalog/undergraduate/arts-sciences/in...
I think you misunderstood me; I never said any such thing. Historical oppression is simply oppression that happened in the past. I'm not using "oppression" outside of its normal context.
> But that's because you don't understand the history. If you'd like to understand, try taking a course. It's not an easy subject, but it's worth the time. Your local college surely offers something.
You're being awfully condescending for someone whose argument is roughly "uh... history and stuff".
You were dumping on "identity politics" as if it were some weird new thing invented by the left. My point is that by any reasonable definition, identity politics has been sustained and enforced by the right in the US. For centuries. It is the left that has been trying to tear it down.
The move you're making is known technically as "erasure". Instead of admitting that the status quo is the result of energetic pro-white, pro-male, pro-rich stacking of the deck and honestly proceeding from there, you erase the history and treat pro-white-male identity politics as normal. That makes any deviation from or challenge to it supposedly problematic "identity politics". Even though the very identities at stake, like "black", were constructed by white men, you blame the victims.
You also conflate "real" oppression with "historical" oppression. Your effective definition of oppression isn't some objective measure of misuse of power. It's "the bad shit in the past that is definitely now over". Which is an incredibly convenient definition for your line of argument.
These are only plausible rhetorical moves if you don't really understand the history. You are making bold pronouncements on a topic you obviously don't understand. Why? From here it looks like motivated reasoning with a goal of protecting the status quo. Thus my suggestion that you go take a class. Which I still recommend.
I wasn't. I only said that the left's identity politics probably helped to alienate an important part of their former voting base.
> My point is that by any reasonable definition, identity politics has been sustained and enforced by the right in the US. For centuries. It is the left that has been trying to tear it down.
I don't see how we can meaningfully refer to "the right" or "the left" across such a large time span, but I'm not interested in debating it, so I'll concede that point if it's important to you. I certainly agree that from the civil rights era until roughly ten or twenty years ago, the right was generally in favor of identity politics and the left was against it. Since then, the right have largely accepted the "no more identity politics" position (with notable exceptions here and there), and the left has largely regressed to a pro-identity politics (likewise, with notable exceptions).
> The move you're making is known technically as "erasure". Instead of admitting that the status quo is the result of energetic pro-white, pro-male, pro-rich stacking of the deck and honestly proceeding from there, you erase the history and treat pro-white-male identity politics as normal. That makes any deviation from or challenge to it supposedly problematic "identity politics". Even though the very identities at stake, like "black", were constructed by white men, you blame the victims.
No, no. You're simply wrong about this. I never said or implied any such thing. I've said repeatedly that white oppression existed throughout history. I'm sure I've been less than clear on other points, but I've been perfectly clear about this one.
> You also conflate "real" oppression with "historical" oppression. Your effective definition of oppression isn't some objective measure of misuse of power. It's "the bad shit in the past that is definitely now over". Which is an incredibly convenient definition for your line of argument.
Again, I never said any such thing. The only statements I made about oppression is much of what is called oppression today (things like women choosing their own careers) are not actually oppression by any reasonable definition, and this abuse of terminology by the left has made it really hard to identify and talk about legitimate oppression. I never said anything that could be interpreted as "legitimate oppression is that which occurs in the past"; there are certainly forms of legitimate oppression that exist against minorities today--intimidation of minority religions and communities, for example. It does no good to conflate actual oppression with different outcomes from freely-made choices.
> These are only plausible rhetorical moves if you don't really understand the history. You are making bold pronouncements on a topic you obviously don't understand. Why? From here it looks like motivated reasoning with a goal of protecting the status quo. Thus my suggestion that you go take a class. Which I still recommend.
I don't appreciate you saying I don't understand this. You've erected blatant strawman after blatant strawman (willfully or accidentally), and you tell me to take a class? Come on, you're not being a good faith participant here. I know there are good, legitimate arguments to be made against my points (and I'm sure you're capable of presenting them). Don't insult me by refuting arguments I never made and then telling me to take a class...
This is at best nominally true, but only because being openly pro-white became socially untenable. But it has been a tacit driver for anybody who cares to look, and has again started coming into the open. E.g., Trump ran a pro-white, pro-male identity politics campaign, called white supremacists "very fine people" and just used the power of the pardon to excuse a racist oppressor of Latinos.
> I've said repeatedly that white oppression existed throughout history.
Except that in your view it vanished when rhetorically convenient for you. (You're getting closer, though. Now your past is only ten years away.) That's not "throughout history" in any useful sense. We're still in history. As Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
> It does no good to conflate actual oppression with different outcomes from freely-made choices.
This is an example of the erasure I'm talking about. "Actual oppression" is what you as a white man are willing to accept as oppression. Everything else is fake. Who gets to decide? Not the people experiencing it. Not the experts in it. You, a random white guy with no particular expertise. And conveniently, the dividing line between "real" and "fake" is the one that lets you off the hook. What a surprise!
> I don't appreciate you saying I don't understand this.
Noted. I don't appreciate you opining like you understand it when you don't.
> you're not being a good faith participant here.
Ah, so you also get to define good faith. Of course.
That I am not accepting your framing is not a sign of bad faith. It is also not my job to make you feel comfortable about this. Your discomfort is a sign that you could heed if you wanted to: http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/249
Black culture is a real thing: it is the culture created by kidnapping millions of Africans, stripping them of their names and heritages, and leaving them to their own devices in a new country. (This sounds activist-y, but it's not; it's a simple statement of fact).
"White culture", on the other hand, is not really a thing. Irish people don't share the same songs, eat the same food, tell the same stories or wear the same clothes as southern Italians. And, in fact, at points not too far back in history, neither the Irish or the Italians were considered "white"!
Compare "pro-black" with "pro-Irish" or "pro-German". You'll find that people are out and proud about their Polish or Lithuanian heritage.
The problem with being "pro-white" is that, when you dig into the history of the concept, it's really just a way of being anti-black (or, if you want to generalize, of being "anti the outgroup of races and cultures not currently accepted into the coalition of races and cultures we currently deem "white").
Just a reminder to you that we're supposed to be a color-blind society. What you've written here is quite wicked and racist because most Americans are ignorant about their history.
That cluelessness presents us with an fantastic opportunity! If you observe the average American numbskull, you'll see he'll treat his peers objectively in the here-and-now rather than through historic racial filters. Given people are now like blank slates, it's cruel of you to pigeon-hole everyone into racial and ethnic buckets the way you've done.
By repeating these confusing things to our lovable idiots, "there's race, historic oppression", you continue to divide people.
Oh gosh, you are so abrasive!
First, I think she said she was a black woman, so clearly you haven't been a good faith participant with cracks like that.
Second, your use of the word oppression is too loose. You can't slap that word on practically every interaction between humans and not have it lose meaning!
I'm totally interested an honest discussion. Once you start being honest about how your framing of these things is part of America's historical structure of oppression, we can have one. But as long as you keep pretending without evidence that oppression miraculously ended in "in the 70s", "the 90s", or "roughly ten [...] years ago", we can't have an honest discussion.
We both agree America was founded with oppression built in. We both agree that it carried through until recently. You believe that those structures and attitudes totally ended at some hazy time by undescribed means, a time that just happens to be convenient for your argument. I don't. I believe it has continued, waxing and waning just as before.
Per Occam's Razor, you are making the claim that requires justification. The only reason you can act otherwise is that you hold one of the beliefs necessary to prop up oppression: that the current structure is perfectly fair. Suddenly, identity politics is not what white men have been doing in America since 1619. It's what those other people do. Without you ever catching on that your beef with those uppity other people is the same complaint that's been voiced at least since white people were fretting about slave rebellions.
So if you want honesty, get honest. Go take a class and learn the history. Maybe you'll discover some proof that oppression really did end the day before yesterday. But my bet is you'll realize that your claim is bunk.
It's difficult to summarize why they've lost the election. But it's probable their focus on wrong civil right issues made them lose, when those rights were exaggerated. Some of those rights alienated voters the point that people preferred voting for a (let's be honest) stupid spoiled child than for the Dems. It's important to choose the correct civil right issues to fight for when you're running Dems, perhaps when fighting against "privileges" and 90% of the population ends up in one of the "privilege buckets", that may be a sign that the threshold for the notion of "privileges" goes way too far. Same goes for safe spaces, authorized speech (James Damore), overprotection of minorities, I wonder what would have come if the Dems left all this "privilege hate" aside and their program went just "Let's extend Obamacare and drop the TTIP".
That would truely help minorities yet not be hate speech against the so-said "privileged".
Its just about strategy, they can still fix the civil rights issues when they get to office. But they don't need to run on them, everyone interested in identity politics (sans the white nationalists) is already voting Dem. Campaigning on these issues doesn't win any new voters. They need to court all the centrists and right-wing people who aren't rich.
Make the election about putting more money in everyday people's pockets. Run on "no taxes on your first $30k of income". Severely cut taxes on everyone below $100k, and start adding new brackets at $1m and every $500k above that.
As it stands though, the Democratic party won't touch economic issues. They've got a supermajority in California , have a bill passed by the state senate for single payer healthcare (SB562) and the (democrat controlled) assembly shelved it.
Name me one signature left policy isn't couched and positioned in-terms of victim identity politics?
All major policy proposals are described in terms of the victims that will be saved, regardless of left or right. You can't get the public to back anything unless you make it personal.
If it satisfies, then you're claiming the ends justify the means. Lots of mischief and tragedy has been rationalized in that way throughout history.
> I don't find that either side in the political spectrum can legitimately claim a moral high ground
Ah, well, I think we could complain that the moral high ground no longer exists. We've spent the past 100 years telling ourselves that there is no objective truth and therefore there is no moral basis for anything.
"Family values" on the right is the ideological shadow of traditional Judeo-Christian ethics and morality. And "identity politics" is the ideology of some twisted-up cultural marxism that seems to hold "being nice" up as the highest virtue. Both left's and right's claims lack all conviction or consistency and are too flimsy to represent any kind of moral high ground.
I suppose a lack of specificity means you're less of a target for your political foes and you have fewer concrete campaign promises to make and keep with the voters.
I'd say that conveniently, this lack of moral high ground allows snaky politicians to passionately proclaim whatever obscenity they fancy is moral since people hunger for a framework. Damn the consequences, the world is their political science petri dish.
But of course, this is my white male privilege speaking.
Nope, at least not in my experience.
I attended a small protest at the SF EPA offices in support of the agency and against the funding cuts from the Trump administration. It's fair to say that everyone there was an environmentalist who cared deeply about EPA efforts to curb pollution and encourage green energy. It's stands to reason that the organizers would focus on the thing that united everyone in attendance, right? But, instead, they brought up Native American speakers who offered prayers and talked about how non-Native Americans could never experience the same connection with the land that they had. They brought up Latin Americans who similarly talked about their special exposure to environmental issues. They took what little cohesiveness the group had and fractured it by having to acknowledge people's individuality.
We then marched to the Federal building. But on the way, they had multiple stops to protest non-environmental issues. They stopped at a housing developer to protest the new housing they were building, just because it happened to be near an area that's currently low income. Never mind the studies that show that any new housing, even luxury, helps keep rents lower at all levels. And then they stopped to protest in front of an industry conference of some sort. I forget their specific grievance, but I remember distinctly feeling like it was naive and I didn't support it.
The whole experience left me with a particularly distasteful feeling. I went to support increased funding and regulation by the EPA and somehow got roped into supporting a ton of crap that I disagreed with. And if this was an isolated incident, I could write it off as being poorly organized, but I've been to a few of these leftist protests now and, with the exception of the march for science, none of them were able to stay on message. They were all sidetracked by focusing on what divides us into individuals as opposed to what united us all to come protest. We're all multi-faceted people, but I think the left needs to learn that when we protest, it's okay to focus on the single facet that unites everyone protesting rather than the many that divide us so that we can speak with a single, powerful voice with a clear and coherent message and not a multitude of easily ignorable voices, each with their own unique message.
I know when the right rails against "identity politics" this is not what they mean, but as a progressive, I feel that this sort of identity politics gets in the way of building a coalition large enough to make progress.
When stated motives are questionable, look at the outcomes and use those to infer what the true motives were.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/529137/environmental...
Race and climate aren't naturally connected concepts. It's fair to conclude you use race and class in this way as a wedge to divide people and pit them against one another in order to batter your political enemies and increase your power.
If you want to be a Marxist, just be a Marxist and don't hide your beliefs.
And 90M people eligible voters chose not to vote at all. For as bad as people claimed Trump was, that's a staggering number of people to just say "meh, I don't really care."
But I do think one big problem is how to channel the energy the American Left has for marching, protest etc. into voting. Maybe there needs to be a 'March to the polls' on voting days! Everyone from a specific district or area get together, then groups go to their specific local voting locations.