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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.