Identity
One of the most overused and least illuminating phrases in this election cycle is “identity politics.” It is not useful because it can ultimately refer to any kind of politics, since every act of association and every exercise of the franchise is to some significant degree a statement about the people and the kind of nation with which a person identifies. Voters are routinely asked, and routinely express themselves, in terms of which candidates they most identify with, but only some of these identifications do we deem worthy of being called “identity politics,” as if it were less tribal or irrational or reflexive to support a fellow partisan or a fellow ideologue because “he is like me.”
It also reveals little that cannot be explained in another way. Viewed one way, all democratic politics is always at least partly identity politics. It was for this reason that Kuehnelt-Leddihn saw democracy as a cousin of other “identitarian” ideologies of the left. Whether you accept K-L’s taxonomy and his location of democracy on the political spectrum or not, he hit upon an essential facet of democracy that it is a regime type that encourages and even valorises collective self-expression and self-identification.
Furthermore, the deployment of the phrase is frequently aimed at discrediting or undermining a campaign: Huckabee’s campaign was somehow tainted because it had engaged in evangelical identity politics, or now a number of pundits have started arguing that Obama has suffered from being too closely identified with support from black voters. A standard charge from Republicans against Democrats is that they practice “identity politics,” as if the nationalists in the GOP do not engage in the same when they rhetorically align their political foes with the French or other foreigners. When a message appears “divisive,” it is “identity politics,” but when it seems “unifying” it is described in entirely different terms.
Obama’s South Carolina victory speech was a ringing endorsement of a certain idea of American identity. Because it was an American identity, and some might argue an Americanist ideology, that Obama was endorsing on Saturday night, it not only receives praise, but rapturous approval, partly because of its emphasis on unity and inclusion. The thing that needs to be kept in mind in all of this is that every affirmation of identity is an attempt include as many as possible within some coherent definition, and every affirmation of identity is an implicit exclusion of those unlike ourselves.
This can be put to pernicious ends or to just ends, but a good way to begin discerning between them more clearly is to recognise that everyone is engaged in identity politics of one kind or another, and that it is the content of the policies being advanced with this identitarian appeal and the goals of the person making this appeal that should matter the most. More often that not, the charge of engaging in “identity politics” is a way of changing the subject in a debate where your side seems to be losing, and indeed to complain about an “identity politics” that pits Americans against one another is to make another, different appeal to national identity without addressing the possibility of competing interests.
Perhaps all of this is perfectly obvious, but if the coverage of the election to date is any indication I think it could stand to be repeated.
I’ve actually been somewhat confused by the usage in this race so far of the term “identity politics,” so thanks for this. It seems to me what people are using it for would just as easily and perhaps more appropriately be described as simple demagoguery.
— Miles · Jan 28, 09:24 AM · #
Very enlightening, and if it is obvious, then I must have missed it.
Although I think it’s a very appropriate observation, I still find (as an at least pseudo- evangelical) that Huckabee’s “vote for me because I’m the only real (wink wink nudge nudge say-no-more) Christian in the race” off putting. I wonder why that is?
— Rick · Jan 28, 11:22 AM · #
The difference (or what should be the difference if you’re an Enlightenment type like me) between identity politics and other kinds of pandering is that identity refers to a differentiating quality you do not choose: race, gender.
“Evangelical identity politics” is therefore an oxymoron, if only because Evangelicalism is probably the religion most contingent on personal choice (as befits an American-originated phenomenon).
This is why identity politics is bad. When you pander to waiters or wal-mart greeters or hedge fund managers you pander to people who have reputedly chosen these occupations and whose preoccupations are therefore more legitimate than those of, say, blacks, gays, women and the tall (who will soon face punitive tax rates when Greg Mankiw becomes Mitt Romney’s Chancellor of the Exchequer), who should rise above their genetic heritage and shape their on destiny, as befits citizens of a free democracy.
— PEG · Jan 28, 12:06 PM · #
Identity politics a republican term made up to confuse voters into becoming a droid to do the work of the wealthy as cheep as possible. People all over America is tired of politics as usual as the republican and democratic “Good Old Boys” all having their left hand in THEIR POCKETS to protect their wealth, and shaking hands with the special interest groups. Support the Constitution, vote for Ron Paul.
— Joe · Jan 28, 04:02 PM · #
The problem Huckabee and Obama have when their consituents’ identities are drawn narrowly is that people outside that identity may decide there’s not much in it for them. If Huckabee threatens to win the Presidency by winning 90% of the evangelical vote and 30% of the non-evangelicals, the non-evangelicals might start thinking there’s more in it for them with the other guy.
— J Mann · Jan 28, 04:59 PM · #
I’m with PEG up to a point, but the distinction I make is between identities and interests. A racial group can have a legitimate and tangible interest in civil rights legislation, for example, and that’s not a bad thing. Identity politics comes up when you get beyond these tangible interests and try to get a racial/gender/religious group to take uniform positions on issues that don’t have anything to do with legislation targeting their distinct interests. I don’t think there’s a coherent African American or female position on the Iraq war, for example, and there certainly doesn’t appear to be a uniform Evangelical position on the environment.
The reason I dislike identity politics is that I think societies work best when the coalitions are different for different issues. You might have urban/rural for one issue, ethnic divisions for another, class divisions for still another, age divisions for a fourth, and pure ideology for a fifth. When societies freeze into competing blocks, there’s no possibility of doing deals across party lines, and you’re less likely to end up with legislation that actually serves the needs of the country in all the different policy areas.
— M.C. · Jan 29, 04:02 PM · #