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Identity Politics

Recent statements by some U.S. political figures show the clarity and depth of a mud puddle, a mix of the antiquated obliviousness of white privilege and the poison of the past four years of twisted illogic, outright lies and fear-mongering.

In a January 22 article in The Weekly Dish titled “Biden's Culture War Aggression,” Andrew Sullivan insists that “equity means giving the named identity groups a specific advantage in treatment by the federal government over other groups — in order to make up for historic injustice and ‘systemic’ oppression.” Note the use of the term advantage and his need, oddly, to put the term systemic in quotation marks, conventionally a ploy to indicate disagreement.

If Mr. Sullivan is so ignorant of historical and social science research that he does not believe the massive evidence of long-standing systemic privilege for whites over BIPOC people, I can only refer him to reams of meticulous published documentation available in journals and books. For a thorough but brief snapshot, I recommend the fourth season of the podcast Scene on Radio called “Seeing White” that in fourteen episodes reveals some of the most egregious examples of the social construction of white privilege.

I want, rather, to focus on his use of the word “advantage” in the context of what is now called identity politics. As the “Seeing White” series makes clear, for over 400 years the advantage has gone overwhelmingly to whites. Identity politics has been with us all along; it’s just that the only identity that mattered was white identity, usually unspoken and unseen as such. All politics is identity politics. The term is a redundancy. All social policy has been identity based. That is the true identity politics still at work in the USA today.

Fight for What?

On January 26, Senator Rand Paul asked, “Who hasn’t used the word fight figuratively... in a speech?” This woefully specious argument against the second impeachment of Donald Trump uses analysis worthy of a grade school debater. The question that merits attention is not the use of the word but the use of the word for what purpose. We may be asked to fight campaigns against illiteracy or polio or poverty or the novel coronavirus. Since last fall, however, Trump and his minions have relentlessly put forth phony arguments about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. At least ninety judges have disagreed and dismissed every case brought before them, including the U.S Supreme Court twice. Last summer, Trump asked the vicious, fascist group styling themselves the Proud Boys to “stand by.” Well, they did, and when Trump and his lackey Giuliani called for an assault upon the voting process itself at the infamous rally on January 6, those boys and others maddened by months of repetitious fake stories let loose their fear and wrath. A shameful spectacle indeed, fueled and sparked by Trump. We must place the responsibility where it lives. As President Truman said, “The buck stops here.”

Banana Republicans

Finally, a few words in support of the international outrage against the use of culturally insensitive slurs by some Republicans in their comments on the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building, comments that showed their ignorance of history. Both former president G.W. Bush and Rep. Mike Gallagher spoke of the attack as more suitable behavior for a “banana republic” and Sen. Marco Rubio said the action was “third world style.”

I hope some day these shallow men choose to learn enough of the history of Latin America and of all emerging nations to understand that just about every economically struggling and politically unstable nation around the world can lay responsibility for those ills on Europe and the USA. From colonial extraction of wealth and brutalization of the local people to drawing artificial “national” boundaries to US corporations practically enslaving those populations and their homegrown political/economic structures and leaders to foreign money interests, the world is filled with the legacy of Euro-American greed. The so-called first world created much of the havoc we still see today in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia but has taken little responsibility for it. To invoke tired old slurs is to perpetuate the lies about international domination and to expose the speakers as uninformed and blithely over-privileged.