Quote:
Originally Posted by rubecube
The whitewashing of the identity politics, which was used by certain groups to get to the progress we're at today, under the banner of liberalism is pretty insulting to said groups.
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Sorry, I don't see it that way. Black Americans made far more progress under the leadership and tactics of Martin Luther King, who was a genuine liberal who wanted blacks to be treated no differently than other Americans, than they did once the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and Angela Davis seized the spotlight. And it bears keeping in mind that those latter groups failed miserably in their agendas of overthrowing the American government and setting up autonomous black states.
Anti-obscenity laws that prohibited references to homosexuality were rolled back under the banner of the freedom of unpopular speech, another liberal value.
Ending the systemic discrimination against natives in Canada was a liberal project. They gained the right to vote, etc. within the legal framework of Canada, which could not sustain the practice of treating them differently from other Canadians.
The problems we're faced with now are not legalistic. They're problems of poverty, of social segregation, and of cultural attitudes. These are not easy problems to address, especially as there's fierce disagreement over the source of the problems and the best way to redress them. But they won't be resolved by turning our backs on the liberal principles that drove the tremendous progress of the last 50 years. Identity politics is a siren call to tribalism and the dubious comforts of us vs them. It's folly.