[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

I cannot possibly give this statement enough thanks. The unending condescension about "identity politics" is infuriating, when coming from people whose identities will never result in any discrimination/loss of rights/fear of safety.

Classical liberals believe people should not be discriminated against. Classical liberals believe identity should play no role in how people are treated by the law or by our institutions. It's the color-blind approach to society, the one championed by Martin Luther King. It was the foundation of the Rights Revolution in the 60s and 70s, when Western legislatures and courts greatly expanded civil rights and civil liberties.

This approach was rejected by academics in the 80s, who wanted to use the Marxist approach to class struggle and apply it to race, gender, and sexual identity. They rejected color-blindness, and the core liberal principles of individual freedom and tolerance. It's an authoritarian credo, which hopes to use the power of the state to impose radical egalitarianism on society, in contrast to the classical liberal approach of leaving people alone to live as they please.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Gay people are uniquely affected by Pence's support of conversion therapy. Muslims are uniquely affected by Trump saying he's going to ban anyone of their faith from entering the country.

Classical liberalism covers all those things: Leave people alone to do as they please. Do not treat people differently because of their race or gender.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

In general, the leftist parts of the Democratic party aren't anti-capitalist or anti-western.

What's going on at college campuses is inspired by a anti-capitalism and anti-western ideology. Individual rights and individual freedoms are subordinated to the group struggle, where class has been replaced with race and gender. Freedom of expression is suppressed. All political and social struggles are seen through lens of race and gender, and the moral and political high-ground are inversions of the existing patriarchal power struggle formulated by radical leftists. In recent years that has spread out of campuses and into mainstream media and politics.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Really? Just now identity issues are brand new? What about suffrage? What about the civil rights era? What about the politics of the AIDS epidemic among the gay community in the 80s?

All driven by classical liberalism, not identity politics. Again, if you think people should not be treated differently owing to their race or gender or sexuality, then you're defending classical liberal principles.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Identity politics have always been there, and until we actually obtain equality, they will continue to be part of the picture.

Identity politics have been around for about 30 years. Before that, all those causes were championed on the basis of classical liberalism.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

No one is saying it's wrong because they're straight. They don't have experience with the situation. A straight person doesn't have to worry about having an alliance with others to give them a place to feel supported, because straight people are inherently supported because it's the "norm." So this hypothetical guy still doesn't have the same view of the topic, because he has no grasp of the effect that something like a GSA can have, thus yes, his opinions are lacking a huge part of the equation. Without knowledge of the consequences, without experience being discriminated against, this person cannot get a full, 360 degree view of whether or not that GSA is valuable.

Now THAT'S identity politics. It says the validity of someone's opinions derives from their race or gender. It's the same arguments that were once used by conservatives to keep women out of professions like law. It's poisoning the well - a way to delegitimize someone else's opinion.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of being told identity politics are the cause of division.

When you go from the classically liberal position that nobody should be discriminated against, and that we should treat everyone as unique individuals - principals on which there is broad agreement if not consensus in Western society today - to the identity politics credo that all politics are a struggle between groups and we should regard people first and foremost as members of their group, then yeah, you're going to cause division. And not just the kind of division you want to imagine, between righteous people and evil oppressors. You're going to get - you are getting - a division among liberals between the classical liberals who believe in treating everyone as individuals and putting the highest premium on freedom of expression and open debate, and the regressive political left, who believe in using group identity to impose a new political model on society, and in silencing any speech that questions or challengers that new model.

The upshot is that if women and minorities and people of non-CIS orientation mobilize as political groups fighting for their collective interests*, you're going to get males, whites, and straights mobilizing as political groups to fight for their collective interests. Which is fundamentally illiberal, and a very bad thing - especially for minorities.

The Left's Attacks on Color-Blindness Go Too Far

...But if adherents of colorblindness are vulnerable to ignoring or underestimating race as a factor, the academic left is vulnerable to fetishizing it and missing some of the ways in which race is a pernicious construct that robs people of their individuality. Ensconced in campus bubbles, the academic left also underestimates how divisive it can be to put anything other than individualism at the center of identity. A decade ago, when I lived at a liberal arts college, I’d have said that the worst flaw of the academic left’s approach to race was its tendency to mistreat blacks, Hispanics, and Asians who didn’t fit leftist stereotypes of “person of color.”

Today I’m more concerned by the conceit, popularized on campus and spreading among activists, journalists, and diversity professionals, that racial justice is best pursued by encouraging white people to reflect on, interrogate, and identify more fully with their whiteness. This approach strikes me as naive and dangerous. If pressed to focus on and interrogate their whiteness, some white people will conclude, like Peggy McIntosh, that white privilege is one of the major factors in their lives.

But I worry that the overall effect of encouraging white people to put whiteness rather than color-blindness or individualism at the center of their identity will be to swell and empower a faction in U.S. politics that Trump’s rise has helped to highlight. As the billionaire candidate climbed in the polls, Evan Osnos happened to be reporting on white nationalists, a tiny but nevertheless alarming portion of Trump’s base...

- The Atlantic

* We should recognize that most of the people who belong to the gender and minority groups do not subscribe to the credos of identity politics. Most want to be treated as individuals like everybody else. There's a reason only a quarter of Canadian women self-identity as feminists.