Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
In theory, I like the idea that everyone is equal before the law, and we should treat people as individuals worthy of respect regardless of what group they self-identify with, are perceived as belong to, or both. Classic liberalism is good.
However, it's inaccurate and just plain myopic to think we owe all progress on human rights to this idea. Identity politics is necessary in many cases because people like generalizations and are mostly incapable of looking beyond group identity when thinking about themselves and others. You can't evolve society based on how people SHOULD think if they were completely rational beings, because they just aren't fully rational.
It's a useful simplification to say "a woman's right to choose" is a women's issue, or that "black lives matter". Creating narratives around a disadvantaged group or members who share the same struggle makes those struggles comprehensible and visceral; narratives built around abstract ideas of universal justice make for near-universal yawns and incomprehension.
Yes, identity politics can lead to injustice and oppression, to the quelling of unpopular opinions and to backlash against a perceived revolutionary transfer of power. It's an imperfect tool for an imperfect world. That flawed tool, though, is preferable to a perfect tool for a perfect world, for we don't live in some Platonic plane of ideas inhabited by philosopher kings - we live on a ball of sh*t and mud surrounded by tribally evolved barely sentient animals. The appeal to logic only works, alas, with the logical.
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While I agree that identities are useful for creating narratives to explain the perspective of disadvantaged (and advantaged for that matter) people, and that the use of these narratives to sway public opinion is by definition identity politics, this use of identity is not the divisive kind.
Identity politics becomes a problem when it leads to differential treatment for different groups based on identity, with the disadvantaged benefiting the most, causing everyone to rush in and try to find an identity based disadvantage they can use to get ahead in life. This is what is leading to the Oppression Olympics we see today.
I've often argued that identity is very useful descriptively, as it can be used to create the narratives you describe. However, I think it's terrible when applied prescriptively, as in the case of some forms of affirmative action. The egalitarian solution is to identify what the primary factors contributing to the disadvantages of the various groups, and use a form of affirmative action that doesn't use identity, but those other factors to determine eligibility. This both avoids the oppression Olympics based on identity, and ensure that people outside the main group who are otherwise overlooked, can also take advantage.