Identity Politics: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
It is a fact that we, as global citizens, are going through a very politicised moment in history. Brexit, European Elections, US preliminary campaigning, Algeria’s regime change, Honk Kong’s legislative tensions, Brazil’s Bolsonarian era, South African elections… The examples are endless.
It seems that the closer we look the more we find people passionately engaging with their political surroundings, some to very personal extremes.
It is somewhere in such realm that the concept of identity politics starts to become relevant. Politics are changing globally, and in order to be on the proverbial ‘right side of history’ we must be aware of how, and in what ways, such changes may influence our behaviours and lives.
The Good
History is furnished with mementos of successful and positive achievements of movements based on identity politics. From the Suffragettes in the UK to the Civil Rights Movements in the US, and everything in between, identity politics has been a major driving force behind social progress.
It is beyond any reasonable doubt that the push for equality and justice across the whole spectrum of human existence (from gender, to race and religion, to virtually everything else) is one of the greatest collective struggles of our species as a whole. It is, after all, such capability to act beyond sheer instinct and to build on past lessons that enshroud us with pride of being the ones standing apart in the animal kingdom.
In this sense, the good that can arise from identity politics is the incorporation of smaller factors of one’s existence into the management and governing reality of a nation as a whole. By acknowledging factors such as race or gender as inherently political, societies cross the line between what is morally accepted into the realm of meaningful actions, and eventually legislature. It is the difference between saying ‘we are all the same’ and having a very real, legal ,and political framework enforcing such equality.
Identity politics is, therefore, a step in the creation of more inclusive and fair nations by acknowledging that certain traits of one’s existence are not mere pieces of Self scattered across disparate citizens, but rather an integral part of the fabric of the nation-state.
In an era where global citizens are highly influenced by notions of post-materialism the Economy, Security, or Trade (among others), are bound to coexist with Gender Equality, Minority Rights, Religious Freedom, Sexual Orientation (etc.) as issues of political importance and campaigning.
Nation-states are no longer impersonal machines to be ruled in a way that only favours a balanced management of resources, they are also places inherently constituted by a mass of individual citizens striving towards existing in a society which they can support, belong to, and feel safe in.
The Bad
The last paragraph of the former section started with the following sentence: ‘Nation-states are no longer impersonal machines to be ruled in a way that only favours a balanced management of resources’.
The emphasis being on the word Only.
The other side of the coin when it comes to identity politics is that it can lead some political actors to overemphasise the importance of identity in the greater scheme of politics.
Let us not deceive ourselves. Much of what should make a competent politician lies in his diplomatic, economical, intellectual and managerial aptitudes.
The problem is that those are the exact same traits that are hard to get across during campaigns, and even if a candidate is able to do so, they are nonetheless very impersonal topics which hinder the creation of personal ties with prospective voters.
I mean, if someone screams our name in a crowd, even if not calling us specifically, we are still bound to turn our heads; On the other hand, if a stranger is making a detailed presentation about his economic growth plan, we are either going to keep walking or fall asleep.
And that point in particular I will not be moralising, for if we all had a passionate interest in knowing every little detail of political realities, we would be politicians ourselves.
What I do label as bad, is when politicians exploit that facet in order to conceal their utter lack of skills for office. When politicians build their campaigns and personas around their relatability to the prospective voter base, and do so while failing to present any meaningful or credible plan to enact their roles once elected, then we have a problem.
In spite of the aforementioned importance of identity politics in modern society, such issues are not enough, in and of themselves, to be at the uttermost centre of a country’s political life. Issues of identity politics should be seen as predictors of where a society is headed as a whole, and simultaneously to assess politician’s awareness of such evolution.
Identity politics constantly push the boundaries of which values are important to the human and social fabric of a nation. They tell us who we are as a whole, but they do not tell us what we do or how we function.
Countries exist to provide a dignified and sustainable existence to its citizens (in theory at least), and in order to do so they have to manage all of its resources as efficiently as possible.
In a summarised manner, when politicians exploit identity politics for votes, they are screaming ‘I see you and I know who you are!’, while omitting the latter half of the sentence: ‘… but I have no idea how to make your lives better’.
The Ugly
The first section dealt with identity politics from the perspective of its capability to push society forward by means of empowering its inhabitants. The second approached the topic from a ‘practical’ perspective, in which identity politics can (willing or unwillingly) serve as a cloak of invisibility, omitting a candidate’s lack of capabilities for office.
This last section looks at when identity politics are bastardised to such a point that they become vessels for the diffusion of distorted ideas and actions.
Contemporary political developments have seen that the same mechanisms used in the push for fairer and more inclusive societies are also applied to the reinforcement of outdated and dangerous ideas. Such developments having made contributions to the corrosion of the conceptual credibility of identity politics in itself.
This point is better exposed through examples.
Think of racial issues in the USA, especially under the Trump presidency. The civil rights movement was for years, in all its complexity, regarded as a legitimate issue of not only identity politics, but also human rights as a whole.
The premise, in its simplest form, being easy to understand: a minority section of society, being discriminated against at political, social, and institutional levels, solely based on the colour of their skin fights for their legitimate place in society; In other words, the political struggle of a whole minority group based on their shared racial identity.
Under Trump, such notion became not only questionable, but was also met with (often violent) responses of pro-white-rights groups.
A very clear representation of this would be the emergence of a White Lives Matter group in response to the already established Black Lives Matter movement. The latter being a legitimate aggregation of individuals standing against racial violence and discrimination of African Americans, the former a communal delusion of white people who think they are discriminated against based on the colour of their skin.
Also out of the US came another very vivid example of the harmful possibilities presented by identity politics. Recently Boston made headlines by hosting a Straight Pride parade, clearly in response to LGBTQ+ Pride parades celebrated internationally.
Once more, the collective identity of being a discriminated minority (based on sexual orientation in this case) pushing for equality in the eyes of the world cannot be replicated in the context of a group of individuals who have never experienced such persecution. Historically, heterosexual individuals have never been hurt by that individual trait of their identities, and as such it is counterlogical that they need to march for their rights to being with.
Lastly, in case the former examples have not been clear enough, there is the case of women’s rights. From fighting for the right to vote, to work, to have agency over their own lives and bodies, equal pay, to be free from violence (among many, many, other issues), women have been challenging the world around them ever since forever.
But even such a movement, whose validity should be beyond any rational challenge, has found its nemesis in the form of so-called men’s rights movements. These focusing heavily on opposing feminist causes based on the belief that men, as a gender, are increasingly marginalised, oppressed, and endangered. A goal that is delusional at best, and dangerous at worse.
It should be clear by now that all factions of society can build a movement based on their identity, allowing them to participate or engage in identity politics. It is a matter of self-awareness and narrative, as much as it is an issue of social progress.
What becomes apparent from the aforementioned examples, though, is that just because a movement can be built around parts of collective identity, this does not automatically legitimates said movements.
It is utterly ridiculous to think that white people are marginalised in any shape or form, that heterosexuality is threatened by the existence of LGBTQ+ citizens with equal rights in society, or that men are somehow becoming increasingly marginalised.
It is when people who are the majority (and often the oppressing forces) of society start to believe that they are threatened somehow by those who have no means to hurt them, that identity politics becomes to surface as a dangerous tool.
What can be used to enact real change and to safeguard the rights and wellbeing of marginalised people, based on courage, communal mobilisation, lobbying and protest, can also be put in place to inflame very impressionable sections of society capable of inflicting real harm on other human beings — Whether politically or physically.
When we see droves of men, sporting swastikas and guns, protesting people who are trying to be acknowledged as equal citizens in the world’s eyes, then we have a problem.
When white, heterosexual men, start to believe that their very existence is endangered by people who do not yield half the power they do, then identity politics becomes ugly.
I have been told that even the smallest of animals, when cornered, attacks. But this is not the case here. For when a lion steps into the mentality of a cornered mouse, none of us are safe.
