{Drafted 6/19/17} Identity Politics is a Correction

Today I read “Why social media is terrible for multiethnic democracies”, which was originally published at some point in 2016, but updated yesterday. Unclear what the update was made.

This article quite rightly points out that pre the 1960s era in politics, the political divide was mostly across economic lines. Labor vs capital. But what the (ostensibly) white men having this conversation don’t seem to understand/be aware of/care about, is that the political upheaval of the 60s was, I would argue, due to that woefully narrow and shortsighted view. That the political upheaval wasn’t just a change, it was a correction. Identity politics is a correction.

Nothing in this world is agnostic. Everything that is created by humans, or used/applied by them, will in some way be affected by human bias. I’m not making a value judgement about that. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, or that it should be preserved or eradicated. I’m just saying that this is something that is so consistently true it could probably be one of the canonical physical laws of the universe.