Ta-Nehisi Coates addresses Hillary Rodham Clinton’s neoliberal Identity Politics

Click through the first tweet to read the full thread. Ta-Nehisi Coates lays out the cogent arguments of traditional intersectionality theory. Doug Henwood on Twitter said he was waiting for this series of tweets to be turned into an essay proper.

It was Professor Adolph Reed that posited Identity Politics are an extension of neoliberalism, and here we have Ta-Nehisi Coates addressing each and every myth that Hillary Rodham Clinton Liberals promulgated during her campaign. Neoliberal myths that the mainstream Democratic Party still embrace as their foundational ideology. If there is an antithesis of intersectional theory, it is Identity Politics fueled by neoliberalism, and the latter’s widespread adoption by the Liberal class has set many social struggles back precisely because it eschews class and is, by its very nature, anti-intersectional.

Because neoliberalism reduces each and every human social relation to a commodity, it requires the atomization of individuals. A major underpinning of neoliberal thought is mythical concept of meritocracy, which dovetails neatly with Identity Politics. Rather than solidarity across lines of gender, race, class, and any other vector of oppression, neoliberal Identity Politics seek to promote “competition,” and to “diversify” oppression. Instead of seeking to dismantle the structures that perpetuate systemic racism, institutional sexism, and the like, those espousing neoliberal Identity Politics strive to place select members of oppressed groups in positions of power to continue those selfsame oppressions.

Moreover, myopic obsession with meritocracy, metaphorical glass ceilings, and Identity Politics is why white bourgeois feminism is, in essence, a faux feminism. The celebrated Professor bell hooks challenged neoliberalism by rightly placing Clinton’s Identity Politics in opposition to the principled politics of intersectionality saying that there is a “constant challenge about Identity Politics versus who are you and what do you stand for?” Professor hooks went on to say in regards to Clinton specifically:

“There are certain things that I don’t want to co-sign in the name of feminism that I think are militarist, imperialist, white supremacist, whether they are conducted by women, or men…”

This strikes at the heart of neoliberal Identity Politics inasmuch as it reminds us that diversifying oppressors necessarily leaves oppressions in place.

If we are to move forward against the very real threat of ne0-fascism, we must confront the counter-productiveness of Identity Politics, and reject neoliberalism entirely. We need a multiracial, multiethnic, working class struggle that is steeped in bell hooks and Paulo Freire.