Identity speak
Must We Say: ‘As a Black, Cisgender, Gay Woman?’
People prefix whatever they are going to say with two or three identity claims, which is not a good idea
For example, someone might say that “As a Black, gay woman, I think Black women in this country are losing jobs because of immigration.” the Black, gay woman prefix doesn’t do much — there is no evidence or facts in the statement to support that Black women are or are not losing jobs.
Dressing the statement up with an “identity claim” makes it seem better-reasoned, or at least well-informed, even if the person citied no evidence.
I’m going to call this linguistic prefixing an “Identity Claim” (and capitalize it here for clarity). An Identity Claim can be useful, particularly if a person is speaking about their subjective perceptions and feelings. Someone inside a particular group can speak best about their own feelings and lived experience, so knowing the speaker’s identity is relevant when we are talking about subjective impressions. But less so when discussing objective reality.
Identity Claims serve less useful and even harmful purposes
If the claims do not really improve an argument, why do we see “as an X” so often as the first thing out of someone’s mouth (or on the page)? The reasons are subtle, and often insidious.
- Establish the primacy of identity. People who use Identity Claims are asserting, implicitly, that identity matters, and by writing it first, they assert that it matters most. The idea that only people from a certain identity group can speak on topics relevant to that group is actually pretty odd, but at this point, few of us even see it as unusual, much less irrelevant.
- Policing contributions from out-group members. When used to reply to an argument or in dialogue, using an Identity Claim functions as an ad-hominem attack on the original speaker. It highlights that the original speaker is not in the correct group to participate in dialogue.
For instance, if this white woman, a scientist who studies HIV, says that Hispanic women are having unprotected sex, leading to a resurgence of AIDS, she may be called out for “whitesplaining.” In this case, she simply commented and analyzed across gender, racial, or sexual identity boundaries, but the critique might be effective. - Establish victimhood status. In some cases, a speaker may use their identity to gain a kind of social or moral standing by pointing out that they are in a historically-oppressed group.
Just as nobody wants to tell a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) who lost a child that their proposed alcohol policy is too strict, nobody wants to challenge or correct a traumatized member of any victimized community. Yet those most traumatized do need input from others who may be dispassionate rather than traumatized. A comment from the “wrong” identity group may be dismissed as uninformed, or even victim-blaming. - Establish and police valid identity groups. By repeating certain identity group terms often and up top, the writer or speaker is also enforcing which groups are valid.
Consider the ever-shifting “LGBT” acronym and the nearly-nonsensical AAPI acronym. They stand for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender,” and “Asian American and Pacific Islander,” respectively. Arguably, trans people and gay people have little in common, and a Polynesian and Pakistani even less so. But these are the categories we are given, and normalizing the use of Identity Claims causes them to be constantly reinforced as correct or even required categories.
As I wrote recently (“We’re All Racist — Or Maybe We’re Not”) identity-based activists are in a battle against socialists and class-based activism. Social Justice and identity activists use various approaches to elevate, normalize, and constantly re-state the importance of racial, gender, and sexual identity.
For whatever reason, you rarely see “as a poor person, I think that…” (Simply google “as a poor person” vs. “as a black man,” and “as a black woman” and other variations, to see that racial Identity Claim prefixing is perhaps 5x as common as class-based prefixing.)
When Identity Claims go wrong
We might call the idea that an Identity Claim is required, or even particularly relevant, the “identity claim fallacy” which is the flip side of the ad hominem fallacy. Ad hominem attacks attempt to tear down an argument by attacking the speaker, and Identity Claims attempt to bolster it by asserting the speaker’s group membership.
A good argument needs to stand on its own, and tacking an Identity Claim to the front of an incorrect statement does not make it true.
Even when an Identity Claim adds useful context, it is still suspect because nobody is an elected ambassador for their entire racial, ethnic, or gender-oriented group. “As a gay man, I think …” subtly implies the speaker is somehow empowered to speak for all gay men, and that gay men are a homogeneous group, inviting stereotypes and denying individual differences. It implies that the writer’s personal views are representative.
Identity Claims are fundamentally post-truth
Finally, Identity Claims undermine the very notion of truth and an open society. They are based on (and attempt to create) a world where only Black people talk about Black issues, only gay people speak about LGB issues, and only Hispanics talk about Hispanic issues. (Curiously, white people, Jews, and Asian people are not extended the intellectual safe-space of only talking to themselves about topics that affect them.)
The fundamentally postmodern reasoning is that since all truth is created in the mind of the speaker and reader, and the world is divided into groups of oppressors and oppressed people, allowing a non-member of group X to speak about group X is an exercise in oppression. Implicit thoughts and ideas from the white supremacist, patriarchal, cissexist, or ableist mindset of the speaker are simply being reinforced and promulgated every time a putative oppressor opens her mouth, or puts pen to paper.
The world is not actually made up of simplistic categories of oppressed and oppressor, so this fiction merely serves to reduce ideological diversity and encourage victim-oriented navel-gazing where open dialogue is actually needed.
Related: the Privilege Disclaimer
Another odd linguistic trend is the privilege disclaimer.
This is where someone talks about something unjust or painful in their personal lives, and inserts a few lines or a short paragraph talking about how they don’t have it as bad as some other people, and particularly some entire identity group.
For example, in this essay on post-pandemic mental decline and depression , Atlantic writer Ellen Cushing includes a Privilege Disclaimer in paragraph 13 of a 19-paragraph essay:
I have a job that allows me to work from home, […] a support network, a savings account, decent Wi-Fi, plenty of hand sanitizer. I have experienced the pandemic from a position of obscene privilege.
Like Identity Claims, Privilege Disclaimers are largely a result of policing speech so that an implicit message about the importance of identity groups is always included. Making the disclaimer signals the writer’s or speaker’s loyalty to the identity-based project. Without it, they could be dragged on Twitter or have their writing careers harmed by needless controversy. Easier to add the paragraph and move on. This is an aspect of how cancellation is broadly used to enforce behavior useful to identity-based advocates.
I find that these privilege disclaimers have moved lower in the text as the need for the Privilege Claim wanes — a few years ago, it seemed to me that Privilege Claims needed to be near the top of any piece, so the content was framed completely within the context of privilege, rather than inserted later on in a piece. Slow progress, but something to watch.
Sometimes justified, but usually not
To be sure, sometimes an Identity Claim adds useful context and lets us know that the speaker’s thoughts and opinions are informed by personal experiences. But the prevalence has increased to the point where it is almost a linguistic tic, and the use of Identity Claims at the start of a statement, to frame an entire idea, is putting the personal background cart before the good argument horse.
I, Pluralus, keep my various identities to myself, at least here on Medium. I try to articulate a few ideas, and hope they stand on their own, inform my lovely and intrepid readers, and perhaps even stimulate further, interesting thought and discussion.
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