What the Left got wrong about Identity Politics
And what it should keep in mind in order to salvage the Democratic base in the future
Written by Conner Bryan
“Identity Politics,” as a topic of concern among political pundits, picked up quite the buzz after Donald Trump’s election in November of 2016. Shortly after his move to Pennsylvania Ave was announced, major outlets began questioning wether Clinton’s loss could be chalked up to one of a democratic emphasis on the differences between races, genders, sexes, classes, etc. In short, because she played the game of identity politics.
Among these larger identity groupings, political analysts typically draw lines around majority-minority distinctions. For example, according to the US Census Bureau, 76.9 percent of people report themselves as white (including, but not limited to, having Lebanese, Moroccan, or Arab decent) placing this particular identity group in the majority.
Major outlets argued that Clinton’s campaign overestimated its ability to build a coalition among those whose identity lie in the minority category (e.g., black: 13.3 percent or hispanic/latino: 17.8 percent).
If correct, this analysis implies a rather homogenized future for political strategists with Democratic stripes. Even though black people preferred Clinton over Trump by a spread of 80 points and hispanic people by a spread of 36 points, only 21 percent of white people, on average, needed to prefer Trump to name him the successor (see Behind Trump’s Victory).
From this narrative alone it is easy to see why people, liberals included, were quick to disregard the so called “identity” approach to politics. Clinton’s emphasis on appealing to minority groups via images of her breaking through glass-ceilings, garnering the support of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, as well as hiring DREAMers to lead latino outreach programs was ultimately unsuccessful.
People have seemed to interpret these events as if identity politics en masse is a complete waste of time. From political philosophers like Wendy Brown who claim “Politicized identity…can hold out no future — for itself or others,” to pop-secularists like Sam Harris arguing that “reality” itself “can’t be predicated on who you happen to be,” the dissatisfaction with identity politics has gained cult followings.
I believe it is important to discuss exactly what we mean to say when we speak of identity politics. I have provided a crude characterization based on examples used in last year’s election and yet, its origin arguably stretches back to 1977. Maybe further. In doing this, perhaps the current debate regarding identity politics’ efficacy can withstand some of the more recent criticisms.
Their emphasis on the simultaneity of factors in oppression helped people like Kimberlé Crenshaw in developing how we think about “intersectionality.”
It’s relatively common knowledge that the literal term “identity politics” was coined by a black, queer, feminist activist group who called themselves the Combahee River Collective. During a famous statement of intention in 1977, they report the following:
Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.
Indeed, because of their disciplined focus on the struggles “in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression,” the Combahee River Collective became home to influential members such as writer and activist Audre Lorde and Charlene McCray, First Lady of New York City. Moreover, their activist work helped desegregate Boston public schools in the mid 70s.
The Combahee River Collective became a significant influence in social theory as well as their activist work. Their emphasis on the simultaneity of factors in oppression helped people like Kimberlé Crenshaw in developing how we think about “intersectionality.” Intersectional analysis, as Crenshaw puts it, is committed to considering “any discourse about identity [as having] to acknowledge how our identities are constructed through the intersection of multiple dimensions.”
In the Combahee River Collective example, the intersection of identities in its constituents lies in being queer, a woman, and black, among others. These are members of identities across sexuality, gender, and race, however, such an analysis can include, for example, class, ability, nationality, and even political party orientation (as I am going to argue below). The point is to consider any one of these identity groupings as not necessarily isolated from the others.
Here is another example, provided by Crenshaw herself, that illuminates the practical applications of intersectional analysis (and lack thereof). Emma Degraffenreid is a black woman looking for a job at a car manufacturing plant. After being admitted to an interview, she was not accepted for hire. She later filed a lawsuit against the plant on the grounds of discrimination. The Judge reviewing the case, however, disagreed that any discrimination was at play, for the reasons that the manufacturing plant hired both black men (disqualifying Emma from racist accusations) and white women (disqualifying her from charges of sexism). What the Judge failed to notice, as Crenshaw points out, was that Emma lies at the “intersection” of these two identity groups and genuinely qualifies for charges on both counts. Crenshaw’s example here is of a legitimate court case: Emma Degraffenreid et Al. v. General Motors Assembly Division, St. Louis.
What can we learn from an intersectional approach to identity politics? Beyond conditioning ourselves to recognize the nuances of racism, I am arguing that intersectional identity politics resolves a lot of the “issues” raised by current members of the left who feel identity politics is a politics of difference, factionalism, and pain. Most notable among these critics is a man named Mark Lilla. Lilla is a professor at Columbia University, Harvard educated, and since Trump’s inauguration, has unloaded a lot of opinions on platforms like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the New Statesman. His prolific demand to end identity politics has recently culminated in a book entitled The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, published August 15 of this year.
Lilla argues this: “Every advance of liberal identity consciousness has marked a retreat of effective liberal political consciousness.” Clinton losing the presidential election was a direct consequence of raising identity consciousness and not political consciousness. You will hear arguments like this that continue on by saying “campus politics bears a good deal of the blame,” because it substitutes “engagement in issue-based movements” for “a single-minded fascination with group differences and the social margins.” This fascination endangers political mobility because instead of advocating for “commonality,” a “shared destiny,” a “we,” as Lilla purports, “liberal identitarianism” divides people, consequently losing Democrats elections.
I will focus on two main problems of Lilla’s thesis: (1) it confuses identity politics with identitarianism, and (2) it commits to a politics that believes Democrats can only win elections by winning over white people who voted for Trump, which is wrong. Let’s start with the first.
A quick wikipedia search for “identity politics” will reveal a picture of James Madison, “Father of the Constitution.” This is because, as Amy Gutmann has shown in her book Identity in Democracy, Madison himself realized the necessity of identity groupings to democracy. She cites Madison saying the following about factions in Federalist 10:
It would be as much a folly to try to abolish what causes identity groups to form — particularistic group identities of individuals and freedoms of association — as “it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to human life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
Insummary, identity politics is a praxis toward manifesting freedom just as much as it is a necessary element of a healthy democracy. As such, it takes on a positivistic character. By this I mean to say that identity politics derives its sense of agency from within and requests policies based on a freedom to e.g., be considered equally under the law, use the appropriate bathroom, or the freedom to not follow through with an unwanted pregnancy.
This positive freedom is an essential feature of identity politics as outlined by the Combahee River Collective’s statement when they say they are working to end “our own” oppression. i.e., identity politics’ positive attitude is rooted in the love for one’s community and support from within such a community.
This may be contrasted with identitarianism, or the identitarian movement more specifically, which dates back to New Right french white nationalists. That being said, the movement has garnered interest in the US in the form of Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute (white supremacist think tank) and Identity Evropa, a white supremacist group attributed with organizing the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
These movements, I submit, engage in what can loosely be considered “negative freedom,” or freedom from external sources of control and censorship. i.e., instead of deriving their politics from a position of self-love, these identitarian movements source frustration with others. Obviously in these cases, the white nationalists are frustrated with anyone who is not white. Moreover, their politics demands not so much that they be recognized under the law, but that those who are specifically non-white not be recognized.
That Lilla could equate the two in the form of a “Left identitarian” should be enough to reconsider his proposals. However, this essay is just as much concerned with the practical application of leftist agendas as it is with the theoretical articulation of such an agenda.
Having distinguished between positively associated identity movements and negative identitarian movements, it is time now to look at Lilla’s second thesis, which leads Democrats to believe the only way to win a 2020 presidential election is to compromise with people who voted for Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016.
This line of reasoning is all too familiar: “The Democrats lost the white working class. The Republicans exploited it.” This group the Republican party exploited were so contentiously significant in the aftermath of the election that they were given a shorthand: “Trump Democrats.” Admitting that Trump Democrats (white working class men) lost Clinton the election, means retrieving these lost souls in the next go around, which means abandoning identity politics for white non-intersectional identitarian politics.
Regardless of how she performed, it was the electoral college’s decision at the state level to vote against their constituencies that ultimately lost Clinton the election.
There’s an easy way out of this trap. First, don’t admit that Trump Democrats were a significant detriment to Clinton’s campaign. Why? Nate Cohn reportsfrom the New York Times that roughly 9 percent of Obama voters switched to support Trump last minute. Similarly, roughly 5 and a half percent of Romney 2012 voters supported Clinton. The difference, as the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group suggests, “did not create more instability, in the aggregate, than other [elections].”
Second, if it’s working class, and not particularly the white working class who are traditionally Republican anyway, then one should look to unions for political support. On this note, Clinton won by 8 percent.
The third takeaway is this: Clinton did not lose the popular vote. She won by about 2 percent. Why would this be important to mention? Because a lot of the debate surrounding identity politics seems to indicate that the Clinton campaign failed its democratic base in some way or another.
She failed to unify, she should not have targeted women and black people, or she should have done a better job to get “middle America” on her side. Regardless of how she performed, it was the electoral college’s decision at the state level to vote against their constituencies that ultimately lost Clinton the election.
If democrats, and liberals alike, choose to interpret Clinton’s loss in this way, the party as a whole can capitalize on its class, gender, religiously, sexually, racially and identity diverse base. In short, the Democratic party is intersectional by design.
This design dates back to the Federalist papers and the country’s founding. It is the product of self-love, recognition, and community. If we follow Mark Lilla’s (and many others’) commitment to abandoning identity politics as a strategy, it is very plausible that we will continue to live in a country that looks like this graph from the Pew Research Center for a long, long time:
