The Myth of Identity Politics

Are American Democrats overly enamored with “identity politics”?

A Newsweek opinion piece from Dan Perry, former AP Editor and managing partner at communications firm Thunder11, claims that American Democrats could learn a lesson from recent Dutch and Argentinian elections. The rise of populist leaders in those countries, Perry argues, should give Democrats pause and a moment of self-reflection – Dutch elections propelled the right-wing Geert Wilders to power on a platform against immigration, with 51% of Dutch voters saying they felt “negative or very negative” about “immigration from outside the EU”, which Perry notes is a “dog whistle for Muslim immigration”.

Perry argues that US Democrats’ 2000s assumption that voters of color would continue their support of the party ad infinitum was mistaken, as evidenced by the newly-published book “Where Have All The Democrats Gone?” by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.

The book’s authors famously argued in 2002 that Democratic power would be all but assured by “The Emerging Democratic Majority” spearheaded by Americans of Color. Their new work is a 180-degree reversal, in which they argue that “Democrats’ embrace of neoliberal economic policies (characterized by financialization, globalization, and a market-oriented approach to public policy) and a divisive politics of identity have imperiled their standing with the working class.” As they say in the Wall Street Journal, “By championing legal and illegal immigrants and largely ignoring border security, the Democratic Party has alienated key voting groups” and squandered whatever potential they may have had with voters of color.

Perry notes that Democrats are “being associated, in people’s imagination at least, with…an idea that racism is everything” and with open border policy.

The idea of a raceless, colorless, genderless, orientation-free “working class” with universal principles is a myth that really only exists in academia: every single worker exists at an intersection. They’re working women, they’re Black workers, they’re working Asian queer men, they’re working disabled people, they’re working immigrants. Emphasizing only “the things we have in common” implies that these “things we have in common” are equally central to all peoples’ existences, which simply is not the case. Climate change simply does not have the same urgency to someone living in a homeless shelter that it does to a suburbanite environmental activist.

White supremacy carries with it the idea of white universalism – what White Americans feel is “the American sentiment”, a problem affecting White Americans is a “problem that affects America” (if not, it’s a problem “for the ___ community”). Any departure from this, therefore, is seen as “divisive” – it takes the focus from the “problems we all have” and forces the gaze to center upon “a group” (who is then “pandered to”). This universalism assumes that there is a set of problems – the problems with which “average” White middle-class Americans can personally identify – that we should “concentrate on”, forsaking social justice and social reforms.

While racism isn’t everything, it is everywhere: one can’t talk about “the economy” without acknowledging that many people were born into their economic circumstances as a result of racism and discrimination. Life has never the same on both sides of the red lines drawn during segregation. And this is only talking about racism: a queer victim of homophobic discrimination is a blip in an unemployment chart whose economic situation is only caused by someone’s bigotry.

Democrats, in the modern era, have tried to show that they are aware of people’s identity-based concerns and issues and, at a minimum, give lip service to them.

Of course, attempts at fixing anything have proven unsuccessful repeatedly, and often entire communities’ concerns get lost in a sea of “compromises” as the sausage gets made on Capitol Hill. But this is where the Democratic Party’s “heart has been”.

Additionally, it can not be stressed enough: saying that the Democratic Party has lost sight of “the working class” acknowledges the existence of a working class. With this realization should come the acknowledgement that classism exists, that regions like Appalachia have been the victims of it, and that class has trumped all types of privilege for many communities for generations. Xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racism – all of these things affect thousands of White Americans as well.

“Identity” means different things to different groups of people. For some, it’s centered around language, culture, and food — for some, it’s centered around family status. And yes, for some, it’s centered around gender identity and transition. The Democratic Party is trying to stand with all of these groups – and while it may be failing with many, again, this is where the party’s “heart is”. The party concentrates on these things because its constituent communities do. No Black person gets to “turn down” their Blackness – it is equally potentially relevant at every moment of life. Any “rising tide” has to also lift Black boats to benefit them.

How often do people talk about “the white community” or “the straight community”? There’s a certain level of identity politics that plays into where many Americans choose to live, attend school, send our children, work, and eventually retire. All of these things have economic ratifications, environmental impact, and labor repercussions – things which are “universal”, things which make up “the economy”. Refusing to look at anything through this lens – “this economic condition/situation exists because of the bigotry of those people” – will inevitably lead to “band-Aid solutions”, however lucrative those solutions may be. The pursuit of a world free of “identity politics” can also lead to a callous, dehumanizing worldview, as conditions as universal as pregnancy or aging are relegated to sidelines that “don’t apply to me”.

A life free of “identity politics” is a myth. Marginalizing “identity politics” is a luxury that only exists on paper. Things like non-discrimination legislation benefit all workers – at a minimum, disability is a condition that will eventually affect virtually all of us – by framing them as “identity politics” they allow “average White America” to think, “this doesn’t apply to me” and decry “divisiveness”. Citizen oversight of police, and its associated reduction in police brutality, can benefit all neighborhoods – it’s not that “Black Americans want better police”, it’s that Black Americans are disproportionately affected by the same policing that’s affecting everyone.

Creating a path to legal citizenship through legal immigration also opens the door for tomorrow’s entrepreneur, tomorrow’s academic, tomorrow’s doctor. Immigration policy framed as “identity politics” pits “Hispanics” against other Americans, “Hispanics” who then shock pollsters by showing diversity of opinion.

The laws created in Florida to target LGBTQ+ students, to keep LGBTQ+ history out of libraries and lesson plans, to keep LGBTQ+ families marginalized — make no mistake, these can be used to target other groups in the future. The Black voter who is “not enamored of gender politics” would do well to remember this. As we saw in Florida, Black history was not too far behind queer history on the chopping block for public school curricula.

And as I often say, the same people who don’t like Black people, don’t like Jews.

Allowing any one form of bigotry to fester in the name of “free speech”, allowing hate groups to flourish in the name of “freedom”, allowing discrimination against any one protected group, all of these things affect multiple communities simultaneously. Communities who then have workers who miss time from work. Which leads to lost productivity and wages. Which impacts “the economy”. By connecting the dots from identity politics to larger, national issues, a unity then begins to form across the various identity-based groups (ideally), which could even bridge “The Great Divide” between urban and rural Americans that Teixeira and Judis discuss.

This is what the Democratic Party attempts to do: integrate identity politics into its messaging, as their constituents integrate identity into their lives. Whether they are successful or not is up for debate. What is not up for debate is the centrality of identity to Americans’ lives. This isn’t “tricky” as Perry says, this should be a “yes, and” situation where all concerns are heard and validated, and shown to be the component parts of the American situation.

We all have identities and we all want a party that represents us – identities and all.