One of the most enduring and concerning aspects of our culture today is identity politics. The way I choose to define identity politics is from Wikipedia:
“Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the interest and perspectives of groups with which people identify.”
In particular there is a focus on “Women’s issues”, “LGBT issues”, “Black issues”, “Lower Middle-Class White America issues”, or any other way that you might choose to group people. This sort of broad brush-stroke painting is inherently a little prejudiced, in that it assumes that all (or the vast majority) of these groups share these concerns.
This reminds me a bit of Dungeons and Dragons. I’m gonna nerd out here for a minute. If you ever read an older D&D guide when they talk about the different races (Dwarves, Elves, etc) they tend to define those people in the ways that they are different than humans. Even when they separate them out into sub-races or cultures, you see major strains of similarity between types of Elves or types of Dwarves. They do not have nearly the same level of cultural nuance as humans.
The same effect happens in American politics. White, striaght males are perceived as having nuanced opinions about a lot of different topics, where other groups are seen as a monolithic whole that is defined by a particular perspective on a handful of issues.
One of the big stories of this election has been about Trump’s supposed alienation of Latino voters. While it may be true that many Latinos do not like Trump for various reasons, to imply that immigration is the issue that Latinos put above all other concerns is crazy! Latinos are a huge and incredibly diverse group of people and they have a wide range of opinion about economics, social issues, and yes, immigration.
Trump’s rhetoric is questionable at best, but the idea that cracking down on illegal immigration is immediately going to lose you the Latino vote is insane.
But the political parties, to a greater or lesser degree have gotten very good at playing identity politics. You may be saying to yourself, “Look at the polls Jason, Latinos support amnesty, by and large.”
But is amnesty the overriding issue for most Latino voters? Probably not. Maybe in some states it is more of a concern than others, but immigration is only one of a host of issues. If I disagree with Democrats on a hundred things but agree with them on immigration, is a foregone conclusion that I will vote Democrat? Of course not! Why should it be any different for Latino voters?
But it does seem to be different doesn’t it?
I think the reason that it is different is not because of any difference between myself and a Latino man with similar views. At least not constitutionally. It is a difference of worldview and perspective. The overwhelming narrative is that opposing illegal immigration is de facto racism against Latinos. If you have heard it portrayed that way, and if blowhards like Trump say stupid things about Mexicans to corroborate that line of thinking, then it may very well start to look like that is the case.
And no matter how much I disagree with Democrats, I’m not going to vote for a party that is racist against me.
And that’s the magic of identity politics, and Democrats are not the only guilty party here. The trick is that you paint a picture that the only reasons a person might hold a particular viewpoint is because they are bigots. Specifically they are bigots against you. Therefore you cannot support people that hold that viewpoint, no matter what else they say that you might agree with.
Take a look at the recent Caitlyn Jenner controversy. She’s been attacked from all sides for believing that someone’s opinion about the economy is more important than their opinion about bathroom access. Note that she specifically goes out of her way to point out that Cruz is not good on transgender issues, but claims that other things are more important.
The article I linked you to has the premise that trans-gendered people would not be helped by Cruz’s policies because the problem for trans-gendered people is that they are discriminated against. The line of reasoning goes that nothing can help them until they deal with the stigmas and such. There is NO POINT in talking about economics until we resolve the social issues.
There are a lot of problems with this. For one thing, there are reasons why a person might be opposed to bathroom laws other than bigotry. Yet that is how Cruz’s position is painted.
So there are two premises: 1) trans-specific issues are so overriding in their importance that you must side with the group that does the best on those particular issues no matter what else they say; and 2) people who are opposed to certain policy positions that you support are bigots and they hate you and want to see you die.
If you buy into those two premises, then the other side has you! They have you as a life-long supporter!
If you pick out a bunch of groups: women, black Americans, Latino Americans, gays, etc, and you sell them all some variation of the above, you can push whatever agenda you want, using this coalition as your base of supporters, even if any one of them only supports a handful of your policies.
So that is why politicians like identity politics. So how do they keep it up? They blow problems way out of proportion, claiming that bigotry is crushing your particular identity group. They drive deeper and deeper divisions into the heart of man. I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist, but it is being sold as though no progress has been made since Depression-era Mississippi.
And the worst part about all this is that the side that uses this sort of thing can’t actually do anything about it. People say stupid things like “I will put an end to institutional racism.” How? How can you or any law possibly get rid of racism? How can any law make it so people aren’t looking weirdly at trans-gendered people?
So they play up our differences, make vague promises to fix issues that they do not have the power to fix, then stay in power by promising that you’ll be worse off with the other guy.
And like I said before, it’s not just Democrats. Trump has been doing this with lower-income whites. They think he’s gonna bring prosperity in manufacturing back to the Midwest, but that is not within his power to do. And he’s painting their identities in such a way that they perceive this Utopian dream as all that matters to them. They vote for him in hordes because they have bought his promises. And when they don’t get it, he’ll get re-elected by “reminding” them that the other side hates the white poor and they’ll definitely be worse off with the Democrats.
This is disunity. This is tearing apart the fabric of America. And sadly, its done in the name of inclusion and fighting bigotry. I sometimes get the feeling that the only real bigots are the ones who run around calling everyone else a bigot. There is more connectedness and unity in America than we have been led to believe. We are being manipulated by the political elite and by the media and by the cultural currents into believing that there are deep divides of hatred where there are really deep divides of opinion. And this is extremely dangerous not just because it creates antagonism against people who are different than you, but also because it then becomes harder to identify true racism and bigotry. I leave you with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:
If the whole picture is painted black there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral color blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but they are all gray.
Image used under Creative Commons. Posted on Flickr by DryHundredFear