Identity Politics is Not Dead

A cottage industry of articles has arisen to take jabs at "identity politics", claiming that it Balkanizes a pluralistic democracy and cannot unite diverse voters. Some attribute Clinton's loss to identity politics and claim that identity politics should be abandoned if Democrats want to form a winning coalition.

Identity Politics = Identity Advocacy + Precision Governance

To understand whether or not "identity politics is dead", as some claim, first we need to understand what exactly "identity politics" is and is not. For the separate consideration of people with identities voicing their needs and the governance that addresses the unique needs of people with identities, It helps to separate "identity politics" into identity advocacy and precision governance. After all, the requests of the governed and the actions of the government are held to different standards, the former allowed full liberty to have their own opinion and the latter required to stay within legal limits of power defined in our Constitution.

"Identity advocacy" is the direct advocacy for government intervention on behalf of individuals of particular racial, gender, religious, ethnic or other identities. While the motivations of citizens' requests are inextricable from their identities, their advocacy is not identity advocacy until its highlighted problems and/or proposed solutions are for the explicit or implicit purpose of their identity group.

There do not and should never exist limits to advocacy based on a person's identity, and often identity advocacy can illuminate shortcomings of or injustices in our union that citizens of other identities are not exposed to. For instance, Black Lives Matter has illuminated the shocking rates of police violence against Blacks, something that white people might never notice otherwise, and consequently motivated many white people to prioritize criminal justice reform. Identity advocacy is not a bad thing - it is, in fact, a very good thing for people to voice their unique needs in a representative government, as hearing about people's unique needs in the government-triage of our pluralistic democracy may allow for precision governance that helps precisely those who are ailing.

The cowboys like Ammon Bundy who occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge are ailing from a combination of falling beef prices, federal acquisition of lands near their locales, and burdensome environmental regulations that limit cattle grazing on those federal lands. The Sioux in North Dakota are suffering from a pipeline built up-river that threatens their water supplies and a U.S. government that neglects their sovereignty and territory as laid out in past treaties. Women are suffering from rape, unequal pay, sexual assault and microaggressions that inhibit their ability to thrive. These identity advocates point out specific grievances; if and, if so, how these grievances are addressed is fair game for platform modification by any representative or party in power looking to secure votes.

Identity advocacy points out problems faced by identity groups, but, as noted by the failure of Occupy Wall Street protests, identity advocates' movements are made more effective when they propose solutions for their problems. Proposed solutions are either social or political - either we're trying to convince people to behave differently, or we're trying to convince the government to change its policy. Any individual is free to propose social or political solutions for their grievances, but some proposals and some modes of proposing are more successful than others - when trying to persuade, the customer is always right.

To examine the interplay of social and political solutions, consider the conservation of elephants. The political solutions include ivory bans and punishments for those involved in the ivory trade. The social solutions break up into two categories: getting people to support an elephant-friendly economy by not buying ivory, and building a coalition of allies who will march, motivate others, and vote in favor of elephant-friendly policies.

Identity advocacy can be more effective if it can carefully balance social and political solutions. The political solutions must be reasonable - Pro-elephant policies that prohibit people from killing any animal is not reasonable given the abundance of meat-eaters in our society, so, while some vegetarians would support such a policy, it's more effective to keep proposals within the bounds of what's attainable, such as bans on imported ivory and punishments for ivory traffickers. For social solutions, it's ineffective to tell anybody who is not an ardent environmentalist that they are "world-killers" and immoral; it is far more effective to discover common experiences and goals - maybe they don't like elephants, but they do like giraffes - and recruit people based not on the in-group morality but on out-group appeal. After all, almost all racial, religious and gender identity groups are minorities, so they will need to build coalitions of people who are not members of their own identity; if they wish to succeed they will benefit greatly from extending beyond their own identity group's morality and internally-effective arguments (that is, arguments that resonate with in-group but not out-group folk) in order to build a coalition and change people who are not members of their own. Inter-group communication is made possible by the fact that, despite our identities, we are human beings and often we have experiences that are analogous.

Ammon Bundy's cattle ranching business is struggling, so he and others propose the political solutions: a combination of reducing the federal acquisition of land and releasing the restrictions on cattle grazing and other extractive and agricultural uses of those lands. Ammon Bundy et al. also attempt to build a coalition by increasing their visibility through a tense, gun-loaded occupation of a wildlife reserve; guns on a wildlife refuge are arguably an ineffective way to build the sympathy of others outside those who already support them. Far more effective for Ammon Bundy might have been to get people to love cowboy culture, to lodge a peaceful protest by showing cowboys on horses rounding up cattle and show cops kicking the cattle and scaring the horses (thereby appealing to our common, human dislike of violent people). The Sioux are suffering from a pipeline that threatens their water supply on land that, according to treaty with the U.S. government, should be theirs, so they propose the political solutions of stopping pipeline construction and the social solutions of building awareness of Native American sovereignty and suffering so that a coalition of non-Native Americans can come to their aid in this and other battles.

Identity-based advocacy is the nature of advocacy in a pluralistic democracy and the proposed political solutions bring the promise of precision governance, defined as carefully crafted policy designed to aid precisely those who need it. However, any effort at identity-based governing must channel identity advocacy into the bounds of legal and, in other manners, acceptable limits. The construction of a policy for the explicit purpose of protecting an identity group may often violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, but the threat of identity-based governing comes not from the explicit favors for identity groups, but for the implicit or effective favors that are recognized as such by the constituents of an identity group not being favored. Even in constitutional democracies without an equal protection clause, precision governance based on identities runs the risk of making government policies appear as arbitrary in-group favoritism at best, or out-group oppression at worst. Identity advocates are wise to consider this in their social and political proposals and find ways to either exchange favors with all groups in accordance to their need or draft political proposals that, although initiated to help a particular identity group, are phrased in such a way as to admit any other identity group should the other groups find themselves in a similar need.

The left argues that forcing or even allowing teaching creationism in public school biology classes is a policy with the implicit intent and overall effect of favoring Christian theology over scientific theory. Teaching creationism in public schools would seem less particular to Christians if, instead of creationism, the Christian advocates suggested a "religion" class and, instead of just Christianity, they advocated the teaching of other religions; absent such concessions, the teaching of creationism in public schools is an attempt by Christians to curry favor for their identity group and theirs alone. The right argues that affirmative action is a policy with the implicit intent and overall effect of favoring non-whites in publicly funded schools. Affirmative action will seem less particular insofar as any group that claims under-representation and/or some agreeable measure of historical oppression is allowed similar benefits; if it were possible for white conservative Christians to demonstrate their low acceptance rates into Ivy Leagues relative to their share of the U.S. population, a more equitable affirmative action would factor this into account. Attempts at precision government are always sneaking their toes over the line of equal protection, but it's clear that both identity advocacy and identity-based governance is a bipartisan game.

Criticisms of Liberal Identity Politics

If identity politics is bipartisan, why are liberals being blamed for identity politics? While part of this criticism is unfair and due to a restricted definition of identity politics to include only the liberal arms of identity politics, it's more productive to seek the substance of the criticisms instead of discounting it based on the superficial confusion of identity politics. The most vocal critics of identity politics point to "social justice warriors" (SJWs) and Black Lives Matters (BLM), so let's start there. Analyzing these two movements in the paradigm presented above suggests that liberals' problem is not "identity politics" but instead a more nuanced mix of poor identity advocacy and missed opportunities for identity-based governing coalitions.

In particular, liberal identity advocates are slow to accept that bad apples obstruct coalition building in identity politics (instead preferring to blame others for judging a movement based on bad apples), tending to reflexively fight instead of include requests for admission of other identity groups, proposing political solutions that are unconstitutional or perceived as designed for the exlusive benefit of one identity group, and pushing for political solutions to social problems for which precision governance is inappropriate. Liberal representatives are failing synthesize these advocates' positions for precision governance into policy visions that include members of other identities (such as rural and/or white, working-class Americans).

1) Bad Apples
The first set of criticisms stems from bad apples. It's important to know that a movement will often be judged by its worst members, not just its formal positions, especially by those who initially have some disagreement and if that movement is composed of members who are not part of the critics' identities. Black Lives Matter critics point to a few bad apples as their reason for not supporting the movement, often citing riots (leaving behind the black/white riot/protest assignment bias in the news) and a few nasty signs as having shaped their perspectives that BLM is inciting racial tensions (never mind that some of this perception is manufactured by fake news from Russia). A few Muslims commit acts of terror and suddenly the movement to stop American imperialism in the middle east is branded as "hating America" and a fiery Islamophobia ensues. A few cowboys take over a wildlife refuge with guns and suddenly all cowboys and "hicks" are exempt from liberal sympathy. Police in some locales shoot innocent black men, generating criticism of police everywhere in the U.S.

Movements and organizations are judged by both their message as well as its members, a sad fact of humans' tendency to stereotype to simplify their world. Until the disease of stereotyping is cured, the imperfections of human nature are best recognized and worked with. We can be the change we wish to see - take every action as limited to precisely those who commit it. However, many people, conservatives and liberals, blacks and whites alike, will always judge out-groups by the actions of the few most offensive members, and use such judgements as reasons for not approaching or working with the out groups. Corporations have evolved to deal with this human tendency: when a twitter storm erupts over an offensive comment by one of their employees, they quickly fire twitter-stormed sexist/racist/homophobe in their ranks because they know the importance of preserving their brand. Instead of saying "that's just one employee! Look at our webpage and our official statements", they combine their official statement with a denunciation of the offending member and a re-orientation within the company for how to behave in accordance to the company's values. Identity advocacy groups must be aware that their brand is represented by their members, and members must be aware that they are representatives of their movements' brand. When it comes to coalition building, the customer is always right and the art of the sale is deciding which people are probable customers.

Thus, one body of critiques against liberal identity politics stems from conservatives' reluctance to agree with liberal policy that is rather lazily reinforced by pointing to the bad apples in liberal identity advocacy movements instead of rising above the mob and making more substantial critiques about the proposed social or political solutions. Liberals (and conservatives like Ammon Bundy) can improve on this by encouraging compassion, peace and kindness in their protesters. The Sioux at Standing Rock have been remarkably effective by taking control of their movement's purpose: they instruct all who join that this movement is a peaceful, ceremonial prayer to protect water (a clear, crisp statement of the movement's intent) and that if you can't say "I love you" to the police, you should stay at camp and not participate in the direct actions with police officers. There are bad apples who agitate police, but they are "called-in" (not called-out) - and incomers are encouraged to always call-in people who stray from the peaceful intent of the movement - thereby preserving the peaceful intent and appearance of the movement. When blogging, tweeting, protesting or talking in support of some movement, liberals should keep this in mind - consider whether your words are matching the compassion and message that makes for a successful movement.

2) "But what about us?"
A second reason for the criticisms against liberal identity politics stems from ineffective/damaging reactions to what-about-isms. Cops are shooting black people... but what about cops being shot? If we care about shootings, shouldn't we care about cops, too? Black people are poor and suffering from public health disparities... but what about rural white Americans who are suffering from increasing mortality rates due to depression and opioid addiction? If we care about public health disparities, shouldn't we care about rural white Americans, too? Often, the response is "that's not the point!" and "you're not an ally!", commonly resulting in defensiveness and an audience (the what-about-ers) tuning out the identity advocates as only interested in themselves and not some broader coalition (liberals do this to conservatives, too, for example when we respond to pro-lifers by saying "what about poor people and refugees?", and use the defensiveness of pro-lifers to argue that they really are not pro-life).

What-about-isms are red herrings, and attacking the red herring is not a good strategy. At worst, the red herring is someone's deliberate effort to derail the conversation, and attacking them does in fact derail the conversation and make the identity advocates look narrow-minded and self-interested. At best, the red herring is someone from a different identity group who is also suffering - such people present a unique opportunity for coalition building by showing compassion and drawing analogy between suffering groups. Perceived out-group what-about-isms are often opportunities for a bigger in-group. We should be quick to recognize people who are also hurting, have compassion for them, and find ways to help them, too. Compassion is the ultimate glue for human coalitions. Verified claims of suffering should be met with compassion - doing so will show that the identity advocates are not interested in only themselves, but are interested in a better world and will work with others towards meeting their own needs. In defining a larger in-group, precision governance can be broadened to include more agreeable proposals - moving from stopping cops from shooting black men to more general criminal justice reform, mental health services for police, and violence-prevention programs is a move for an overall better world, made more probable by a bigger coalition. Other identity advocates should be embraced insofar as it doesn't directly conflict with the needs of the original identity group.

3) Insistence on unconstitutional or biased precision governance
A third body of criticisms against liberal identity politics is substantial disagreement about the constitutionality of proposed political solutions. Most notably are the criticisms that college students' requests for safe spaces amount to restrictions on free speech, that identity-based roommate requests violates equal protection, and that policies restricting microaggressions disproportionately target whites and men and are thereby potentially unconstitutional, absent a broader definition of microaggressions that does not name particular identity groups and which has the capacity to recognize as microaggressions actions and words that subordinate whites, men, and others. These criticisms are substantive critiques and should be taken a bit more seriously when contemplating political solutions to identity advocacy. The criticisms are concerned that the proposed political solutions of identity advocates are intended to explicitly or implicitly favor the advocating group at the expense of another.

There are three ways to address substantive disagreements about proposed political solutions.

The first, and least recommended, is to disregard them and attempt to tyrannize over the opponents by constructing a merciless majority. A direct sprint for the levers of power will cause a previously peaceful society to begin a zero-sum struggle for power and tyranny, despite the existence of more amicable alternatives; liberals could gain what they see as justice but, in the words of Hume, it would be obtained "at the expense of nobler virtues and more favorable circumstances".

The second solution is to modify the proposed political solutions to ensure they are more inclusive. If one wants safe spaces for women, minorities and non-hetero folk, then they should consider providing safe spaces to men, whites, Christians, and homophobes, or otherwise define their boundaries of what groups are tolerable in a manner that is unambiguous and agreeable to most. A rule that "we tolerate people who tolerate others" defeats itself by either hypocrisy, as it does not tolerate the intolerant, or impotence, as it is powerless to not tolerate the immoral. Liberals can try to construct palatable, well-defined norms on what they do and do not tolerate. Microaggressions, for instance, can be defined in a way that is identity-neutral, or the qualifying characteristics of an "oppressed group" should be written so as to include the possibility of reverse-oppression or oppression of groups in the future which are currently the oppressor. The challenge with such rule-writing, however, is that the rules become so long and carefully written in an attempt to be precise yet fair that they might ultimately forbid everything or accomplish nothing.

The third solution is to seek normative social solutions instead of formal political ones. "Social justice", after all, is inherently social, and not all disputes need to be resolved with policy. If a daughter feels oppressed saying prayers at the dinner table of her parents' house, it's unreasonable for her to request a law banning prayer at dinner tables in her house, but very appropriate for her to engage with her family, voice her needs, and attempt to build a coalition supportive of her wishes to not say prayer at the dinner table. Communities can arrive at their own rules that accomodate the wishes of aggrieved identity groups without having to pull the levers of federal policy-making. Social justice movements are attempting to re-define social norms for what's tolerable and what's not, with about the same deep divisions and frustratingly slow progress as the age-old debate about whether the toilet seat should be left up or down. A law for how to leave a toilet seat would undermine respect for laws, but social movements can raise awareness of others needs and change social norms about how one ought to behave (if you're a man, I encourage leaving the toilet seat down; if you're a woman, I encourage leaving the toilet seat up - such kindness makes the world go 'round and is precisely that "nobler virtue and more favorable circumstance" one wishes to have).

Of course, the social justice issues at college campuses have higher-stakes than dinner-table prayer and toilet seats. Universities are a vital organ in our political and economic system, a place where the youth are trained into professionals and the intellectual community analyzes and reacts to the behaviors of powerful political or economic entities. Social justice warriors (SJWs) see college professors and sometimes the entire colleges as an 'bottleneck institution' separating promising youth from fulfilling employment. Microaggressions, hate speech, racially-biased curricula, dorms, and even the use of pronouns are seen - and sometimes empirically demonstrated - as obstacles to the career development of promising young minorities attempting to access the same opportunities as their peers. Given the amount of public funding received even by private schools, there's room for some policies that ensure a more level playing field at the bottleneck institution. However, the point remains: not every social grievance can be resolved through political reforms.

4) Democrats' failure to translate identity advocacy into a clear party platform.
While identity advocates are free to advocate for their own policies, however extreme they may be, political parties must conceive ways to synthesize the grievances of a plurality of identity advocates into constitutional and palatable platforms.

Republicans have attempted to do this with Reagan's slogan that "the government which governs best is that which governs least", thereby justifying lower taxes (appealing to their business and rich constituents), more delegation of powers to states (appealing to Christians who want to teach creationism or outlaw gay marriages and white nationalists who want to suppress votes of non-whites), less federal regulations on public land (appealing both to businesses and the Ammon Bundy's of the world), and more. A careful observer, however, knows that the Republicans' slogan is not a primary principle of their governance but rather a convenient thing for them to say repeatedly, as they are also composed of geopolitical hawks and military-identity advocates who grew up in DODD schools and consequently support a very hefty military budget that allows the U.S. to effectively govern a great deal abroad and enforce an international order - a far cry from a government which governs least.

The Democrats problem is not identity politics, but the failure to construct a platform that unifies their diverse interests, including the white working class and rural voters that they lost to Trump. A long list of what amount to political earmarks is not a platform but a confusing Frankenstein ideology that can quickly contradict itself. Providing protection for blacks against police, support for police in their dangerous job, free-speech on college campuses and restrictions on paid-speech from corporations in public elections are all noble goals, but they are not a platform.

My favorite example of a platform for liberalism is provided by Pope Francis: we must work together for human dignity. Democrats can put themselves as the party of human dignity - placing the priorities of people above profits, unions above corporations. A party of human dignity recognizes the indignity of poverty, police brutality, police officers' traumatic work conditions and lack of psychological support, student debt in an era when college is a necessity for economic mobility, environmental degredation, climate change, national debt handed to our children, accellerating entitlement costs, and - yes - the plight of the white working class.

Allowing the rich to pay a lower share of taxes than the money they earn while poor people beg on the streets and poor schools can't boost their students to college is an affront to human dignity. Stereotypes of Blacks as criminals, police brutality against and harsher sentences for black men is an affront to human dignity. Building a pipeline under the Missouri by use of eminent domain is an affront to human dignity. Allowing well-financed corporate megaphones to out-shout individual voices in a presidential campaign is an affront to the human dignity. Allowing corporations to benefit off American economic and political stability and then leave their workers broke and out-of-work when convenient for them is an affront to human dignity, a corporate exploitation of our American generosity. Paying our mothers, daughters and sisters nothing while simultaneously failing to punish the creeps who sexually assault them on the way to the office or in the board meeting is an affront to human dignity.

A "Human Dignity" platform is just one example of a platform that synthesizes myriad interest groups and identity advocacy groups into one Democratic party. It will certainly have its limits - for instance when Republicans claim that prioritizing endangered species over endangered ranchers is an affront to human dignity - but it can allow Democrats to represent their coalition, with an argument that appeals to many, without excluding out-groups by apparent favoritism of vocal identity-advocacy groups like BLM, environmentalists, feminists, and more.

In Conclusion

Identity politics is not dead - it's misunderstood or misrepresented.

All politics are "identity" politics once members of an advocacy group begin to self-identify based on their shared grievances. Suppose the world started afresh with no memory of the historical events which define contemporary identity groups but the "clean slate" had the exact same political and socioeconomic circumstances we see today: some people would feel unfairly persecuted by cops and imprisoned, so they advocate for criminal justice reform; some people would feel disenfranchised by barriers to voting and advocate for voter rights; some people would feel socially excluded from college due to a variety of cultural barriers and advocate for more equitable admissions and treatment in college campuses. As all of these advocates organize and see themselves again and again, they would begin to recognize that they all have more melanin in their skin, or some other defining characteristic, and begin to self-identify based on their shared experiences (and others, clearly, perceive them based on the melanin concentrations in their skin). This thought experiment is not to neglect the historical processes (slavery, Jim Crow, the heritability of wealth & opportunity) which have amplified the prominence of contemporary racial/ethnic minorities' identities in the US, but rather to argue that "identity politics" is an inevitable, self-organized social phenomenon of grouping and self-identifying based on shared grievances.

If people's grievances are less extreme, they are less likely to self-identify based on those grievances - for example, "Vietnam Vet" is a facet of many folk's personal and political identity largely due to the intensity of their shared experiences, grievances and needs (mental health counseling, affordable healthcare, etc.), whereas "Blink 182 Fan" is not a very potent personal or political label due to a lack of shared experiences, grievances and needs. If the world started aggressively persecuting anybody who liked Blink 182 - denying them jobs, gerrymandering their votes, shouting slurs at them while they walked with their kids - then rest assured "Blink 182 Fan" would become an identity group. If you find identity politics distasteful, then you can either try to put your head in the sand (do nothing), suppress the identity group (the sprint for the lever of power you may regret later) or, more sustainably, you can try to address some of their needs by assisting coalition building and the translation of advocacy into social and political solutions.

Understanding identity politics can help us understand the mechanisms by which identity groups can enact change. Identity politics is comprised of identity advocacy and precision governance, and the distaste of liberal identity politics stems not from identity politics itself - as conservatives play "identity politics" with evangelicals, gun-rights advocates, white nationalists and more - but instead from a combination of unpalatable social solutions proposed by advocates, an inability of representatives to synthesize diverse requests of identity advocates into inclusive party platforms and political solutions, and sometimes outright out-group tribalism: racism, sexism and xenophobia.

Identity advocates can benefit from remembering the importance of managing their message like a business - the customer is always right and bad apples can ruin your business. Representatives of identity advocates can help by translating the needs of identity groups into viable policy solutions. Identity advocates, even if they perceive themselves as victims of oppression, may benefit by remaining open to building a broader coalition of supporters, especially when a legitimate, verifiable claim of "what about us?" is proposed to expand the scope of an identity advocacy movement - analogy and compassion are powerful tools to unite diverse coalitions.

Precise politics requires identity politics - identity advocacy of a specific problem in favor of a specific solution. In emergency medicine triage, responders are encouraged to advocate for their patient - such local situations need to be heard in order to more efficiently allocate resources. In political triage, identity politics can be utilized as an effective tool for precision governance in a complex world, but requires understanding the tools of identity advocacy and the limitations of identity-based governance.