A Useful Definition of Identity Politics

“Identity politics” has never been more than a dogwhistle in my experience. It’s been a way to tell people facing discrimination in activist spaces that they should shut up for the cause. It’s used to suggest that certain identities are inherently divisive when asserted, while others are still merely default. In other words, it’s made certain identities unwelcome in organizing simply through its use.

This is why it was refreshing and illuminating to see an activist lay out a definition that’s useful for planning effective activism and that doesn’t define the behavior of only a marginalized group as political. Interestingly enough, it came out of discussions about Rachel Dolezal a couple of months ago. From Elizabeth Wood at Woodhull Alliance:

As movements have increasingly focused on organizing based on identification by group and as those groups have become increasingly fragmented and then remixed, we’ve become increasingly unable to do much more than tinker with systems of power, achieving liberal changes where we achieve change at all. Nowhere is this more visible than in LGBT rights movement. Meanwhile, we’ve been losing ground around core justice issues like wage inequality, reproductive justice, and civil liberties.

One alternative is to organize around those core justice issues themselves. Racial justice, labor, and reproductive justice movement organizations have done a better job at this than LGBT organizations. The reason that I so admire the organizers behind the #blacklivesmatter and #sayhername hashtags used to coordinate opposition to state violence against people of color is that they understood that, unlike the “#iam{name of most recent victim}” frame, the #blacklivesmatter and #sayhername frames don’t depend on people to share an identity. Instead, they require people to acknowledge a fundamental truth. Rather than connecting people based on identity or solidarity, they connect people based on a shared moral outrage about a particular injustice – in this case the devastating devaluing of the lives of black men and women (whether cisgender or transgender) – that the organizers are trying to address.

It isn’t so easy in practice, of course. The #AllBlackLivesMatter hashtag was introduced for a reason, though more because of the grassroots than BLM leadership. Still, Wood’s post addresses those concerns as well. It’s worth thinking about in a world in which successful LGBT activists are challenging HRC and successful Ferguson activists are challenging the NAACP. At the very least, I appreciate having another frame for these discussions.

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A Useful Definition of Identity Politics
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2 thoughts on “A Useful Definition of Identity Politics

  1. 1

    Rather than connecting people based on identity or solidarity, they connect people based on a shared moral outrage about a particular injustice

    While I like this statement, it does seem to illustrate the fractures in Queer activism: Not everyone can agree that something is an injustice, nevermind be outraged about it.

  2. 2

    This is true, and it illustrates one of the reasons this appeals to me. I’ve spent far too much of the last four years fielding demands that I make other people agree that something is an injustice simply because we both share the identity of “atheist”. Organizing with people who share my goals is a delightful respite from that.

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