The Problem with Identity Politics

When reading Steven Pinker’s interview at the Weekly Standard I was struck by this passage:

Identity politics is the syndrome in which people’s beliefs and interests are assumed to be determined by their membership in groups, particularly their sex, race, sexual orientation, and disability status. Its signature is the tic of preceding a statement with “As a,” as if that bore on the cogency of what was to follow.

It recalled a remark Andrew Sullivan made last week in New York Magazine:

If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges — your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression — will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.

And, sure enough, the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. 

Both authors are leading the fight against identity politics, so I do not wish to make too much of what is going to appear to you to be a pedantic triviality. 

Perhaps you have guessed what struck me in these passages. Perhaps you have not. My epiphany was quite simple: most of the “groups” in question are not really groups, in the strict sense of the word. To believe that the world is divided between those who support individual freedom and those who support group identities is simply wrong. It is a false dichotomy.

Yes, I know that these terms are used very loosely and a group can easily be taken to be a grouping. Of course, there are also arithmetic groups that have nothing to do with social organizations or communities.

If we are talking about race, gender, sexual orientation and the like, we are talking about collections of individuals who have a specific trait in common. In some philosophies, they would have been considered to be classes, like the class of four-legged carnivores or the class of wingless bipeds. 

Most importantly, these so-called groups do not involve a social organization. The class of all females does not and never has constituted a community. It does not have a social organization. It does not require people to get along with each other, to work together, to cooperate and collaborate. It does not reproduce itself. You belong to the class of females or Caucasians by your biological nature, not because you participate in a social organization.

Groups are human communities, whether religious or secular. They run the gamut from religious congregations to nation states to armies to corporations and even to communities. In some nations you are required to be of the same race—like Japan—but being of the Japanese race does not automatically make you a citizen of Japan.

When we arrive at the class of beings known as wingless bipeds, that is members of the human species-- or, as the bien pensant left would have it—Humanity, we discover that, since this is nothing more than a class of beings sharing a common characteristic. It is not a social organization,. Defining yourself as a member of the species of wingless bipeds shares with the practitioners of identity polities one simple fact: it does not matter what you do or do not do, it does not matter how you function within a group. Your membership cannot be enhanced or revoked as you behave or misbehave. So, identity politics is a subspecies of humanism.

The issue is not the conflict between the individual and the group. The issue involves your loyalty to the nation or your loyalty to a class of individuals that is held together only by the fact that they share certain specific characteristics, like XX chromosomes, certain racial traits, or a yearning for members of the same sex.

It’s about patriotism or not, ethical behavior or not. It's not about the conflict between individual identity and group identity.