Thoughts about nice people who say, “I’m sick of Identity Politics”

So, first we (for centuries) had “identity politics” that favored the white (whatever that was… did it include the Irish? the Italians? Jews? Only with lots of $$$, and then only provisionally; there were always “court Jews”, for instance, allowed to live in gentile neighborhoods and given a coat of arms, at least until a scapegoat was needed), with unchecked brutal police power backing it. Then with Emancipation, some of that police power was removed, but not all, and it was reinforced by  heavily armed posses, who operated with a wink and the government looking the other way (or participating actively, if sometimes disguised with white hoods).

Then, thanks to integration of the armed forces in WWII and the advent of the civil rights movement, the idea of identity politics was mostly disfavored, and the ideal became a color-blind, we’re all just a bunch of individuals with no group affiliation at all. This was accepted as the new bien-pensant (see definition #2), nice liberal well-mannered ideal. But that subtly turned into code for continuing with milder versions of the previous identity politics favoring whites. And the onus continued to weigh on the non-whites to earn toleration and freedom from battery by behaving obsequiously. See the Blue Danube segment of the cartoon, Corny Concerto. It always struck me as unfair that the little black duck had to be heroic to get what the little cygnets got just by being cygnets.

So then, since the 70s or 80s or so, I guess, the inevitability of some kind of identity politics was accepted as part of human nature, but now each group could have their own identity and they could jockey in society with other identity groups. Then Obama was elected. And some people who associated themselves with nice liberal bien-pensant ideals felt betrayed — they had rejected identity politics with the understanding that racism and identity politics were conjoined, and that by rejecting the latter, they could be rid of the former. Since it didn’t, they had the wonderful feeling of rejecting a bad thing, but continuing to benefit (however subtly) from that bad thing’s fruits.

That stings, being told that if you benefit from a bad thing, that you must no longer support a nice, liberal ideal that subtly supports that bad thing, even though it, on the surface, rejects it.

I know. Confusing.