Identity Politics and Intersectionality
What is Identity Politics and Intersectionality?
Identity Politics is the basis and goal of Critical Social Justice (Woke) activism. The term was coined in 1977 by the very radical Queer/Lesbian black feminist, Combahee River collective. A simple way to explain identity politics is that it creates political special interest groups out of identity groups and advocates for them. Identity Politics is distinct from traditional civil rights discourse, it seeks to reject and invert the fundamental premises of the Civil Rights Movement. Identity Politics politicizes everything. E.g., the person is political, teaching is political and emotions are political.
Intersectionality, was developed by feminist critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989. It was proposed specifically as a means for advancing Identity Politics. The development of intersectionality can be considered a landmark moment in our cultural turn toward critical identity politics as a replacement for liberalism. Intersectionality claims that a person's position with respect to systemic power dynamics determines that person's possibility of knowledge and status, which in turn defines a person's relationship to dominance and oppression. The concept of intersectionality has since developed to include many other identities considered marginalized, sexuality, gender identity, disability, even weight. Intersectionality has become very complicated and difficult to address, it can look like a form of competitive victimhood. What this means is that we must cultivate an awareness of various ways which one’s group identities “intersect” to provide privilege and create oppression. We must acknowledge these in all situations, especially in social interactions.
What’s wrong with this?
Intersectionality ranks identity based on a subjective view of level of oppression (or privilege). This creates a hierarchy of fixed identities.
In theory, this hierarchy should be flexible, based on different situations, and sometimes this does happen, but it generally ends up being inflexible and permanent. Thirty years ago, this hierarchy would have looked something like this:
However, like with all hierarchies, power gets concentrated at the top, and as such little attention is paid to economically disadvantaged. The logic of putting a “oppressed value” on a subjective and oftentimes unfounded theory of oppression, results in a convoluted system that has groups competing for “most oppressed” status.
This is what the intersectional hierarchy looks like today, according a rubric by some intersectional theorists:
This approach is problematic when interpreting things at a high level, but when it comes to being proactive this becomes positively discriminatory. Forgoing the individual, and pursuing a path which effectively has tribes competing for resources, Identity Politics and Intersectionality are causing the problems that the whole movement of social justice originally sought to solve.
The more oppressed one is in this system, the more deserving and valid one’s claims to new rights and privileges become. That is, for those who buy into this theory, it serves them well to be most oppressed.
The moral basis for individual universal humanity goes back long before the enlightenment and the advent of liberalism. It is deeply rooted across the world, and especially in the West. Identity Politics and Intersectionality have rejected the moral foundation for their own existence, and have degenerated into sophistry, naked tribalism, and a value-system based on self-pity.
