Member-only story
Forms of Identity Politics
Our history is either our servant or our master.
Many commentators want you to think that identity politics is something new and made up by the left. They attempt to describe it as part of the psyche that is not reasonable and which responds to made up slights with childish resentment.
Identity politics is not new. We’ve been practicing identity politics since the moment Columbus landed and called the people ‘Indians’.
There are, as far as I can tell, historically three separate kinds of identity politics practiced in America.
The first kind of identity politics is most prevalent throughout our history and that is subjugation: where hegemon — itself an identity — forces distinctions upon persons based upon their identity, as was done with women, enslaved Blacks, and Native Americans. This is some of the kind of identity politics some people wish when they desire to ‘make America great again.’ The great part was White hegemony telling others who and what they were.
The second form of identity politics is negation: where hegemony refuses to countenance an identity, as was — is — done with both homosexuals and free Blacks. This too is something to which the ‘make America great’ brigade wishes to return. Here An hypocrisy was forced upon homosexual men and women to negate who and what they were and…
