‘Lies at the heart of identity politics’

By Mark Perry.

"…. is the title of an excellent article by Philip Carl Salzman, emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McGill University, perhaps the best article every written on identity politics, at least the best article I’ve ever read! Here are some excerpts (emphasis added), but I highly recommend that your RTWT (“read the whole thing”). There are some great pithy sagacious individual sentences here that rival Thomas Sowell for “idea density.”

Introduction:

Identity politics demands the reduction of individual identity to collective census category identities. You are no longer an individual person with hopes and fears, talents and abilities, and motivations and opinions. The most important thing about you is your sex, or your race, or your sexuality, or your ethnicity. Each of these collective identities not only defines you, but defines your enemies: if you are female, your enemy is males; if you are black or brown, your enemy is whites; if you are LGBTQ, your enemies are heterosexuals; if you are Muslim, your enemies are Jews, Christians, and Hindus (but you already knew that). Universal values such as freedom, equality, solidarity, and human rights are set aside in favor of partisan favoritism, seen in the labels of identity politics movements, such as “feminism” and “black lives matter,” and seen in the feminist declarations that “men are toxic,” or the race activist assertions that statements such as “all lives matter” and “color-blind” are “racist.”

How exactly did this come about? Who decided that our identities must be transformed? The shock troops in this transformation from individual identities to census category identities were second wave feminists in the 1960s. Early on they claimed that their goal was gender equality, but as their self-proclaimed label indicates, they quickly became lobbyists for female interests in opposition to male interests, with a goal of replacing men in status and power. They reframed the nature of American, Canadian, and Western society generally, not as men and women working together to build families and businesses, but as hierarchical gender classes, with males forming the “patriarchy” which uniformly oppressed and exploited their helpless female victims.

Here’s more:

From the early days of second wave feminism, feminists shrewdly aimed at gaining a foothold in colleges and universities, from which they could devote themselves to refining feminist ideology and shaping students’ minds. Claiming to be “marginalized” by the patriarchy, feminists invoked the slogan of “diversity and inclusion” to demand preferences in admissions, funding, hiring, housing, ceremonies, and other unearned benefits, all of which were enthusiastically forthcoming from “progressive” academics and administrators. At first confined to women’ studies, feminist studies, and gender studies programs, feminists strove to strategically infiltrate the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, the faculties of education, social work, and law, and gained footholds throughout the administration.

…..

Note that the race activists and their far-leftist supporters have invoked a new and questionable concept of equality: replacing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, in which each demographic category must have the same representation in every institution, profession, organization, and activity as their percentage of the general population. I am not sure what activists’ views are about the professional sports leagues, such as the NFL and the NBA, where millionaire African Americans account for 70% of the players, and so are overrepresented by around 500%. But the more basic issue is whether underrepresentation is the result of discrimination or some other factors.
……
Identity politics was born and nurtured in universities, in women’s and feminist studies, in gay and queer studies, in black and ethnic studies, Islamic studies, and in whiteness studies. Whiteness studies is the only one to take as its mandate the vilification of its subject population; the others frame their subject populations as victims of white and male oppression. Under the now official and exclusive university policy of “diversity and inclusion,” universities have jettisoned universalistic criteria such as achievement, merit, and potential, now regarded by “progressives” as “male supremacist talking points,” in favor of sex, race, and sexuality bases for selection, preferences, and benefits.

What “diversity and inclusion” means in practice is that females, African Americans, and Hispanics, and, in Canada, members of First Nations, are given preferences, funding, and special benefits, while better qualified males, Jews and other whites, and Asian Americans and Asian Canadians are excluded to make places for the preferred. This is the most prominent form of systemic racism that exists in North America today. Furthermore, what “diversity” never means is diversity of thought and opinion, for deviations from the far-left narratives are punished, those taking a critical view of identity politics are “cancelled,” marginalized and fired. Universities have entirely abandoned academic values in favor of so-called “social justice” identity politics.

Conclusion:

Identity politics celebrates the idea that people should be judged, not as individuals, but on the basis of their sex and race, but also by their claimed identity, whether sexual, ethnic, or religious. What a marvelous formula for dividing people, and setting them at odds and in conflict with one another. This is a strategy by its advocates to gain power for their subgroup at the expense of others. Where groups are small, “intersectional” alliances are called for to strengthen their challenge to their target. Is the feminist strategy any more than anti-male sexism? Is the race activist strategy any more than anti-white racism? Treating people according to their census category rather than as individuals is deeply illiberal, a violation of equality before the law, and thus a violation of their human rights. Dividing the population according to their census categories rather than viewing others as fellow citizens is deeply antisocial and anti-American."