Identity Politics
These days it is avant-garde to be obsessive about identity politics. Society as a whole is out to assign everyone, including themselves, to a very shallow box of what makes them who they are, and why that should matter to everyone else. Every individual wants to be recognized for their perceived bravery and their passive contribution to society while simultaneously claiming victimhood and oppression from those they’ve forced into boxes other than their own.
Make no mistake about it, this is a warped sense of self entitlement and self worth. It is a juvenile, attention-seeking perversion of something we all are inherently inclined to yearn for and seek out; individual liberty.
I recently asked a group of people to explain the concept of identity politics in such a way that an eight year old would understand it. Because, quite frankly, if you cannot explain something to an eight year old, you haven’t really understood it yet yourself.
The responses were vastly different and as individual as the unique point of view held by each person who participated.
* Someone playing cowboy and indians, but neither is a cowboy or an indian. Kevin
* Its like a person getting a trophy even though they may not have won, they got it because the judges liked them more. Jared
* People tend to form opinions based on what they know and are familiar with. For instance, if you had to choose between raising a baby goat and raising a baby okapi, you’re more likely to choose the goat because you’re familiar with it. Michelle
* When we are young, it is hard not to think that the world is our oyster. And, unless we are raised during war times to think that people are generally nice and we are all similar. As we mature, we find that certain things are more important to us. Sometimes because of race, sometimes because of our job, sometimes because of our ethnicity and religion. We start to pull harder into that which remains relevent to us. For instance, even pro-abortion voters, find it less important after they have passed the age where they might have one. Humans cannot help either forging alliances with politics which are pertinent to them or by following family history. In this age, we have seen more people actually switch and bait with politics than what an 80 year old would have seen as they lived. The actual definition, IMHO is your religion, race or social standing causes you to decide your political beliefs rather than just history. And, in today's age, so many, for years have voted for the least of the worst. One issue or a few issues are so important that you cannot see any flaws with a politician. Kathleen
* Divide and Conquer, using peoples identify as a wedge issue against others, truly an implementation of victimhood. Gina
* Can't we all just get along? Identity politics: I think of the lunchroom at a high school - jocks, nerds, popular girls/people musicians, thespians etc... They all identify w their own group (thought, prejudice, etc) instead of focusing on how they are all one student body, again why can't we all get along? At least that's my version of how I look at Identity politics. Mary
* For an 8 yr old I think you have to keep it SIMPLE. One of your friends goes home from school every day, they don’t play games, watch YouTube, or eat candy. They get home, do their homework and then go walk 2 miles delivering newspapers to people. For doing this every day instead of watching YouTube and having fun they get money and candy. They have more candy at school than anyone else. Now, your the kid that goes home and plays, but you want as much candy as the kid that goes home and works, well little buddy, you don’t get the candy unless you work. The more you work the more candy you get, if u don’t want to work you get non, if u work a few days a week you get some candy, and if you work as hard as the other kid, you get as much as they have, but you DONT GET TO HAVE HIS CANDY, and play every day while he walks 2 miles delivering papers!!! Daniel
* Identity politics is simply a means of controlling people or groups of people by dividing them. Possibilities might for instance be Race, Wealth, Social skills, Social status, Politics, Intellect, Gender, etc. etc. The subject doesn't matter, the object matters. If you can demean an individual or group and cause your target audience to see them as unacceptable to the greater good, you can paint the accusation against that person or group in any fashion that you choose. Many who let others do their thinking for them will fall in line.The victims words and motives will be denied, shouted down, and lied about whether faulty or not. “How to work in politics 101" R.A.
* It’s a lie you tell to get what you want from a person or group. Making promises you don’t plan to keep. Making someone think you’re their friend only because you want something. Evan
* Identity politics splits people up into groups and tells them they can only be friends with those who are in their group and that their group is better than everybody else. You are put into your group based on things that don’t really matter, like the color of your skin, instead of things that are important and matter to you. Once you’ve been split off into your group, people start fights with other groups to get everybody riled up so that you never want to be friends with those other people. This helps them control you so you don’t think about things too much and decide for yourself what is right or wrong. They want you to make decisions based on what they tell you is good for your group instead of what you think would be best for you. Identity politics is bad because it causes bad feelings between people and gives people an excuse to do bad things to you if you’re not in their group. Brent
* It's like "pretend", or "make believe". It's like a game where you try to act like someone else, but you're really not that person. Playing "house" and pretending to be a mommy or daddy, but you know you're just a child acting like a grown up. Michael
Merriam-Webster uses this definition, “identity politics: politics in which groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group.”
Within all of these definitions we can see one common thread; the promotion of the individual’s rights, perceived or inherent, over the whole. When we are duped into believing that one minute aspect of the infinitely complex individuals we are should be glorified and applauded by all of humanity, while concurrently being relentless in the condemnation of all those who have differing beliefs and experiences, we cannot help but cause rifts of disconnect and discontent within our society. When politicians who are more interested in their job security than the security of our nation can find ways to exploit these rifts, they master the art of manipulation by way of segregation, turning those rifts into seemingly impassable chasms and keeping individuals tightly confined to their societal box.
Identity politics touts the phrase “diversity and inclusion” as it’s goal. However, just as we learned in elementary school PE class, when we are asked to divide up into teams someone is always left out. If you pick the kids who are the best players first, the less athletic kids are picked last and seen as less desirable by their peers. If you tell the team captains that this practice is unfair and instruct them to choose those children first from now on, the kids who worked harder to practice and refine their skills are the ones who are left standing on the sidelines wondering why they were left out after they had put in so much more work. It is the same in adulthood. When we choose teams based on the shallow box we have stuffed ourselves into we inevitably leave out parts of what make us the complex individual we are. When we focus on one aspect of our identity and ignore the pieces of ourselves which bridge the gap between the societal boxes, we are self segregated and easier to control.
Every person is born wanting to have autonomy over their life. Even a toddler will refuse help with basic tasks and struggle for the sheer satisfaction of not relying upon someone else to do something they can potentially do themselves. Individual liberty is ingrained in us. When we give up that innate drive to do the hard things for ourselves simply because we can, we relinquish our autonomy to whomever we choose to do it for us. When we operate from within our restrictive societal box we are trading our personal responsibility for a sense of pseudo security. Instead of striving to do the hard things we ease back into our box and give someone else the authority to wield the power between the boxes. We trade away our individual liberty for the temporary guise of comfort. Once our liberty has been exchanged we are forced to stay inside the box. We are no longer useful to those in power outside of our box. When the box becomes too small for us, or we don’t agree with how the world outside our box is being run, and we try to break free of our self-segregation, we are publicly shamed, doxed, and even at times physically assaulted by those to whom we relinquished our liberty; all in the name of diversity. Because, if they can get you to believe that what makes you different from your neighbor is more important than what you have in common, they know that you will sink back down to the familiarity of your box.
Identity politics is the antithesis of how we as human beings are designed to live. Identity politics divides us based on our differences, whereas individual liberty allows us to be every aspect of who we are while freeing others up to do the same.
Identity politics says that my rights are in danger because you are different.
Individual liberty is the practice that our individual rights are recognized because we are different.
Do not be deceived into trading your liberty for security. Do not sell off your sovereignty and autonomy simply to avoid doing the hard things. Be who you are and allow those around you the freedom to be who they are. Meet your neighbor on common ground and recognize that your differences can be used as an asset to protect your liberty. Refuse to be manipulated into the confinement of the shallow boxes of societal segregation which politicians have designed to divide and conquer. We the People are powerful when we stand united. Those who are continuously seeking to divide us are simply hoping that you wont be able to see that from inside the walls of your box.
Rebecca Schmoe
