A Discussion on Identity Politics

The emergence of identity politics has isolated minority groups everywhere, so that each minority group is concerned with their rights and their rights only. The political landscape of today supports only self-interest: blacks are concerned with black rights, women are concerned with women's rights, and gays and lesbians are concerned with queer rights. The fight for minority rights has strayed far from concern over individual autonomy. Today, if you are not part of a group, nobody is fighting for you. From a radical left point of view, identity politics is considered detrimental to worker rights, and the only true solution is an overthrow of capitalism. These interest divisions are dangerous as they weaken the ability for minority groups to fight for their rights.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels concluded their Communist Manifesto with a powerful proclamation: "Workingmen of all countries, unite!" (Marx, 44) With that, the authors told proletarians everywhere that if they wish to end class antagonism and the needless abuse that they experience everyday, they must unite as one and overthrow the capitalist regimes which bind them in chains. Marx and Engels aim to "do away with [...] the miserable appropriation, under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only insofar as the interest of the ruling class requires it." (Marx, 24) The proletariat can rise up and end class struggles as we know it if only they could form a unified front:

If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. (Marx, 24)
Yet today, identity politics divides the minority groups of the world, as everyone is only looking out for them and their minority group. These identity politics are unnecessarily dividing the working class against itself. The working class has enough problems to worry about without having to compete amongst itself. Because each individual group is worrying about problems concerning its own rights, overarching socioeconomic problems are being completely ignored and the working class as a whole is getting trampled on.

The problem today, Marx and Engels might argue, is that capitalism created circumstances of inequality that made the formation of groups seem necessary. Capitalism leads to the class struggle that the authors detail so specifically in their work, and class struggle may lead people to form the factions that lead to identity politics. The problem is that identity politics severely weaken the ability of the minority groups to advance in the world. Identity politics forces members in minority groups for vote along party lines if they wish for their vote to mean anything, as every other member of their group is surely voting along those lines as well. This polarizes elections and weakens the same democratic institutions that can likely assist the minority groups in their struggles.

In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Derrick Bell paints a picture of exactly how the minority groups become so isolated and identity politics takes over. In Space Traders, the very last essay in the book, extraterrestrial intelligence finds Earth in a state of disarray and turmoil. The alien creatures propose a trade: the aliens will give up mounds of gold with which to fix the tremendous debt accrued by the United States government, safe, effective chemicals that can reverse decades of pollution, and safe, reliable, renewable energy sources that can relieve the nation of it's problem with ever-deleting fossil fuels. All that the United States had to sacrifice was every single African American citizen in the country. This kind of drastic threat has a certain way of making the divisions between minority groups quite a bit more visible. At one point in the essay, during a discussion of how the corporate leaders of the world were exploiting the lower class, it is revealed that even the poorest of white people considered themselves great lengths better than the poor black people, and any indication otherwise would lead to turbulent unrest. "If blacks were removed from the society, working- and middle-class whites - deprived of their racial distraction - might look upward toward the top of the societal well and realize that they as well as the blacks below them suffered because of the gross disparities in opportunities and income." (Bell, 181)

Even among the most abused groups of society, there exists an unwritten hierarchy. Even these destitute people need someone to look down upon. Karl Marx is rolling in his grave. Even social groups that are not at the bottom of the rung acknowledge the hierarchy of abuse, Bell suggests:
"A concern for many Jews not contained in their official condemnations of the Trade offer, was that, in absence of blacks, Jews could become the scapegoat for a system so reliant on an identifiable group on whose heads less-well-off whites can discharge their hate and frustrations for societal disabilities about which they are unwilling to confront their leaders. Given the German experience, few Jews argued that 'it couldn't happen here.'" (Bell, 186)
Perhaps the worst part of the entire situation, however, is the white people at the top of the ladder, who are completely oblivious: "Indeed, the very absence of visible signs of discrimination creates an atmosphere of racial neutrality and encourages whites to believe that racism is a thing of the past." (Bell, 6) Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well paints an interesting picture of the means through which the groups involved with identity politics become so isolated.

Another striking novel that shows just how the minority groups involved with identity politics become so isolated is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The primary problem displayed in The Handmaid's Tale is complacency. Although Offred and other handmaids are treated horribly, with a forced sex ritual that dehumanizes the girls and treats them like objects, like instruments in a laboratory, the women, for the most part, are content. Offred has a memory of her mother saying that it is "truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations." Through her relationship with Nick and her ability to, in a way, humanize the Commander and grow to like him, Offred becomes complacent with her less then optimal role in society. In a situation similar to those in Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Serena Joy, the Commander's wife, despite holding no power or authority in the outside world, also is complacent with her role in life, as she exercises power in the household over Offred. These characters adapt to their lifestyles and learn to accept their roles in society because they have someone to look down on, much like the destitute white man that holds dearly his status over the destitute black men of America.

Identity politics are a dangerous threat within America and the world. Because each group is focusing on themselves and nobody else, nobody ends up advancing in the world, and the long chains of class struggles and abuse that have existed since the beginning of man continue. Because these minority groups become complacent due to their having someone to be on top of in their own inter-minority group hierarchy, all of the minority groups are affected for the worse.

Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Anchor Books, 1998.
Bell, Derrick. Faces At the Bottom of the Well. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.