Identity politics

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Identity politics refers to a belief that socially constructed identities, especially in minority communties, are the basis for creating group solidarity and political action. It is especially applied by groups that identity as racial and gender minorities, but also includes immigrant status, social class, or other identifying factors. Identity politics is an attempt to develop political agendas that are based upon these identities. The term is used in a variety of ways to describe phenomena as diverse as multiculturalism, women's movements, civil rights, lesbian and gay movements, and regional separatist movements.

Many contemporary advocates of identity politics take an intersectional perspective, which accounts for the range of interacting systems of oppression that may affect their lives and come from their various identities. According to many who describe themselves as advocates of identity politics, it centers the lived experiences of those facing systemic oppression. Systemic oppression is the view that the problems minorities face are not understandable as simply racism, or sexism, but rather the belief that society is organized to serve the interests of the majority at the expense of minorities.

Identity politics typically is used to describe the efforts to create community and struggle against majority groups by people of specific race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, economic class, disability status, education, religion, language, profession, political party, veteran status, and geographic location. These identity labels are not mutually exclusive but are in many cases compounded into one when describing hyper-specific groups. An example is that of African-American, homosexual, women, who constitute a particular hyper-specific identity class.[1] Those who take an intersectional perspective, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, criticise narrower forms of identity politics which over-emphasise inter-group differences and ignore intra-group differences and forms of oppression.

Critics of identity politics have seen it as particularist, in contrast to the universalism of liberal perspectives, or argue that it detracts attention from non-identity based structures of oppression and exploitation. A leftist critique of identity politics, such as that of Nancy Fraser,[2] points out that political mobilization based on identitarian affirmation leads to surface redistribution that does not challenge the status quo. Instead, Fraser argued, identitarian deconstruction, rather than affirmation, is more conducive to a leftist politics of economic redistribution. Other critiques, such as that of Kurzwelly, Rapport and Spiegel,[3] point out that identity politics often leads to reproduction and reification of essentialist notions of identity, notions which are inherently erroneous.

Terminology

During the late 1970s, increasing numbers of women—namely Jewish women, women of color, and lesbians—criticized the assumption of a common "woman's experience" irrespective of unique differences in race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and culture.[4] The term "identity politics" was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977.[5] The collective group of women saw identity politics as an analysis that introduced opportunity for Black women to be actively involved in politics, while simultaneously acting as a tool to authenticate Black women's personal experiences.[6] It took on widespread usage in the early 1980s. It has gained currency with the emergence of social justice activism.

In academic usage, the term identity politics refers to a wide range of political activities and theoretical analyses based on the subjective experience of injustice shared by different, marginalized social groups. In this context, identity politics aims to both create solidarity around these socially constructed identities and to create greater self-determination and political freedom for marginalized peoples through understanding particular paradigms and lifestyle factors, and challenging the socially constructed characterizations and limitations, instead of organizing solely around status quo belief systems or traditional party affiliations.[7] Identity is used "as a tool to frame political claims, promote political ideologies, or stimulate and orient social and political action, usually in a larger context of inequality or injustice and with the aim of asserting group distinctiveness and belonging and gaining power and recognition."[8]

History

1960s Liberalism

Civil Rights

Liberalism accepted the notion that truth is possible and that science is the method to arrive at it. Based on these ideas liberals had fought to correct what they saw as flaws in the political society that led to discrimination against women, people of color and homosexuals. The civil rights movement conducted campaigns like the [Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham campaign, and numerous others to force desegregation and create economic opportunity for blacks. President John F. Kennedy spoke of creating an "equal chance" for all Americans.[9]These efforts would lead to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which would outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Sexual orientation and gender identity would be added later. The next year the Voter Rights Act of 1965 was passed, prohibiting states from passing laws and creating rules that would unfairly hinder minority voters from casting their votes. In 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Congress passes the Great Society legislation as part of his war on poverty. These were all part of the liberal efforts to promote equal opportunity for all Americans.

In 1969 a riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn of the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan in New York City. This is largely considered the initiation of the gay liberation movement. Gay liberation built on the feminist notion that the personal is the political. Annual marches to commemorate the anniversary of Stonewall would later become the Gay Pride parade. While there were always different groups within different interests within the movement, as with the feminist movement, much of the focus was on equal rights, cultural acceptance, and removing barriers to employment.

The term identity politics may have been used in political discourse since at least the 1970s.[10] The first known written appearance of the term is found in the April 1977 statement of the Black feminist socialist group, Combahee River Collective.[11] who have been credited with coining the term.


Gay rights movement

The gay liberation movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride.[12] In the feminist spirit of the personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on coming out to family, friends and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person.[12] While the 1970s were the peak of "gay liberation" in New York City and other urban areas in the United States, "gay liberation" was the term still used instead of "gay pride" in more oppressive areas into the mid-1980s, with some organizations opting for the more inclusive, "lesbian and gay liberation".[12][13] While women and transgender activists had lobbied for more inclusive names from the beginning of the movement, the initialism LGBT, or "Queer" as a counterculture shorthand for LGBT, did not gain much acceptance as an umbrella term until much later in the 1980s, and in some areas not until the '90s or even '00s.[12][13][14]

Postmodernism and identity politics

The 1960s and 1970s also saw the rise of postmodernism in the academy. Deconstruction and the power/knowledge theories of Michel Foucault became highly influential. They argued that the Enlightenment and scientific knowledge that emerged from it produced knowledge that supported the ruling class. Jacques Derrida argued that Western discourses were phallocentric, by which he meant both theocratic and patriarchal. Foucault argued that knowledge was produced by discursive practices that propped up existing power structures. The result of postmodern ideas was an attack on the universalist assumptions of the Enlightenment and liberalism.

The postmodern critique argued that these universal ideals were grounded in discourses that were designed to prop up the power of the establishment, who are predominantly white, male and heterosexual. These ideas were taken up by the theorists of race, feminism and gender studies. They would come to be grounded in the new Critical theory.

Social Construction of Identity

In the 1990s and early 2000s, a new generation of scholars applied the theories of postmodernism to race, gender and other marginalized groups. They created new theories about society, like Intersectionality, Standpoint theory and the social construction of identity. Identity politics depends heavily on these new theories that arose largely from race and gender studies programs. According to postmodern social constructionism, it is not people who make discourses, but discourses which make people. Truth and universal values are dismissed. The discourses of reason, logic, evidence, and norms is rejected as nothing other than white, male, heteronormative culture making individual subjects that conform to the norm. For postmodern race and gender theorists, group identity that becomes the locus of resistance and the defining feature of what is generally understood as individual subjectivity. The social construction of (group) identity would serve as the basis for a shift in the approach of identity politics from inclusion to fighting for diversity.

Standpoint theory is based on the view that people occupying the same location in the social grid have roughly the same experience of power, and that one's position within the power grid will determine what one can know. What a person is capable of knowing is based on their group. Those who are part of the majority are said to be privileged, not capable of knowing the experience of minorities. Those that are part of a racial, gender or other minority group are said to be able to see not only their own experience but also understand the experience of majority.

Civil rights, feminism and gay liberation and anti-colonial movements would all undergo major shifts based on the idea that social action now meant fighting for one's identity. They adopted the view that political struggle now meant that society must affirm their marginalized and excluded identities. The rise of this new identity politics meant that critical and social theory itself must undergo a transformation, or fragmentation as the dominant theory was white, male and heteronormative. Each category - women, gay men and lesbians, people of color, and various previously excluded groups - would develop its own version of theory based on its own sense of identity. These would be sometimes allied, sometimes competing. Diversity would require not only different attempts to understand social phenomena, but also of their very theoretical discourse itself.

Critical Race Theory

Critical race theory began in the 1980s as Critical legal studies at Harvard Law School. It has roots in critical theory. Critical race theory rejects the older liberal notion of inclusion and creating greater opportunities for blacks and other minorities. It repudiates liberal approach to a rights-based remedies (expanding access to education and economic opportunities) on the critical theoretical grounds that social structures systematically oppress blacks and only permit remedies that do not change the dominant structure and that dovetail with white interests. Critical race theory attempts to disrupt the socially constructed system by rejecting objectivity as racist, offering narratives of oppression based on identity. Rather than a color-blind society, it seeks to foreground racial identity as the basis for critique and political organizing.

Intersectionality and Third-wave feminism

Second-wave feminism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s within liberal politics to advocate for greater rights and freedoms for women. Third-wave feminism took a different tack. Within the postmodern setting, it focused on creating greater consciousness of gender identity and how it has been shaped by society. Together with Critical race theory, it also lead to the development of an important concept of contemporary identity politics, intersectionality. Intersectionality developed in the early 1990s in part as a result of third-wave feminism and in part as a response to it. Black feminists, influenced by the rise of Critical race theory, argued that the experience of black women could not be fully understood or described by oppression as understood by feminism, nor that of black males.

Intersectionality represented a significant step in the development of identity politics. It began with Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw famous essay, "Mapping the Margin." It was a key text in the rejection of liberal inclusiveness in favor of a more radical identity politics. The liberal approach was grounded in a universalism. Crenshaw insisted on foregrounding identity, famously describing the difference between the statement, "I am Black," versus "I am a person who happens to be Black." The former grounds the person's subjectivity in their social identity, while the latter treats that social identity as an accidental feature grounded in the person's universal claim to personhood.[15]


The emergence of gender theory in the 1980s and 1990s also had a profound impact on feminism. Gender theory, like Critical race theory and intersectionality relied heavily on postmodern discourse analysis. It also help precipitate a major shift in feminism away from the focus on equal access and improving the economic lives of women to the ways in which the discourse of modernity excluded and oppressed women. The notion of standpoint theory was introduced into feminist scholarship by Nancy Hartsock in 1983 in The Feminist Standpoint: Developing Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.

Queer theory

During this period in the United States, identity politics were largely seen in these communities in the definitions espoused by writers such as self-identified, "black, dyke, feminist, poet, mother" Audre Lorde's view, that lived experience matters, defines us, and is the only thing that grants authority to speak on these topics; that, "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive."[16][17][18]


By the 2000s, in some areas of postmodern queer studies (notably those around gender) the idea of "identity politics" began to shift away from that of naming and claiming lived experience, and authority arising from lived experience, to one emphasizing choice and performance.[19] Some who draw on the work of authors like Judith Butler particularly stress this concept of remaking and unmaking performative identities.[20] Writers in the field of Queer theory have at times taken this to the extent as to now argue that "queer", despite generations of specific use to describe a "non-heterosexual" sexual orientation,[21] no longer needs to refer to any specific sexual orientation at all; that it is now only about "disrupting the mainstream", with author David M. Halperin arguing that straight people may now also self-identify as "queer".[22] However, many LGBT people believe this concept of "queer heterosexuality" is an oxymoron and offensive form of cultural appropriation which not only robs gays and lesbians of their identities, but makes invisible and irrelevant the actual, lived experience of oppression that causes them to be marginalized in the first place.[23][19] "It desexualizes identity, when the issue is precisely about a sexual identity."[24]

Some supporters of identity politics take stances based on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's work (namely, "Can the Subaltern Speak?") and have described some forms of identity politics as strategic essentialism, a form which has sought to work with hegemonic discourses to reform the understanding of "universal" goals.[25][26][27] Others point out the erroneous logic and the ultimate dangers of reproducing strong identitarian divisions inherent in essentialism.[28]


Queer theory was a development of the gay rights and gay liberation movements of the 1970 and 1980s. Queer theory emerged in the 1990s with the works of theorists like Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick and Gayle Rubin. Grounded in postmodern theory, Queer theory has an explicitly political agenda. It seeks to "blur boundaries" and disrupt notions of what is normative in order to "create a space" for the marginalized and excluded. The term "queer" is meant to refer to all marginalized groups.


During this period in the United States, identity politics were largely seen in these communities in the definitions espoused by writers such as self-identified, "black, dyke, feminist, poet, mother" Audre Lorde's view, that lived experience matters, defines us, and is the only thing that grants authority to speak on these topics; that, "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive."[16][17][18]

By the 2000s, in some areas of postmodern queer studies (notably those around gender) the idea of "identity politics" began to shift away from that of naming and claiming lived experience, and authority arising from lived experience, to one emphasizing choice and performance.[19] Some who draw on the work of authors like Judith Butler particularly stress this concept of remaking and unmaking performative identities.[20] Writers in the field of Queer theory have at times taken this to the extent as to now argue that "queer", despite generations of specific use to describe a "non-heterosexual" sexual orientation,[21] no longer needs to refer to any specific sexual orientation at all; that it is now only about "disrupting the mainstream", with author David M. Halperin arguing that straight people may now also self-identify as "queer".[22] However, many LGBT people believe this concept of "queer heterosexuality" is an oxymoron and offensive form of cultural appropriation which not only robs gays and lesbians of their identities, but makes invisible and irrelevant the actual, lived experience of oppression that causes them to be marginalized in the first place.[23][19] "It desexualizes identity, when the issue is precisely about a sexual identity."[24]

Some supporters of identity politics take stances based on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's work (namely, "Can the Subaltern Speak?") and have described some forms of identity politics as strategic essentialism, a form which has sought to work with hegemonic discourses to reform the understanding of "universal" goals.[25][26][27]

Post-colonialism

One of the key tenets of modern identity politics comes from post-colonialism, although it is shared by all the other post-modern critical approaches. It is the concept of "otherness" or "othering." Post-modernism argues that discourses serve the interests of the ruling majority. In his 1978 book, Orientalism, Egyptian literary critic Edward Said, using Michel Foucault's postmodern theory of discourse argued that that the West not only created the East as the exotic other, but in the process had created themselves as the norm by which the other could be measured. The result for the other is that they were excluded not only from the discourse of the West, but also from themselves. They needed to reclaim themselves on their own terms. This view of otherness was explicitly political and a call for a politics of identity which runs through all the postmodern discourses of marginalized groups.

Criticism

The term identity politics has been applied retroactively to varying movements that long predate its coinage. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. discussed identity politics extensively in his 1991 book The Disuniting of America. Schlesinger, a strong supporter of liberal conceptions of civil rights, argues that a liberal democracy requires a common basis for culture and society to function. Rather than seeing civil society as already fractured along lines of power and powerlessness (according to race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.), Schlesinger suggests that basing politics on group marginalization is itself what fractures the civil polity, and that identity politics therefore works against creating real opportunities for ending marginalization. Schlesinger believes that "movements for civil rights should aim toward full acceptance and integration of marginalized groups into the mainstream culture, rather than … perpetuating that marginalization through affirmations of difference."[29]

Brendan O'Neill has suggested that identity politics causes (rather than simply recognizing and acting on) political schisms along lines of social identity. Thus, he contrasts the politics of gay liberation and identity politics by saying: "[Peter] Tatchell also had, back in the day, … a commitment to the politics of liberation, which encouraged gays to come out and live and engage. Now, we have the politics of identity, which invites people to stay in, to look inward, to obsess over the body and the self, to surround themselves with a moral forcefield to protect their worldview—which has nothing to do with the world—from any questioning."[30]

In these and other ways, a political perspective oriented to one's own well being can be recast as causing the divisions that it insists upon making visible. Similarly in the United Kingdom, author Owen Jones argues that identity politics often marginalize the working class, saying:

In the 1950s and 1960s, left-wing intellectuals who were both inspired and informed by a powerful labour movement wrote hundreds of books and articles on working-class issues. Such work would help shape the views of politicians at the very top of the Labour Party. Today, progressive intellectuals are far more interested in issues of identity. ... Of course, the struggles for the emancipation of women, gays, and ethnic minorities are exceptionally important causes. New Labour has co-opted them, passing genuinely progressive legislation on gay equality and women's rights, for example. But it is an agenda that has happily co-existed with the sidelining of the working class in politics, allowing New Labour to protect its radical flank while pressing ahead with Thatcherite policies.

Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class[31]

Intersectional critiques

In her journal article Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color, Kimberle Crenshaw treats identity politics as a process that brings people together based on a shared aspect of their identity. Crenshaw applauds identity politics for bringing African Americans (and other non-white people), gays and lesbians, and other oppressed groups together in community and progress.[32] But she critiques it because "it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences."[32] Crenshaw argues that for Black women, at least two aspects of their identity are the subject of oppression: their race and their sex.[33] Thus, although identity politics are useful, we must be aware of the role of intersectionality. Nira Yuval-Davis supports Crenshaw's critiques in Intersectionality and Feminist Politics and explains that "Identities are individual and collective narratives that answer the question 'who am/are I/we?" [34]

In Mapping the Margins, Crenshaw illustrates her point using the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy. Anita Hill accused US Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment; Thomas would be the second African American judge on the Supreme Court. Crenshaw argues that Hill was then deemed anti-Black in the movement against racism, and although she came forward on the feminist issue of sexual harassment, she was excluded because when considering feminism, it is the narrative of white middle-class women that prevails.[32] Crenshaw concludes that acknowledging intersecting categories when groups unite on the basis of identity politics is better than ignoring categories altogether.[32]

Examples

Template:Main category In the United States, identity politics is usually ascribed to these oppressed minority groups who are fighting discrimination. In Canada and Spain, identity politics has been used to describe separatist movements; in Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe, it has described violent nationalist and ethnic conflicts. Overall, in Europe, identity politics are exclusionary and based on the idea that the silent majority needs to be protected from globalization and immigration.[35]

Racial and ethnocultural

Further information: Ethnocultural politics in the United States

Ethnic, religious and racial identity politics dominated American politics in the 19th century, during the Second Party System (1830s–1850s)[36] as well as the Third Party System (1850s–1890s).[37] Racial identity has been the central theme in Southern politics since slavery was abolished.[38]

Similar patterns appear in the 21st century are commonly referenced in popular culture,[39] and are increasingly analyzed in media and social commentary as an interconnected part of politics and society.[40][41] Both a majority and minority group phenomenon, racial identity politics can develop as a reaction to the historical legacy of race-based oppression of a people[42] as well as a general group identity issue, as "racial identity politics utilizes racial consciousness or the group's collective memory and experiences as the essential framework for interpreting the actions and interests of all other social groups."[43]

Carol M. Swain has argued that non-white ethnic pride and an "emphasis on racial identity politics" is fomenting the rise of white nationalism.[44] Anthropologist Michael Messner has suggested that the Million Man March was an example of racial identity politics in the United States.[45]

Black women identity politics

See also: Black feminism, Combahee River Collective, and Black women in American politics

Black women identity politics concerns the identity-based politics derived from the lived experiences of struggles and oppression of Black women.

In 1977, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) Statement argued that black women struggled with facing their oppression, and with their coinage of the term identity politics, it gave black women the tools and comprehension to confront the oppression one was facing. The CRC also suggested that "the personal is political".[46] This expression explains the outlook that black women have for politics, as they are constructed by the lived experiences of racial inequalities, and the oppression based on their identities. As mentioned earlier K. Crenshaw, claims that black women oppression is illustrated in two different directions; race and sex.[47] In 1991, Nancie Caraway explained that the politics of black women had to be comprehended in the understanding that the oppression they face are all interconnected, presenting a compound of oppression (Intersectionality).[48]

In 1988, Deborah K. King coined the term Multiple jeopardy, theory that expands on how factors of oppression are all interconnected. King suggested that the identities of gender, class, and race each have an individual prejudicial connotation, which has an incremental effect on the inequity of which one experiences[49]

Arab identity politics

Arab identity politics concerns the identity-based politics derived from the racial or ethnocultural consciousness of Arab people. In the regionalism of the Middle East, it has particular meaning in relation to the national and cultural identities of non-Arab countries, such as Turkey, Iran and North African countries .[50][51] In their 2010 Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition, academics Christopher Wise and Paul James challenged the view that, in the post-Afghanistan and Iraq invasion era, Arab identity-driven politics were ending. Refuting the view that had "drawn many analysts to conclude that the era of Arab identity politics has passed", Wise and James examined its development as a viable alternative to Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world.[52]

According to Marc Lynch, the post-Arab Spring era has seen increasing Arab identity politics, which is "marked by state-state rivalries as well as state-society conflicts". Lynch believes this is creating a new Arab Cold War, no longer characterized by Sunni-Shia sectarian divides but by a reemergent Arab identity in the region.[53] Najla Said has explored her lifelong experience with Arab identity politics in her book Looking for Palestine.[54]

Māori identity politics

Due to somewhat competing tribe-based versus pan-Māori concepts, there is both an internal and external utilization of Māori identity politics in New Zealand.[55] Projected outwards, Māori identity politics has been a disrupting force in the politics of New Zealand and post-colonial conceptions of nationhood.[56] Its development has also been explored as causing parallel ethnic identity developments in non-Māori populations.[57] Academic Alison Jones, in her co-written Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds, suggests that a form of Māori identity politics, directly oppositional to Pākehā (white New Zealanders), has helped provide a "basis for internal collaboration and a politics of strength".[58]

A 2009, Ministry of Social Development journal identified Māori identity politics, and societal reactions to it, as the most prominent factor behind significant changes in self-identification from the 2006 New Zealand census.[59]

White identity politics

White identity politics concerns the manifestation of the ethnocultural identity of white people in various national political settings such as the United States or Australia.

In 1998, political scientists Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg predicted that, by the late 20th-century, a "Euro-American radical right" would promote a trans-national white identity politics, which would invoke populist grievance narratives and encourage hostility against non-white peoples and multiculturalism.[60] In the United States, mainstream news has identified Donald Trump's presidency as a signal of increasing and widespread utilization of white identity politics within the Republican Party and political landscape.[61] Political journalists such as Michael Scherer and David Smith have reported on its development since the mid-2010s.[62][63]

Ron Brownstein believes that President Trump uses "White Identity Politics" to bolster his base and that this will ultimately limit his ability to reach out to non-White American voters for the 2020 United States presidential election.[64] A four-year Reuters and Ipsos analysis concurred that "Trump's brand of white identity politics may be less effective in the 2020 election campaign."[65] Alternatively, examining the same poll, David Smith has written that "Trump’s embrace of white identity politics may work to his advantage" in 2020.[66] During the Democratic primaries, presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg publicly warned that the president and his administration were using white identity politics, which he said was the most divisive form of identity politics.[67] Columnist Reihan Salam writes that he is not convinced that Trump uses "white identity politics" given the fact that he still has significant support from liberal and moderate Republicans – who are more favorable toward immigration and the legalization of undocumented immigrants – but believes that it could become a bigger issue as whites become a minority and assert their rights like other minority groups.[68] Salam also states that an increase in "white identity" politics is far from certain given the very high rates of intermarriage and the historical example of the once Anglo-Protestant cultural majority embracing a more inclusive white cultural majority which included Jews, Italians, Poles, Arabs, and Irish.[68]

Columnist Ross Douthat has argued that it has been important to American politics since the Richard Nixon-era of the Republican Party,[69] and historian Nell Irvin Painter has analyzed Eric Kaufmann's thesis that the phenomenon is caused by immigration-derived racial diversity, which reduces the white majority, and an "anti-majority adversary culture".[70] Writing in Vox, political commentator Ezra Klein believes that demographic change has fueled the emergence of white identity politics.[71]

See also

  • Adversarial process
  • Affirmative action
  • Auto-segregation
  • Blue-collar worker
  • White-collar worker
  • Client politics
  • Conflict theory
  • Conviction politics
  • Culture war
  • Diaspora politics
  • Divide and rule
  • Diversity (politics)
  • Endogamy
  • Ethnic interest group
  • False consciousness
  • Group polarization
  • Group rights
  • Identity (social science)
  • Identitarianism
  • Interest group liberalism
  • Marx's theory of alienation
  • Minority influence
  • Nationalism
  • New social movements
  • Objectification
  • Opposition to immigration
  • Political consciousness
  • Political correctness
  • Queer theory
  • Racialism
  • Sectarianism
  • Separatism
  • Social conflict theory
  • Standpoint theory
  • Toxic masculinity
  • Tribalism
  • Voting bloc

Further reading

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  1. ↑ (2009). "Queer Nation is Dead/Long Live Queer Nation": The Politics and Poetics of Social Movement and Media Representation. Critical Studies in Media Communication 26 (3): 212–236.
  2. ↑ Fraser, Nancy. From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age.
  3. ↑ Kurzwelly, Jonatan (2020). Encountering, explaining and refuting essentialism. Anthropology Southern Africa 43(2): 65–81.
  4. ↑ >Martha A. Ackelsberg, "Identity Politics, Political Identities: Thoughts toward a Multicultural Politics," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 16(1), 1996, 87–100.
  5. ↑ Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983, ISBN 0913175021), xxxi-xxxii.
  6. ↑ Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, How we get free : Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective (Chicago, Il: Haymarket Books, 2017, ISBN 978-1608468553).
  7. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Stanford
  8. ↑ Vasiliki Neofotistos, "Identity Politics," Oxford Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, 2013. Retrieved February 22, 2022.
  9. ↑ Amy Chua, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0399562853), 178.
  10. ↑ Howard J. Wiarda, Political Culture, Political Science, and Identity Politics: An Uneasy Alliance (Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge, 2016 (2014), ISBN 978-1317078852) "There are disputes regarding the origins of the term 'identity politics' .... Almost all authors, even while disagreeing over who was the first to use the term, agree that its original usage goes back to the 1970s and even the 1960s."
  11. ↑ Zillah R. Eisenstein, Capitalist Pat Zillah R. Eisenstein Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, ed. (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1979)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Hoffman, Amy (2007). An Army of Ex-Lovers: My life at the Gay Community News. University of Massachusetts Press, xi–xiii. ISBN 978-1558496217. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Hoffman, Amy (2007). An Army of Ex-Lovers: My life at the Gay Community News. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1558496217. 
  14. ↑ Gay Rights Are Not Queer Liberation (29 June 2012).
  15. ↑ Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color," Stanford Law Review 43(6) (1991): 1297.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Lorde, Audre (1982). Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. New York: Crossing Press. ISBN 978-0-89594-123-7. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Kemp, Yakini B. (2004). "Writing Power: Identity Complexities and the Exotic Erotic in Audre Lorde's writing". Studies in the Literary Imagination. 37: 22–36.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Leonard, Keith D. (28 September 2012). ""Which Me Will Survive": Rethinking Identity, Reclaiming Audre Lorde" {{#invoke:webarchive|webarchive}}. Callaloo. 35 (3): 758–77. Digital object identifier (DOI): 10.1353/cal.2012.0100 . ISSN 1080-6512.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 "Queer Theory and the Social Construction of Sexuality". Homosexuality. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Butler, Judith (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal 40 (4): 519–531.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 "queer". Oxford English Dictionary. (2014). Oxford University Press.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Halperin, David M. (1990). One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-90097-3. 
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Mortimer, Dora, "Can Straight People Be Queer? - An increasing number of young celebrities are labeling themselves 'queer.' But what does this mean for the queer community?", 9 February 2016.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Jagose, Annamarie, 1996. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Spivak, Gayatri Chakrovotry (2008). Other Asias. Malden, M.A.: Blackwell Publishing, 260. ISBN 978-1405102070. 
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Abraham, Susan (2009). Strategic Essentialism in Nationalist Discourses: Sketching a Feminist Agenda in the Study of Religion. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25 (1): 156–161.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 G. Ritze/J. M. Ryan eds., The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology (2010) p. 193
  28. ↑ Kurzwelly, J. (2020). Encountering, explaining and refuting essentialism. Anthropology Southern Africa 43 (2): 65–81.
  29. ↑ M.A. Chaudhary & Gautam Chaudhary, Global Encyclopaedia of Political Geography, New Delhi, 2009, Template:ISBN, p. 112
  30. ↑ Identity politics has created an army of vicious, narcissistic cowards. The Spectator (19 February 2015).
  31. ↑ (2012) Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, updated, London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-864-8. 
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 Crenshaw, Kimberle (1 January 1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99.
  33. ↑ Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139–68. 
  34. ↑ Yuval-Davis, Nira (1 August 2006). Intersectionality and Feminist Politics. European Journal of Women's Studies 13 (3): 193–209.
  35. ↑ (2020). Identity Politics and Populism in Europe. Annual Review of Political Science 23: 421–439.
  36. ↑ Daniel Walker Howe, "The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North During the Second Party System," Journal of American History (1991) 77#4 pp: 1216-1239.
  37. ↑ Jon Gjerde, The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917 (1999).
  38. ↑ Harold D. Woodman, "Class, Race, Politics, and the Modernization of the Postbellum South." Journal of Southern History 63.1 (1997): 3-22.
  39. ↑ John O'Connell. "The Literary Influences of Superstar Musician David Bowie", Newsweek, 31 October 2019.
  40. ↑ Tessa Berenson. "How President Trump Put Race at the Center of the Midterms", TIME, 6 November 2018.
  41. ↑ James Kirchick. "Opponents on the left pouring gasoline on Donald Trump's fires", The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 August 2019.
  42. ↑ (2012) Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415162555. “For example, where a legacy of oppression based on race exists, an identity politics of race can be formed in opposition to that form of oppression, and can help to provide an occasion for racial pride and resistance to that oppression.” 
  43. ↑ (1994) "Building Coalitions", Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in Urban America: Status and Prospects for Politics and Activism. Praeger Publishing. ISBN 978-0275949341. 
  44. ↑ (2004) "Preface", The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521545587. “The continued emphasis on racial identity politics and the fostering of an ethnic group pride on the part of nonwhite minority groups.” 
  45. ↑ (1997) "Racial and sexual identity politics", Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-0803955776. 
  46. ↑ How we get free : Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective, Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta.. ISBN 978-1-64259-104-0. OCLC 975027867. 
  47. ↑ Crenshaw, Kimberle (2018-02-19), Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics [1989], Routledge, ISBN 978-0-429-50048-0. Retrieved 2020-10-09 
  48. ↑ Caraway, Nancie E. (1991). The Challenge and Theory of Feminist Identity Politics: Working on Racism. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 12 (2): 109.
  49. ↑ King, Deborah K. (1988-10-01). Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (1): 42–72.
  50. ↑ (2010) "The myth of "National Identity": Psycho-nationalism in Iran and the Arab world", Middle East Review (IDE-JETRO), Volume 7, Japan External Trade Organization: Institute of Developing Economies. ISBN 978-0980415810. “Iranian and Arab identity politics thwarted, perverted, and dismembered communitarian thinking for long periods in the twentieth century and the same applies to other forms of psycho-nationalism in Turkey” 
  51. ↑ (2014) "The Arabness of Middle East regionalism: the Arab Spring and competition for discursive hegemony between Egypt, Iran and Turkey", Contemporary Politics, Volume 20, No. 4, Taylor & Francis, 421–434. “To explore the role played by Arab identity politics in regionalism with regard to the status of non-Arab states, this article presents a study of the competing hegemonic regional discourses employed by Turkey, Iran and Egypt” 
  52. ↑ (2010) Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition. Arena Publications. ISBN 978-0980415810. 
  53. ↑ (2019) The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231158855. 
  54. ↑ "Najla Said: "My Arab-American story is not typical in any way"", Salon (website), 28 July 2013.
  55. ↑ (2005) The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. Otago University Press. ISBN 978-1877276538. “The tensions created by the intersection of tribe as identity, versus tribe as organisation, are central to Maori identity politics.” 
  56. ↑ (2005) "Transnationalism in the Pacific Region as a Concept of State Identity", Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, Volume 11, Edition 1, University of International and Public Relations Prague: Walter de Gruyter. “Maori identity politics have disrupted the colonially-inspired constructions of the New Zealand nation and state from a base of indigeneity.” 
  57. ↑ (1997) Constructing collective identity: a comparative analysis of New Zealand Jews, Maori, and urban Papua New Guineans. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3631319444. “The material on biculturalism particularly shows how ethnicity interdigitates with identity politics for Maori and stimulates parallel developments among non-Maori New Zealanders.” 
  58. ↑ (2005) Critical Conversations in Kaupapa Maori. Huia Publishers. ISBN 978-1775503286. “As Jones and Jenkins (2008) point out, an oppositional Māori identity politics has been the 'basis for internal collaboration and a politics of strength' (p.475).” 
  59. ↑ (2009) Social Policy Journal of New Zealand.
  60. ↑ (1998) The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813525648. 
  61. ↑ "Trump's America: Where politics dictate definition of racism", Associated Press, August 6, 2019.
  62. ↑ David Smith. "After Kamala: activists fear Democratic primary whitewash", The Guardian, December 8, 2019.
  63. ↑ Michael Scherer. "White identity politics drives Trump, and the Republican Party under him", The Washington Post, July 16, 2019.
  64. ↑ Ron Brownstein. "The Limits of Trump's White Identity Politics", The Atlantic, August 15, 2019.
  65. ↑ Chris Kahn. "For Trump, appeals to white fears about race may be a tougher sell in 2020: Reuters/Ipsos poll", Reuters, August 19, 2019.
  66. ↑ David Smith. "'It's a political civil war': Trump's racist tirades set tone for 2020", The Guardian, December 8, 2019.
  67. ↑ "Pete Buttigieg says Donald Trump's white 'identity politics' contributing to a 'crisis of belonging'", May 13, 2019.
  68. ↑ 68.0 68.1 Salam, Reihan, "Reihan Salam: Is 'white nationalism' rising?", Sep 25, 2015.
  69. ↑ Ross Douthat. "Can the Right Escape Racism?", The New York Times, September 10, 2019.
  70. ↑ {{#invoke:Citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=magazine }}
  71. ↑ Ezra Klein. "Trump vs. "the Squad"", Vox Media, July 16, 2019.

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