It’s our annual fundraiser. We’ve raised a little over $6,845 from 61 people in the last thirteen days, out of our goal of $12,500. If you’re a regular reader and can afford to support our writing, please subscribe or donate. Over 10,000 people read every day, but without those who give the site would not survive.
If you’re anything like me every time you hear the word woke used you wince. Conservatives don’t know what it is and just use it as a hobgoblin, Liberals created it but pretend they didn’t and the left is forced to reluctantly defend basic principles like “everyone should be treated equally”, and “people should have control over their own bodies” after Liberals made doing so noxious.
All of this is based on two thing: cold hard economic math, and the ideology of identity politics as original sin. We’ll look at both, but let’s see some of the results first:
But it’s not just the Youngs:
Now some of this is straight up economic competition. Women get most of the college degrees, they dominate in multiple professions including law, and despite the wage gap, they’re bringing home the bacon. When I was at an elite all-male school in the 80s some of us mentioned to Mr. Skinner, the resident socialist history Prof, that we thought having girls around would be marvelous.
“If we had girls, half of you wouldn’t be here.” And he pointed some fingers.
Chilling.
The bottom line is that there are men who would be more successful if women were restricted to various pink collar ghettos like they were in the 50s and 60s. There’s no denying it and pretending otherwise is stupid and dishonest. So some of “get back in the kitchen” is pure self-interest, whether or not most men will admit it.
But part of it is the original sin of identity politics. I was first introduced in a big way in the early 90s, when I went back to university. As it was explained to me, repeatedly, since I was white, I was racist, and since I was male I was sexist and apparently being heterosexual was somehow dubious. I was willing to accept the first two: I grew up in a somewhat patriarchal (it wasn’t Republican Rome) white society, and sure, I’d taken in some of the values. (As for heterosexuality, well, women are wonderful and no, I’m not changing that preference.)
So, OK, if you’re male you’re probably sexist and if white probably racist (though they would have said 100% for sure.)
OK. I’m bad. It’s not my fault, really, I was raised that way. How do I fix it.
And this is where the problem came in. Apparently no matter what you did, or said, or however much you were re-educated, if male you’d always be sexist and if white you’d always be racist.
“Wait, so you’re saying I’m a bad person, and that I can never be a not bad person?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, I don’t think I want to be part of your movement.”
Here’s the thing, folks, if your religion (and ideology is religion without the appeal to the supernatural) insists people are bad, it has to give them a way out. Even Catholics, obsessed with the original sin, allow that it is possible for humans to become good and wind up in Heaven. Evanglicals, with their “born again” shtick, offer forgiveness for anything.
First you make people feel bad, then you offer a way for them to feel good about themselves. Many will jump thru quite a few flaming hoops to “not be a bad person” and “be a good person.”
Identity politics didn’t offer that. You were bad. You would always be bad. There was no salvation, no good deeds, thoughts or words cold ever truly cleanse of you of your sexism or racism or whatever. (-Isms expanded over the years, till everything had an -ism.)
Identity politics did have its victories, for sure, as with Catholic guilt, people will strive even against the impossible. “Can I be a male feminist, please?” “I’m an ally, right, not one of the bad ones?”
But it also alienated a lot of people with its message of “you’re bad and you’ll always be bad.” The explosion of -isms, of various disadvantaged groups which, as epistemological given, could never really understand each other created a flock of interest groups, some small, some medium sized and all of them undercutting the mass solidarity required to pursue shared interests. (Like not letting the rich impoverish us all.)
Mass political movements are about solidarity, shared interests and an agreement not to make separate peace. I’m 57 and male, but I still care passionately about abortion rights, even though it’s an issue which is unlikely to ever effect me personally. I’ve defended trans people, even though I’m not trans, because I feel they should have the right to bodily autonomy and that they’re being picked on because they’re weak and an easy wedge to use against the larger LGBTQ movement. I’m happy for China that they lifted a billion people out of poverty, even though I’m not Chinese and it’s probably going to fuck me over personally as a Canadian. (That’s mostly the fault of US and Canadian politicians, not Chinese, so I don’t blame the Chinese.)
Identity politics was political malpractice on an epic scale. “Don’t break solidarity” is the first and last rule of mass politics, especially any sort of real populism which seeks to make the weak strong by forming them into a mass capable of demanding their interests be met, or else.
This is the reverse of the rule of the powerful. “Keep the masses divided and fighting themselves, so they can’t fight us.”
Anyone who destroys solidarity is working for the masters, not for the people, whatever they personally believe.
We’ve spent 50 years destroying the political basis of New Deal prosperity. It’s dead, Jim, with about a thousand stab wounds. Identity politics pressed a lot of those daggers home.
Let’s hope we can find something better, a way that unites us and takes care of all of us (well, except for the oligarchs). The world’s looking mighty dark in the West these days, and if we don’t pull together, most of us are assuredly going to hang separately
It’s Our Annual Fundraiser. If you read us a lot, please Subscribe or Donate.
Bill H.
When you have successfully split people up into dozens of mutually hostile self interest groups, how do you bring them back together again? How do you ever even unite them in common causes? Is DEI a bell that can be unrung?
AJ
Where to begin…?
The experience of identity politics as it evolved depends on one’s birth lottery. The “original sin” you describe originated as survival based community building and empowerment for marginalized, persecuted minority populations. The roots of the word “woke” in African American communities connoted and carried with it the collective wisdom of generations of families learning how to survive under American white supremacy.
That the affirmations and traumas of marginalized communities were weaponized by capitalists, their lackies, and by some academics for personal advancement and profit was not entirely the fault of these communities. That is what you experienced on campus. However, that is not and never was the whole story, just the in media res entry point for a lot of people with demographics like your own.
I agree that in the end identity is an illusion and should be superseded at some point in development, but that’s a larger spiritual topic for another day. Developmentally, consciousness in bodies comes to an experience of non-duality by first beginning to recognize self in at least some others: family, then tribe, humanity, and last the perception of unity with all we can perceive. That’s a progression, and along the way, for many within oppressed groups, the experience of suffering is mitigated at least provisionally by the formation of a collective identity that can lead to collective action to mitigate suffering and systems of oppression. The fuel behind that is a soup of both love and trauma, which can manifest as messy and strident and unyielding, as you describe in your university experience.
But suffering, love, and trauma of some sorts are universal experiences. I encourage and try to model empathy and understanding for that trauma and fear behind the stridency on a human level, while raising consciousness about how that trauma was weaponized by capitalist elites to avoid the actual work of collective justice and mercy, channeling it instead toward the division of working class people. So I don’t “other” identity politics. My approach is different.
This is perhaps easier for me than for some as I have sides of me in both camps: to look at me, using the language of these things, I’m a cis-male light skinned man with a German surname. Scratch the surface and I am a gay half latino with a very brown grandfather whom ai adored. That latino side of the family was much more a positive part of my childhood experience than the euro, mostly Irish and English side (despite the German surname), which was mostly a group of alcoholics and dysfunctional manipulators.
somecomputerguy
I believe the concept we know as “Woke” was a natural evolution from the ‘Four G’s’; God (abortion), Guns, Green (the environment), and Gays.
This was the New Dems redefinition of leftism or liberalism to exclude economic issues.
That is why they latched on to the idea that demographics would be destiny for them; no need to worry about governing; brown people would just automatically vote for them without them actually having to do anything.
Identity is the way humans satisfy the fundamental human need to belong. I used to think that the central problematic of modernity, was that atomized individualized society had no inherent way satisfy it and capitalism exists in contradiction to it.
I think that is really well illustrated in the movie “Fight Club”; alienation causes fascism. That is what the tour of the protagonists apartment is about; he has lots of cool stuff, and no friends.
Feral Finster
You are not the first to note the connection between original sin and IdPol. Whatever, just an aside. For that matter, I don’t claim that all my thoughts are original to me.
Anyway, IdPol is entirely useful, otherwise it would be even harder to tell Team R apart from Team D (non-US readers may substitute the local political parties here).