Identity politics

The Democrats message was not well received by Latinos during the 2020 Presidential election.

Identity politics is the basing of one's political and sociological viewpoint by claiming membership in some "oppressed" group and then constructing most of one's lifestyle and identity around their supposed membership in this group. Identity politics is closely related to political correctness and multiculturalism, and in some cases to postmodernism.

Political and cultural ideologies that take advantage of identity politics include, but are not limited to, white supremacy, black supremacy, and the black lives matter movement.

Membership in an "oppressed group" has taken the place of the proletariat in modern Marxist thought. "White privilege," for example, is an assertion of authority by an "oppressor ruling class" under the theory.

Liberals frequently engage in identity politics, to the point where they even frown upon using the term as they see it as a "pejorative" term. A 2018 study by researchers at Yale University and Princeton University found that liberals patronize minorities and present themselves as less competent when speaking to them, while conservatives speak and present themselves the same way to everyone regardless of skin color.

NeverTrumper David French described the phenomena of groupthink in identity politics this way:

"a Cass Sunstein academic paper, published all the way back in 1999. Surveying the relevant social science, Sunstein said, “[I]n a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments.”

In plain English, this means that when like-minded people gather, their views get more extreme. Our arguments reinforce one another to such an extent that the entire group will sometimes become more extreme than the most extreme person at the start of the deliberation. Think of it like this—when gun rights advocates (or gun control activists) gather, do they tend to leave the meeting doubting their positions or redoubled in their commitment to advocacy? How many people leave a good Bible study loving Jesus less?

It’s a nonpartisan, human phenomenon, and what’s so seductive about it is the fact that we can’t perceive the sheer tribalism because it’s accompanied by deliberation—by discussion and thought. We fool ourselves into believing our ideas or our intellects are in control when it is often our identity or our history."

Victor David Hanson on identity politics in America

Victor Davis Hanson wrote in his essay The End Of Identity Politics:

“

What is the future of diversity politics after the 2016 election? Uncertain at best—and for a variety of reasons. One, intermarriage and integration are still common. Overall, about 15 percent of all marriages each year are interracial, and the rates are highest for Asians and Latinos. Forty percent of Asian women marry men of another race—one quarter of African-American males do, as well—and over a quarter of all Latinos marry someone non-Latino. Identity politics hinges on perceptible racial or ethnic solidarity, but citizens are increasingly a mixture of various races and do not always categorize themselves as “non-white.” Without DNA badges, it will be increasingly problematic to keep racial pedigrees straight. And sometimes the efforts to do so reach the point of caricature and inauthenticity, through exaggerated accent marks, verbal trills, voice modulations, and nomenclature hyphenation. One reason why diversity activists sound shrill is their fear that homogenization is unrelenting.

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See also

• Social justice warrior (SJW)
• Microaggression
• Gender psychosis