Category Archives: Intersectional Identity

Identity Politics and the People of God (Part Two)

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In part one of this two-part series (June 13, 2024), I described the essential features of identity politics. Identity politics divides people into oppressors and the oppressed and further subdivides the oppressed into a hierarchy of oppression. One’s place in this hierarchy determines all personal relationships, communal bonds, and social policies. This vision of society is characterized by division, hostility, and shame. Communal bonds among the oppressed are forged by a sense of victimhood and hostility toward the oppressor classes. The oppressors are allowed into the community only if they confess their privilege and guilt, engage in rituals of shame, and pay reparations in some form. In this way, the oppressed become everything they hated in their oppressors. Just like their oppressors, they seek power, wealth, privilege, and honor but use a different set of virtues to rationalize their quest: justice, diversity, respect, inclusion, truth, and equity. And like their oppressors, they display the vices of greed, envy, resentment, pride, and jealousy.

The People of God

The New Testament frankly acknowledges the existence of social divisions and hierarchies, of class and ethnic consciousness. It understands the human tendency to seek power, wealth and honor, and it is well aware of the rationalizations used to justify it. It sees the widespread injustice, violence, and oppression that plagues the world. It knows of the prevalence of greed, envy, resentment, pride, and jealousy. But the New Testament neither excuses these evils as do defenders of the status quo nor attempts to reverse the order of oppression and privilege as do theorists of identity politics. The Christian vision of community is dramatically different from either order, as we can see from 1 Peter 2:9-10:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Peter declares that those who believe in Jesus Christ have been given a new identity superseding all others. God has united people from every tribe, tongue, and class into a people, a nation. The divine power that unites them is much greater than the worldly forces that had divided them, for their unity is grounded in God’s eternal nature, will, and power. The “identities” that identity politics makes primary—race, class, sex, gender, and all others—God subordinates to the greater harmonizing force of the Holy Spirit. God orders natural and cultural diversity into a rich harmony of love, beauty, and fellowship.

Consider the identity markers these people share. They are each and all chosen by God, each and all are ordained priests, each and all are holy to God, each and all are called by God, each and all have the task of praising God, each and all have been saved from darkness and blessed with light, and each and all have been given mercy. Notice especially the words bolded in the quote from 1 Peter. Peter uses three Greek words that may sound familiar because they have been incorporated into the English language: genos, ethnos, laos. They are often translated race (or generation), nation, people. It would be foolish to attempt to distinguish them. That is not Peter’s point. He uses three different words to emphasize one point: just like the ancient people of God, he says to his readers, you have a bond of kinship, calling, and purpose that takes priority over all other bonds. You are not a people because of your similar economic interests, not a nation because of your common ethnic origins, or your language, native customs, etc., but because of your divine calling and your common faith.

The Line of Division

In an essay posted May 03, 2024, I wrote about the origins of such training programs as Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED), which is used in hundreds of American colleges and universities to inculcate identity politics. In the 1980s, Erica Sherover-Marcuse developed workshops designed to promote a new intersectional consciousness among educators and other shapers of culture. The most well-known exercise in these workshops is the “privilege walk.” Participants divide into groups based on where they stand in the hierarchy of privilege and oppression. The privileged, then, must acknowledge and apologize for their racism, sexism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression. Imagine a room filled with students, school teachers, or college professors. The facilitator asks the white males to move to one side of the room. White females stand next to them. The process continues in order of least to most oppressed. Those considered oppressed are invited to share stories of abuse, shame, and marginalization. Tears abound. The privileged, however, are not allowed to defend themselves from accusation or relate their stories of oppression; instead, they must confess their undeserved privilege and engage in penitential rituals. No reconciliation here. No love. No forgiveness. No foundational unity. Only resentment, envy, shame, and hypocrisy.

The Circle of Unity

Imagine a different room. Men and women and children from different ethnic groups, languages, cultures, economic classes and educational levels gather to worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. They surround the Eucharistic Table to participate in the body of Christ in grateful memory of their costly redemption. United in the one baptism and full of the one Spirit, they sing praises to their Creator and Savior. They form a circle of love by joining hands. They look across, to the right, and to the left and see only dear brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. Each has a claim on all and all have a claim on each. The love of God compels them to love each other, to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. There are no oppressors and no oppressed…no shame, no envy, and no contempt.

Lines have beginnings and ends, tops and bottoms. Circles do not. The most prominent feature of a circle is the center, the principle of its unity. A line has a middle but no center, therefore no unity. As we can see from 1 Peter 2:9-10, God is the center that makes a circle of a line and a people of a crowd.

Identity Politics and the People of God (Part One)

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Today I want to reflect critically on a thesis argued by some (mostly progressive) Christians that the basic principles of identity politics (DEI, CRT, SEED, etc.) embody the teaching of Jesus. Such a thesis is not altogether implausible, for certain of Jesus’s teachings seem to support it:

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16)

20 Looking at his disciples, he said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
    for you will be satisfied…

24 “But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
    for you will go hungry (Luke 6:20-25).

Of relevance also are the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16) and the Book of James’s severe rebukes of rich oppressors (2:5-6 and 5:1-6). I believe, however, that the resemblance between the moral principles taught by Jesus and his apostles and identity politics is superficial. At a deeper level they are profoundly at odds. Perhaps at a later time I will examine these passages in their contexts, but in this short series I will limit myself to contrasting the vision of identity politics with that of 1 Peter 2:9-10.

Identity Politics and Intersectionality

In my recent review of Christopher Rufo, America’s Cultural Revolution, Chapter 7, we learned a bit about the background of what are now called “identity politics” and “intersectional identity.” In the early 1970s, Angela Davis asserted that oppressed groups possess greater insight into the true nature of freedom than oppressor groups do. At the bottom rung of the ladder of oppression is the black woman who is doubly marginalized by being both black and female. In 1977, drawing on Davis’s theory of privileged knowledges, a group of black lesbian activists composed the Combahee River Collective Statement. The Statement coined the term “identity politics” and laid out the logic of what came later to be called “intersectional identity.” “This focusing upon our own oppression,” explains the Statement, “is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially radical politics come directly out of our own identity.”

Identity politics asserts that the knowledge possessed by the marginalized—black, female, LGBTQ+, etc.—should serve as the standard by which to criticize and reconstruct the current social order. In the light of this alternative knowledge, the dominant social order appears as racist, colonialist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. Guided by the privileged knowledges of the marginalized, the social order should be reconstructed by turning the identity/oppression ladder on its head and reordering society according to the oppressed groups’ views of justice, equity, freedom, and fairness. The last will be first and the first will be last.

Analytical Observations

Division, Hostility, and Shame

Identity politics divides society into oppressors and oppressed and further sub-divides them into other identity groups ranked hierarchically from most privileged to the least. Those at the top of the oppression ladder are the enemies of everyone below them, and their only acceptable response is shame and confession of their undeserved privilege. Those at the bottom are the bearers of truth unalloyed with the blindness of even the slightest privilege. They alone have nothing of which to be ashamed and no sins to confess.

The identity of those in the top group is “pure oppressor,” and that of the bottom group is “purely oppressed.” Everyone in between is both oppressor and oppressed and experiences hostility from below and harbors hostility to those above. Division and infighting are the constant challenges to the collective identity of those on the oppression ladder; for there can be no solidarity between the oppressed and the oppressors. Only when all levels of the oppression hierarchy direct their common hostility to the most privileged (i.e., white, straight males) can their identity as “oppressed” be felt as a common consciousness. That is to say, the feeling of solidarity among the “oppressed” is forged by common hostility toward the group viewed as the most privileged.

Moreover, in the upside-down world of identity politics the most oppressed is treated as the most privileged; consequently, there will always be competition and conflict among “the oppressed” over where one stands in the hierarchy. Because identity politics defines identity solely within the oppressor/oppressed dialectic, it can never produce a society wherein the hostility between the two is overcome in a higher solidarity. Without an oppressor the oppressed cease to exist.

The New Hierarchy

Supposedly, the goal of identity politics is exposing and correcting systems of oppression. It cries out against the order of domination and subordination, privilege and marginalization. One might think that the answer to such systemic inequality and alienation would be equality and reconciliation. However, this is not the agenda of identity politics. It is rather to flip the order upside down so that the top becomes the bottom and the bottom becomes the top. Identity politics replaces objective truth with ideology in service of power and common humanity with group identities. It replaces white/male/straight privilege with Black/woman/lesbian privilege. But the oppressor/oppressed privileged/marginalized structure of society remains in place. Even if they are called by other names—social justice, respect, inclusion, reparations, truth, and equity—power, wealth, privilege, and honor are the chief ambitions that drive this community. These are of course the same ambitions that drive the society it seeks to replace. Not surprisingly, the two societies share the same vices: greed, envy, resentment, pride, and jealousy. And both societies hide their true ambitions and vices under clever euphemisms.

Next Time we will see just how great is the opposition between the social vision of Jesus and his apostles and that of identity politics.

Understanding Academia’s Obsession with Race, Gender, and Identity (Part Two)

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In the previous essay I promised to complete my description of Theory (or Critical Theory), which is the framework that makes sense of the “crazy talk” about race, gender, and identity we often hear emanating from the modern university. The original postmodernism, with its two principles and four major themes—discussed in the previous post—takes a playful, skeptical, and ironic stance toward all truth claims. It affirms nothing and criticizes everything. Pure postmodernism cannot function as a philosophy for political activism. For it deconstructs everything and constructs nothing. Whereas science aims to describe the world and radical politics wants to change it, postmodernism wishes only to criticize it.

Social Justice Theory as Applied Postmodernism

According to Pluckrose and Lindsay, Cynical Theories, between the 1980s and 2010 race, gender, and identity theorists drew on postmodernism for the critical parts of their activist theories. Theory uses postmodern knowledge principle to create suspicion of the knowledge claims and narratives of the dominant groups in society. And it uses the postmodern political principle to expose the pervasive presence of power in society and its control over what counts as truth and justice. However, in contrast to the original postmodernism, Theory uses postmodernism’s critical tools only against ideologies and narratives it deems supportive of the oppressive forces in society. It does not turn them against the narratives of society’s oppressed and marginalized.* The latter are treated in practice as true and expressive of justice. The former are treated as false and expressive of injustice. Postmodernism’s universal deconstruction of all truth claims, every power center, and each assertion of stable identity, was transformed into a binary order–a new metanarrative–defined by the division between oppressor and oppressed.

*I don’t have space to define the “marginalized.” As the term indicates, the marginalized are defined by what they are not. They are not the dominant group. Look up Cynical Theories in your favorite search engine.

Social Justice Theory as Reified Postmodernism

After 2010, Theory (Social Justice Theory or Critical Theory) confidently asserted the truth of its critique of knowledge and the political order. The mood is no longer skeptical and playful but cynical and dogmatic. Pluckrose and Lindsey speak of this shift as the “reification” of postmodernism. Within the world of contemporary Theory it is presupposed that any moral or scientific justification of the status quo (the oppressors) is merely an ideology originating from desire to maintain dominance over people with marginalized identities. In contrast, narratives that free and empower marginalized people are by definition true. Social Justice Theory is a strange combination of cynicism and dogmatism, which makes sense only as an arbitrary decision to apply postmodern cynicism to the narratives of one group and superstitious credulity to the other. What motivates this seemingly arbitrary decision? Lust for power, guilt, resentment, and envy or passion for justice?

Ironically, because of Theory’s dogmatic assertion that truth and right are always on the side of the marginalized, a marginal identity has become a coveted possession within the Social Justice universe. And the more marginalized your identity, the higher your status in the new order will be. A person’s identity as marginalized is enhanced when it is constructed by the intersection of two or more marginal identities. In a reversal of postmodernism’s universal suspicion of power, contemporary Theory uses its claims of truth and right to demand submission from the heretofore dominant group. Theory, then, flips the social order on its head. The oppressors become the oppressed, truth becomes falsehood, good becomes evil, and right becomes wrong. And there is no arbiter, via media, no common ground. There are only winners and losers.

Classical Liberalism as the Response to Applied and Reified Postmodernism?

As their response to the irrationality and socially destructive effects of Social Justice Theory’s activist and reified postmodernism, Pluckrose and Lindsey urge a return to classical liberalism, that is, to reason, truth, freedom of expression, civil liberty, common humanity, debate, and evidence-based knowledge.

Next Time: I will explain my partial agreement with Pluckrose’s and Lindsey’s proposal and offer a Christian response to the view of freedom common to both postmodernism and liberalism.