Tag Archives: Identity Politics

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. 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 facilitate 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 any 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.

Race and Radical Politics: A Review of Christopher Rufo, America’s Cultural Revolution (Part Two A)

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Today I will continue my review of Christopher F. Rufo: America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (Broadside Books, 2023).  In Part II, Rufo deals with race and develops the narrative with constant reference to Angela Davis (b. 1944). As in the previous essay, I will follow Rufo’s chapter divisions.

1. Angela Davis: The Spirit of Radical Revolt

Davis’s story is fascinating and well worth reading, but I want to focus on one thread, that is, how in her life Marcuse’s theory of revolutionary violence was put into practice. Angela Yvonne Davis was born on January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama. A very bright child, with school-teacher parents, she read vociferously. At age 15, she won a scholarship to Elisabeth Irwin High School, a private school in New York City. Many of her teachers were members of the Communist Party; they introduced her to the writings of Marx and Engels. At Elisabeth Irwin, Davis became fascinated with the Communist Manifesto’s vision of the abolition of capitalism and institution of a classless society. She studied next at Brandeis University where she met Herbert Marcuse, who became her mentor and life-long inspiration. After a brief stay in Frankfurt, Germany where she studied “Critical Theory” at the Institute for Social Research, she followed Marcuse to the University of California, San Diego.

The brainy and highly educated Davis soon became impatient with theory and pursued ways to get involved in the practical struggle. She joined the Black Panther Party but found it too unorganized. She then joined the Communist Party USA. Applying the Communist oppressor/oppressed theory to race, Davis interpreted the American judicial, law enforcement and penal systems as instruments of white oppression of black people. Within this ideological framework, criminal acts such as theft, property destruction and murder, when committed by poor black people, become legitimate acts of resistance to the structural and legal violence built into the white capitalist system. Putting this theory into practice on August 7, 1970, Davis participated, albeit at a distance, in a dramatic, failed prison escape that began in the Marin County Hall of Justice. A shootout followed at the end of which four people were dead including Judge Harold Haley. Davis had purchased the guns used in the attack and her finger prints were found on the gun manuals discovered at the crime scene. After a period of hiding, Davis was arrested and charged with murder. Instantly, she became world famous. At her trial, she and her lawyers turned the tables on the State of California, claiming that she was a political prisoner and that the prison break was a “slave insurrection.” Amazingly, despite the evidence, Davis was acquitted on all charges.

2. “Kill the Pigs”: The Black Revolution Explodes”

This chapter tells the story of the Black Panther Party and its founder Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver minister of information. The Party’s “Ten-Point Program” (1966) includes demands for black people to be granted full employment or a guaranteed income, free housing, exemption from military service, self-determination, and reparations for past injustices. The Panthers assassinated police officers and engaged in shootouts with the authorities. In the early 1970s Newton and Cleaver parted company, with Newton remaining on the West Coast and Cleaver on the East Coast. The East Coast faction, the Black Liberation Army, eventually became little more than another gang. Newton descended into drug addiction and in 1989 was murdered outside an Oakland drug den. Cleaver, too, became a drug addict and in 1998 died of a heart attack in Oakland. The militant revolution was dead.

3. From Black Liberation to Black Studies

The failure of black radical street violence to bring positive change provoked Angela Davis and others to retreat to the universities to begin the “long march” through the institutions. Davis worked to establish various forms of black studies programs in the university. She argued that marginalize members of society understand the true nature of freedom whereas the dominant classes do not; and the black woman is doubly marginalized, at the bottom of the heap of the oppressed. People of marginalized identities are sources of knowledge unavailable elsewhere. These special sources of knowledge, therefore, should be institutionalized in departments and studies programs. According to Rufo, “Davis’s theoretical work on identity had an enormous impact on the development of left-wing politics throughout the era” (p. 103). Of great significance for the future of identity politics is the Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) made by a group of black lesbian activists. Drawing on Davis’s theory of the privileged access of marginalized identities to certain types of knowledge, 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.” Rufo describes the significance of the Statement:

The activists eschewed the masculine inclinations toward violence…and created a uniquely feminine program that marshalled identity, emotion, trauma, and psychological manipulation in service of their political objectives. The Combahee Statement recast left-wing politics as an identity-based therapeutic pursuit (p. 104).

It worked. Today most universities contain “studies” programs for almost every recognized ethnic or gender identity.

4. BLM: The Revolution Reborn

The Black Lives Matter organization was founded in 2013 by Alicia Garza (b. 1981) and Patrisse Cullors (b. 1983). It burst onto the national scene in the aftermath of the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, MO. BLM’s guiding principles tracks almost perfectly with the Black Panthers’ Ten Point Plan. According to Rufo, BLM “can be best understood as a synthesis of the major lines of the black liberation movement—the racialist dialectic of Angela Davis, the identity first orientation of the Combahee River Collective, the Marxist-Leninist vision of the Black Panther Party—resurrected for the digital age” (p. 115). BLM’s innovations are in the way it packages its message. It appeals to (white) emotions of guilt and shame rather than fear. Using social media to highlight individual incidents of “police brutality” (such as that used against George Floyd in May 2020) as proof of systemic racism and the pervasive influence of white supremacy. According to the narrative created by BLM, police were conducting a slow genocide of unarmed black men. Is the number, 10,000 or 1,000 per year, as many people think? According to Rufo’s reading of the Washington Post database for police shootings, the actual number was 14. [According to my reading of the appropriated filtered database for the year 2021, the number was 12. I don’t know how to reconcile these two numbers.].

5. Mob Rule in Seattle

In this chapter, Rufo details the disasters that befell Portland, OR and Seattle, WA in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in the long summer of 2020. BLM leader Nikkita Oliver (b. 1986) became the most visible figure of the “abolitionist” movement, which pressed for the abolition of police departments, courts, and jails. Weeks of protest and street violence roiled the city. Then, on June 8, 2020 the police department stationed in the East Precinct abandoned their headquarters. That evening armed men from Antifa and other militant leftist groups set up the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) bereft of police, courts, and jails. The new order followed the rule of “identity politics.” The bottom became the top and the top the bottom. Black, indigenous and trans women became the privileged and white male heterosexuals were shamed and urged to pay reparations to Black people. Division, chaos, and killings ensued. CHAZ lasted from June 8 to July 3, 2020. Rufo concludes:

The truth is politically impolite but factually unassailable: the real problem in America, from the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter, is not police brutality, but the brutality of the American streets…Like their historical predecessors, the new abolitionists are not seeking to achieve reforms within a given social order; they are seeking to overturn that social order altogether…The revolution is, after all, the relentless application of the negative dialectic: to subvert, to shift, to unmask, to destroy” (pp. 140-141).

It takes less than five minutes to cut down an oak tree that nature took 300 years to grow.

To be continued…