Robyn Blumner puts lipstick on a pig

The pinata of the St. Petersburg Times, Robyn Blumner, is at it again this week, creating a terrific segue from my commentary on the column of her fellow SPT editorialist Bill Maxwell. Maxwell noted that Barack Obama is not "ideologically black."

I noted in my commentary that Maxwell had engaged in identity politics, and offered my (nonpartisan, in this instance) condemnation of the implication. If a given way of thinking is inextricably linked to a group, such as a racial group, then one become a type of racist merely for disagreeing with an idea that is not racially linked (save for the notion of identity politics). In effect, identity politics would serve as a handy vehicle for ensuring that people focus on their differences rather than what they might hold in common.

Blumner's column this week consists, more or less, of an apologetic for identity politics. A shallow apologetic to be sure, since she doesn't even acknowledge the problem with identity politics that I brought up in answer to Maxwell's column and highlighted at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Concern about this aspect of identity politics has crystallized around the transparency of experience to the oppressed, and the univocality of its interpretation. Experience is never, critics argue, simply epistemically available prior to interpretation (Scott 1992); rather it requires a theoretical framework — implicit or explicit — to give it meaning. Moreover, if experience is the origin of politics, then some critics worry that what Kruks (2001) calls “an epistemology of provenance” will become the norm: on this view, political perspectives gain legitimacy by virtue of their articulation by subjects of particular experiences. This, critics charge, closes off the possibility of critique of these perspectives by those who don't share the experience, which in turn inhibits political dialogue and coalition-building.

Blumner sweeps the drawbacks safely under the rug for her readers. Identity politics are a good thing, she argues, and the negative connotations associated with the terms have been unfairly attributed to Democrats!

(I)dentity politics has been unfairly conflated to mean that part of the American left that sees the world through the lens of racism and misogyny.
(The St. Petersburg Times)

If you figured that Blumner would offer an example of the supposedly unfair conflation, you'd be mistaken. I can't even detect any clue as to what term has been conflated with "identity politics."

Here's the bottom line: If you want to have a political movement that benefits your particular group, however you define that group, that's fine with me. That isn't identity politics. That's just plain old politics. When you start to say that some relatively immutable characteristic of your group (such as sex or race) is unavoidably identified with that group's ideas then you're engaged in the worst type of identity politics. What people like Bill Maxwell have tried to do to Barack Obama (and Colin Powell) is only slightly better than that. People who think like Maxwell paint Obama as an inauthentic black man based purely on his life experience and ideology.

That's not fair regardless of your political stripe. That type of technique is not fair applied to Obama nor is it fair applied to Hillary Clinton (or Condoleezza Rice for that matter). It is an illicit attempt to marginalize alternative views.

Blumner doesn't see it that way, of course.

I am interested in what the term "identity politics" communicates and how it is used to shut down discussion on national issues that are of great importance to large slices of the electorate.

I'd love to see how the term "identity politics" is used to shut discussion on important national issues. No, really, I would. I'm past expecting examples from Blumner, however.

I can give an example of how identity politics per se is used to marginalize a competing political voice. Just read Bill Maxwell's column. A black man like Barack Obama is apparently not ideologically black if he acts more-or-less colorblind in the sense envisioned by Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Sorry, Dr. King. We've entered a new era in which the content of your character is measured by the color of your skin combined with your adherence to group ideological orthodoxy. The era of identity politics, that is.

I'm supposing that I could espouse the same views as Barack Obama and be "ideologically white." I'm also supposing that those who say that Obama is not ideologically black do not view his failure in that department as a positive state of affairs.

Identity politics: Fatal to muliculturalism (which has problems enough as it is), bad for democracy.

Just say no.

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