Identity Politics

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• 6/4/2023
  

  Can the Left Take Back Identity Politics?

  by Umut Özkırımlı

  Recovering the liberatory potential of identity politics means going back to the term's source—the Combahee River Collective—and recognizing its radical roots and embrace of coalition-building and politics.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  4/21/2023
  

  What Has Black Lives Matter Achieved? A New Critique from the Left

  by Jay Caspian Kang

  Political scientist Cedric Johnson argues in a new book that protest movements have fixated on racial identity at the expense of making a broad critique of how policing defends an unequal and exploitative society and building a bigger coalition for change. Writer Jay Caspian Kang puts this argument in the context of debates about identity politics from the center to the left.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/23/2023
  

  The Crisis of the Intellectuals

  by Ibram X. Kendi

  A dire health crisis forced the author to ask what his intellectual work was ultimately for. Intellectuals more broadly need a similar push from the dire state of democracy, and should be assured that when they face pushback about being "illiberal" or "presentist" or violating the traditions of their discipline, they're on the right track. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/21/2022
  

  The Defeat of Identity Politics

  by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò argues that the rhetoric of diversity has allowed an "elite capture" of racial justice movements that strips those movements of the impulse to transform society. Historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor reviews his new book of essays.

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  1/26/2021
  

  ‘Despised’ Review: The Left and the Working Class

  by Jonathan Rose

  Historian Jonathan Rose reviews a book by British firefighter and "left conservative" Paul Embery which identifies the collapse of both working class communities and open debate in Britain as factors in the demise of Labour as a political force. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  11/6/2020
  

  Trump’s Presidency May Be Over. The Effects of Trumpism on Campus are Not

  The Trump presidency has raised issues about the extent of racial resentment in White America, the significance of identity politics, and the place of intellectual discovery and academic research in American life that are a long way from resolution. 

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  9/10/2020
  

  The Wages of Whiteness (Review Essay)

  Hari Kunzru's review essay examines the current vogue for white antiracism (and antiracist training) through the history of whiteness as a political and academic concept, concluding that many  of the most popular books and multicultural pieties strip the idea of its structural elements and reduce it to a question of personal purification. 

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• SOURCE: Stanford Daily
  5/5/2020
  

  ‘Anti-Blackness and Classroom Racism’: Senators Condemn Professor’s Repeated Use of Racial Slur

  The art history professor used the racial slur while writing the full name of the group N.W.A. and when discussing one of its albums.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  4/24/19
  

  Identicide: How demographic shifts can rip a country apart

  by Monica Duffy Toft

  Internal strife, perhaps civil war or collapse often precedes a decisive demographic shift.

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• SOURCE: Politico
  9-17-17
  

  Mark Lilla Is Getting Identity Politics All Wrong

  by Joshua Zeitz

  Appealing to voters' tribal instincts is a time-honored American tradition. Because it works.

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• SOURCE: Salon
  9-2-17
  

  Mark Lilla’s book against identity politics continues to draw the fire of liberals

  by Jim Sleeper

  One line of attack: He’s playing into the hands of a well-funded conservative campaign to highlight examples of political correctness that distract us from real injustices.

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• SOURCE: The Way of Improvement Leads Home
  12-10-16
  

  Another Kind of “Identity Politics”

  by John Fea

  Is Mark Lilla right that liberals need to get beyond identity politics?  And just what do we mean by identity politics anyway?

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• SOURCE: NYT
  12-1-16
  

  People are still talking about historian Mark Lilla’s NYT op ed 2 weeks after it was published

  Lilla, a historian at Columbia, argued that the Democratic Party has lost its way by focusing on identity politics.