Identity politics

Similarly, Marxist academics such as Kurzwelly, Pérez and Spiegel, writing for Dialectical Anthropology, argue that because the term "identity politics" is defined differently based on a given author's or activist's ideological position, it is analytically imprecise.

[18][1] It subsequently gained currency with the emergence of social activism,[clarification needed] manifesting in various dialogues within the feminist, American civil-rights, and LGBT movements, as well as within multiple nationalist and postcolonial organizations.

[18] The first known written appearance of the term is found in the April 1977 statement of the Black feminist socialist group, Combahee River Collective, which was originally printed in 1979's Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism,[21] later in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith, a founding member of the Collective,[22] who have been credited with coining the term.

[23][24] In their terminal statement, they said:[25] [A]s children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated different—for example, when we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being 'ladylike' and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people.

In the process of consciousness-raising, actually life-sharing, we began to recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from the sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression....We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.

We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression.Identity politics, as a mode of categorizing, are closely connected to the ascription that some social groups are oppressed (such as women, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities); that is, the idea that individuals belonging to those groups are, by virtue of their identity, more vulnerable to forms of oppression such as cultural imperialism, violence, exploitation of labour, marginalization, or subjugation.

[33] Similar patterns which have appeared in the 21st century are commonly referenced in popular culture,[34] and are increasingly analyzed in media and social commentary as an interconnected part of politics and society.

In the regionalism of the Arab world and the Middle East, it has a particular meaning in relation to the national and cultural identities of the citizens of non-Arab countries, such as Turkey and Iran.

Junn and Masuoka find that in comparison to blacks, the Asian American identity is more latent, and racial group consciousness is more susceptible to the surrounding context.

In 2013, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi created the hashtag in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Ron Brownstein believed that President Trump uses "White Identity Politics" to bolster his base and that this would ultimately limit his ability to reach out to non-White American voters for the 2020 United States presidential election.

In India, caste, religion, tribe, ethnicity play a role in electoral politics, government jobs and affirmative actions, development projects.

[60] A 2009, Ministry of Social Development journal identified Māori identity politics, and societal reactions to it, as the most prominent factor behind significant changes in self-identification from the 2006 New Zealand census.

[62] In addition, because Muslim identity politics is seen as internally/externally divisive and therefore counterproductive, as well as the result of manipulation by religious conservatives and local/national politicians, the progressive policies of the anti-racist left have been outflanked.

[67] By the early-1960s, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the United States were forming more visible communities, and this was reflected in the political strategies of American homophile groups.

While the society did not take much political activism to the streets at first, Kameny and several members attended the 1963 March on Washington, where having seen the methods used by Black civil rights activists, they then applied them to the homophile movement.

"[76] Similarly in the United Kingdom, author Owen Jones argues that identity politics often marginalize the working class, saying: In the 1950s and 1960s, left-wing intellectuals who were both inspired and informed by a powerful labour movement wrote hundreds of books and articles on working-class issues.

In response to the formulations of the Combahee River Collective that necessitated the organization of women around intersectional identities to bring about broader social change, socialist and radical feminists insisted that, instead, activism would require support for addressing more "basic" forms of oppression.

Tarrow also asserts that identity politics can produce insular, sectarian, and divisive movements incapable of expanding membership, broadening appeals, and negotiating with prospective allies.

[89][7][90][91] Sociologist Charles Derber asserts that the American left is "largely an identity-politics party" and that it "offers no broad critique of the political economy of capitalism.

Both he and David North of the Socialist Equality Party posit that these fragmented and isolated identity movements which permeate the left have allowed for a far-right resurgence.

[92] Cornel West asserted that discourse on racial, gender and sexual orientation identity was "crucial" and "indispensable", but emphasized that it "must be connected to a moral integrity and deep political solidarity that hones in on a financialized form of predatory capitalism.

"[93] Historian Gary Gerstle writes that identity politics and multiculturalism thrived in the neoliberal era precisely because these movements did not threaten capital accumulation, and over the same period "pressure on capitalist elites and their supporters to compromise with the working class was vanishing."

The view that identity politics (rooted in challenging racism, sexism, and the like) obscures class inequality is widespread in the United States and other Western nations.

Crenshaw applauds identity politics for bringing African Americans (and other non-white people), gays and lesbians, and other oppressed groups together in community and progress.

Nira Yuval-Davis supports Crenshaw's critiques in Intersectionality and Feminist Politics and explains that "Identities are individual and collective narratives that answer the question 'who am/are I/we?"

Crenshaw argues that Hill was then deemed anti-Black in the movement against racism, and although she came forward on the feminist issue of sexual harassment, she was excluded because when considering feminism, it is the narrative of white middle-class women that prevails.

[111] However, many LGBT people believe this concept of "queer heterosexuality" is an oxymoron and offensive form of cultural appropriation which not only robs gays and lesbians of their identities, but makes invisible and irrelevant the actual, lived experience of oppression that causes them to be marginalized in the first place.

[117] A study by Nancy Scherer and Brett Curry was concerned with the question if racial diversity on the federal bench impact citizens' views of the U.S. courts.

In a series of experiments by Amanda Clayton, Diana Z. O'Brien, and Jennifer M. Piscopo, these researchers controlled both the makeup of the decision-making body and the outcome reached.