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The intent is to put the supposedly uneducated individual off balance. Personally I find the tactic to be manipulative and outside the realm of good intentione

The intent is to put the supposedly uneducated individual off balance. Personally I find the tactic to be manipulative and outside the realm of good intentioned debate. By turning the issue away from racism and towards ™the system" it unites smaller groups together under one cause while disarming the fragmented majority. This gets intermingled with the idea that if you are not the correct skin color or gender you don't get to speak your opinion on certain topics. There is also what I would call a puritanical desire to immediately "other-ize" people who deviate in the slightest from accepted line of thought: they are publicly shamed and expunged from the group. It is baffling to watch. As someone else pointed out on this page, whomever came up with identity politics is a Machiavellian genius.

eesmith 6y ago
If your argument is true, then that means it's easily countered (by anyone with any education on the topic) by saying something like "you and a small minority of others have decided to re-define racism in a manipulate way that favors your viewpoint. I reject that a-historical revisionism." Since that doesn't happen, it means one of two things: 1) most individuals are actually uneducated about the debate, or 2) it's not actually a re-definition. My (admittedly light) reading of the scholarly literature says that "racism" generally requires some sort of power imbalance, suggesting that it's #2, which further suggests your interpretation isn't correct. I don't know what you mean by "not the correct skin color or gender you don't get to speak your opinion on certain topics". Could you explain further, perhaps with examples? Identity polities is indeed Machiavellian genius. It's as old as the Bible. I think the current form in the US has its roots in European colonialism, where a small number of foreigners managed to convince a larger minority of a foreign country to act as their muscle. (Eg, the origins of the Rwandan genocide because of German racial theory which place the Tutsi over the Hutu, or the techniques the English used to rule India.) The early US history starts with the colonialist views (English but also Spanish) of superiority over the indigenous peoples. The current white/black identity polities started in the early 1800s when white supremacist ideas grew as a response to the abolitionist movement. After the Civil War, it developed further as a way to keep poor whites in line with the power structure of rich whites, rather than their black and free economic brothers and sisters. "Better poor than black." I therefore don't think it can be pinned to any one person, but like I said, my knowledge isn't that deep.

eesmith 6y ago

If your argument is true, then that means it's easily countered (by anyone with any education on the topic) by saying something like "you and a small minority of others have decided to re-define racism in a manipulate way that favors your viewpoint. I reject that a-historical revisionism." Since that doesn't happen, it means one of two things: 1) most individuals are actually uneducated about the debate, or 2) it's not actually a re-definition. My (admittedly light) reading of the scholarly literature says that "racism" generally requires some sort of power imbalance, suggesting that it's #2, which further suggests your interpretation isn't correct. I don't know what you mean by "not the correct skin color or gender you don't get to speak your opinion on certain topics". Could you explain further, perhaps with examples? Identity polities is indeed Machiavellian genius. It's as old as the Bible. I think the current form in the US has its roots in European colonialism, where a small number of foreigners managed to convince a larger minority of a foreign country to act as their muscle. (Eg, the origins of the Rwandan genocide because of German racial theory which place the Tutsi over the Hutu, or the techniques the English used to rule India.) The early US history starts with the colonialist views (English but also Spanish) of superiority over the indigenous peoples. The current white/black identity polities started in the early 1800s when white supremacist ideas grew as a response to the abolitionist movement. After the Civil War, it developed further as a way to keep poor whites in line with the power structure of rich whites, rather than their black and free economic brothers and sisters. "Better poor than black." I therefore don't think it can be pinned to any one person, but like I said, my knowledge isn't that deep.