https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/01-02/the-inherent-racism-of-identity-politics/
That only white people can be guilty of racism is preposterous. Most people are aware of non-white people vilifying other ethnic groups in racial terms. Why is this not racism? Why should the perpetrators not be held as accountable? Doesn’t it imply an inability to take responsibility — a racist presumption if ever there was one?
Identity politics racist? How can that be, you might ask. After all, is not the pursuit of “racial justice” part of the very essence of identity politics? Surely all those warriors for social justice who so prodigiously level charges of racism against others could not themselves be guilty of this offence? They wouldn’t embrace a racist ideology, would they?
Sad to say, yes they would, at least if we adopt what until recently was the standard, commonsense understanding of the terms race and racism. On these understandings, a person’s race referred to certain heritable, unalterable and visible features, like skin colour, that might indicate ancestry tracing back to a particular geographical region. A racist was someone who was inclined to think ill of, or to discriminate against, a person or group solely because of such characteristics.
Towards the end of the last century it became generally accepted in societies like ours that racism so defined was both morally odious and profoundly irrational. The classic expression of this was Martin Luther King’s great civil rights speech of 1963 in which he looked forward to a day when his children would be judged by “the content of their character”, not the colour of their skin.
The basic sentiment here, shared by most people across the ideological spectrum, and certainly those who considered themselves left-wing and progressive, was that race was something we should aspire to transcend. People must not be judged according to visible surface features that reflect trivial genetic variations. We should see each other as, first and foremost, members of a common humanity, free agents possessing certain inalienable rights.
So what has changed? A great deal, as it happens, with the wide embrace of the ideology of identity politics in Western societies, and its wholesale incorporation into the worldview of those who consider themselves left-wing or progressive. On this view, we are essentially defined not by our humanity but by our race, gender or other identity category, or some intersecting set of identities.
The notion of a post-racial future is now considered an ideological heresy by the academic high-priestesses and priests of the identitarian ideology. These ideologues are nowadays absolutely obsessed about race. They strive constantly to heighten racial awareness and to perpetuate rather than resolve racial grievances. The Enlightenment vision of a common humanity is now distinctly passé, as even the late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm lamented in a speech in 1996.
