https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272992/proud-queen-identity-politics-john-perazzo
During the MSNBC program AM Joy this past Sunday, host Joy Reid asked Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris if, during her campaign, it would “be difficult … to advocate race-based policy” without becoming vulnerable to the charge that she was engaging in identity politics. In her response, Harris said:
“I want to talk about the issue of identity politics, Joy. This term identity politics, people will use that term — it’s like people used to talk about the race card. They bring this term up when you talk about issues that are about race, about sexual orientation, about religion. They’ll bring it up when we are talking about civil rights issues as a way to marginalize the issue, as a way to frankly try to silence you or shut you up. We need to call it what it is, which is to try and divert away from a conversation that needs to happen in America. Why? One, because we must speak truth. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism are all real in this country, so we need to have that conversation and address it. Two, and this is equally important, how America deals with the issues and the disparities, and also the hate that can be — that causes these issues to become lethal in proportion — how America deals with these issues is a matter of American identity. This is not about identity politics, and if it is, it’s about the identity of the United States of America. How we handle the issues will be about our collective identity.”
If we distill Harris’s meandering reply down to its essence, she is saying that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with identity politics, because identity politics is ultimately a vehicle for helping more Americans understand that the very “identity of the United States of America” has always been — and continues to be — thoroughly infested with the ineradicable sins of “racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, [and] anti-Semitism.”