THE DANGER OF IDENTITY POLITICS: SYDNEY WILLIAMS
“We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA) July 31, 1968
Identity politics has divided us into categories, convenient for politicians to address perceived concerns and, more dangerously, to exert control, turning us into a nation of oppressed and oppressors, so that Washington’s “progressives” can ride in as savior. Identity politics places the group above the individual, while those who think independently – outside the box – are slighted, demeaned, or cancelled. One consequence is rising distrust and hatred; a second is that the group, not the individual, defines who we are; and a third is a loss of faith in America, its history and in its accomplishments.
Issues of identity have a long history. Women’s rights date back before the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments in 1848. My paternal grandmother, a well-educated woman, was forty-five when the 19th Amendment was passed, allowing her to vote in 1920. It was in 1965, a hundred years after the civil War, that the Voting Rights Act directed the Attorney General to enforce the right of Blacks to vote. However, even as we made progress – slow as it has been – self-manufactured divisional bitterness increased.
It is important to step back, not to rest on laurels, but to gain perspective and celebrate what our nation has achieved over more than two centuries. Winston Churchill, in a back-handed compliment, is alleged to have observed: “The Americans will always do the right thing…after they have exhausted all the alternatives.” America continues to evolve, too fast for some and too slowly for others. We are best off when momentum is deliberate, when we individually, as Governor Reagan is quoted in the rubric, accept responsibility for our actions. Our country is unique in the annals of human history. It is based on the rule of law, and on the individual, his sovereignty and his uniqueness – “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” Those words have evolved over time to include more of our citizens. We have further to go, but we have come a long way. We do not want to return to a time where some groups are favored, and others excluded, as identity politics would have us do.
It is true that as social animals we seek out those with common interests, which explains why there are myriad groups devoted to such pursuits as fishing, bridge, antique cars, golf, and P.G. Wodehouse. It is why sororities and fraternities exist on college campuses, why there are different religious denominations, and why civic organizations, like Rotary, Elks, American Legion, and the Knights of Columbus, exist in communities across America. Fifty and sixty years ago, some of these organizations were restrictive, based on race, gender, and/or religion, but such restrictions lessened in the wake of the passage of civil rights legislation and as tolerance became more common. Man’s social progress has always been evolutionary. We live today in a nation more accepting and tolerant than that known to our grandparents. We have further to go, but we have been moving in the right direction.
Today’s focus on identity politics is a setback. It has been fueled by political correctness and a desire for power, and it emits accusations of racism and denials of merit. It has created division and hatred, and it threatens to undo the good that has been achieved over the past two and a half centuries. It is, perhaps, most dangerous in the nation’s schools, on the nation’s college campuses, and in the armed forces. The fact that so many of our children, especially in inner city schools, cannot read or do math at grade level is an indictment of teachers’ unions whose funds support Democrat politicians in return for the monopoly they enjoy. Vituperative attacks have led to the cancellation of conservative speakers on college campuses. Demands that students conform to a preferred ideology has suppressed intellectual inquiry. Subjecting the military to “woke” ideologies is not smart in a dangerous world. In October 1933, at Albert Hall in London, Albert Einstein – having just left Nazi Germany – spoke: “If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake…Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister…Most people would lead a dull life of slavery just as under the ancient despotisms of Asia. It is only men who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worthwhile.”
It is natural for people to find others with similar interests, as opposed to the artificial compartmentalizing of people by skin color or gender. Immigrants to this country often live with others of a similar heritage. But after two or three generations, through marriage and association they assimilate into broader society. In New York City, Germantown is only a memory. Little Italy and Chinatown are no longer exclusive to Italians and Chinese..
Identity politics returns us to a world we had been escaping. Politicians find it convenient to appeal to specific identities: Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, native Americans, male, female, gays, transgenders and cisgenders, young and old. As Americans, we are all of those things – often a mixture – but a single category does not alone define anyone of us. It is the desire to live freely, to speak, to write, to pray and to associate as one chooses that has made the United States the unique nation it is, and it is why we have been a magnet for the world’s poor and oppressed. Let us keep it that way.
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