Really.
Modern identity is rigid because modern states institutionalize it through censuses, identity cards, legal classifications, and racialized administrative categories. This form of bureaucratically enforced identity did not exist in antiquity, where identities were socially inherited but still situational and permeable.
Nobody’s denying that modern states institutionalize identity in ways Rome or Han China couldn’t. Censuses, ID cards, racial codes, colonial “native” categories that whole package is clearly modern. Where you and I part ways isn’t on the existence of that machinery, it’s on the claim you keep hitching to it, that this “form of bureaucratically enforced identity” is the first time identity gets treated as fixed and inescapable in principle, and that the underlying logic “did not exist in antiquity.” Modern bureaucracy hardens and formalizes things; it doesn’t invent from scratch the idea that who you are by birth can mark you for permanent stigma or destruction.
Here’s the problem with how you and NoHolyCows keep engaging me. You’re slicing my argument into isolated fragments instead of dealing with it as a whole. When I say fixed identities weren’t treated the same in antiquity, you both twist that into “he’s saying fixed identities didn’t exist at all.” You both remind me of bible thumpers who chop up passages so that context is irrelevant and the bible says whatever they want it to say.
You keep accusing us of twisting your words, but the exact phrases I’m quoting are yours, not invented “fragments.” You wrote that you’re “treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity,” that the Sudanese categories “operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity,” and that ethnic cleansing is “a modern and European thing.” That’s not me turning “weren’t treated the same” into “didn’t exist at all”; that’s you repeatedly saying “did not exist” and then getting upset when someone reads you literally. If you now only want to claim “fixed identities worked differently in antiquity,” we can talk about that. But you can’t blame other people for taking “did not exist” and “modern and European thing” as more than a casual aside when you leaned on those lines over and over.
My point is simple: in systems like caste, or in ancient empires, fixed identities still had built-in pathways for incorporation, absorption, or assimilation. People had a place within the structure, even if it was hierarchical or oppressive. In modern ethnic cleansing, especially under a colonial identity framework, there is no place for the targeted group. Their identity is treated as inescapable, and assimilation isn’t built-in. That’s the context for Sudan, the people being targeted are marked as having no place in the system, which is precisely what makes the violence ethnic cleansing rather than ancient-style conquest or stratification.
I’ve never denied that assimilation was built into a lot of ancient systems. Rome, Persia, China – yes, there were structured ways to be absorbed. What I’m rejecting is your clean either/or, “if assimilation exists, identity is flexible; if identity is fixed, there can be no assimilation at all.” Real systems never obey that binary. You can have identities that are inherited, stigmatized and extremely hard to escape and a set of narrow, unequal routes where some people get pulled across the line. That’s how caste, slave lineages and “tainted blood” regimes worked, and it’s also how modern genocidal systems work.
And the claim that modern ethnic cleansing leaves “no place” for the targeted group simply doesn’t match your own examples. The Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan all of them mix killing, expulsion and coerced absorption. Some people are murdered “as such,” some are driven out, some survive by passing, hiding, being taken into other families, or living in mixed households. Modern ideology says “they have no place,” but the practice always includes a grim sorting into “kill, expel, absorb.” That’s why I keep saying your assimilation vs elimination contrast is too pure to describe either ancient or modern reality.
My point is simple: in systems like caste, or in ancient empires, fixed identities still had
built-in pathways for incorporation, absorption, or assimilation. People had a place within the structure, even if it was hierarchical or oppressive. In modern ethnic cleansing, especially under a colonial identity framework, there is
no place for the targeted group. Their identity is treated as inescapable, and assimilation isn’t
built-in. That’s the context for Sudan, the people being targeted are marked as having
no place in the system, which is precisely what makes the violence ethnic cleansing rather than ancient-style conquest or stratification.
As for as modern identity not being rigid... OMG. I can't believe Emily of all people is making that claim.
The same Emily parading around this forum with tiki torch in hand over simple pronouns?
I guess none of the below is rigidly enforced.
Modern identity is Encoded in:
- the nation-state
- census categories
- bureaucratic registration
- ID cards and passports
- racial classification systems
- colonial administrative categories
- legal definitions of ethnicity
- fixed categories used by states and international institutions
Alright then, I’ll go ahead and put ‘white man’ on my next set of legal documents and we’ll see how far I get before a government office reminds me that identity is, in fact, rigid as hell.
You’re arguing past what’s actually being said. Nobody is denying that modern states encode identity in law and paperwork. Yes, if you walk into a government office and tick “white man” where they have you classified otherwise, you’ll run into a wall. That tells you how rigid official categories are on forms; it doesn’t prove that those categories are metaphysically inescapable in the way you keep talking about.
Historically, the boundaries of “white,” “Black,” “Arab,” “native,” “civilized,” “tribe X” and so on have shifted, been redrawn, and re-filled with different people. Groups that were once outside have been pulled inside, and vice versa. That doesn’t make modern states gentle; it shows that even supposedly “fixed” categories are products of politics and history, not eternal essences. When Emily points out that modern identity isn’t as rigid in practice as the forms pretend, she’s not denying that forms exist. She’s denying your leap from “the state has boxes” to “this is a completely new kind of identity logic that didn’t exist in any meaningful way before colonial bureaucracy arrived.”
Look, I’ve never claimed to be some master debater. I’ve said from the start that the way I framed my argument wasn’t perfect, and I’ve admitted there are flaws in how I presented it. What I won’t accept is this idea that I’m shifting my position just to save face. I don’t need to run from being wrong, and I don’t play cowardly games like that. All I’m asking is simple: if you want to disagree with my argument, then argue against what my argument actually is, not the version you’ve invented.
This isn’t about your character, it’s about your claims. You did frame it as “fixed identity did not exist before colonial modernity,” “this logic did not exist in antiquity,” and “ethnic cleansing is a modern and European thing.” Under pressure you’ve clarified to a narrower point, that modern states create racialized, bureaucratically enforced categories and use them in ethnic cleansing, including in Sudan. On that more modest claim, I don’t have much quarrel with you.
Where I still disagree, and where you’ve never actually answered, is the extra step treating that colonial package as the moment the logic of targeting a group “as such” under an inherited, heavily stigmatized identity first appears, and treating everything earlier as “just conquest or stratification.” That’s not me inventing a new version of your argument; it’s me following the one you wrote all the way to the end and saying: this last bit is too strong for the history to carry.
NHC
Sure, sure. People being enslaved on the basis of their ancestry and traded as belongings of a higher caste of people is totally more egalitarian than current developed society.
