Identity Politics vs Othering

[ronburgundy]

Identity Politics is politics based on assigned and assumed collective group identities rather than based on individuals. It is a form of prejudice.

So if you tell people you are a Democrat who supports the Green Party Platform, you are expressing prejudice?

No, that would be an attempt to identify your politics through group identity rather than politics based on assigned or assumed group identity. Identity politics would be more along the lines of Republicans voting for Trump and backing all he says no matter what it is or opposing everything Obama because he is the other (be it black or be it Democrat). It would also be identity politics to demand that everybody who voted for Trump must be a racist. It would also be identity politics to say "there is a special place in hell for women who don't vote for Hilly Clinton" or to consider black people who vote Republican to be traitors to the race, or white people who date black people to be race traitors, etc. It would also be identity politics exclude black people or women from opportunities afforded white people or men regardless of merit, and also be identity politics to provide scholarships to black people or women regardless of individual circumstance or academic merit.

I think that the needed distinction is between when one merely recognizes objective features of people that are define different categories (all the examples given by others to refute your point) versus viewing or treating people and situations based upon these broad categories rather than individual traits that are actually relevant to the judgment or decision being made.

Most of your examples are of the latter, except for the two I bolded. Voting for Trump is an individual chosen action that most certainly does reflect one's moral character and ideology. It is in fact an objectively sound predictor of racism. Odds are very high that most of the 25% of adult Americans who voted for Trump are more racist than whites that did not vote for Trump.
To infer that every single one of them is a racist may require an unreasonable leap rooted in "identity politics", however one can get pretty close without doing so. Trumps rhetoric was so grossly racist and his base support so obviously coming from xenophobic white supremacists that no one but a racist could think he is anything but vile scum and not strongly fear the increased racism his presidency would and is encouraging. That leaves the only plausible non-racists who would vote for him being people who hate him and fear his racist impact but hold their nose and vote for him either out of their own identity politics or because they sincerely think his presidency would help them in ways that outweigh the racism he will engender. Note that the latter motive still means one has a morally questionable selfish disregard for the harm of racism, and the former is just a form of group think not much better than racism.

As to the second example of black "traitors" that kind of depends what is entailed by "traitor". If a Trump presidency is bad for the vast majority of blacks (and it objectively is), then it is just and objective fact that a black person voting for Trump is harming most people of their own race, which is likely to mean harming many of the people they know and are presumed to care about. Is it worse to harm one's own race than another race? No, that assumption would be "identity politics". However, it is arguably worse to harm the black community regardless of whether they are your own race, given the amount of harm the US government has already inflicted upon them. So, at minimum, this example is less clear cut as an instance of identity politics.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

No, that would be an attempt to identify your politics through group identity rather than politics based on assigned or assumed group identity. Identity politics would be more along the lines of Republicans voting for Trump and backing all he says no matter what it is or opposing everything Obama because he is the other (be it black or be it Democrat). It would also be identity politics to demand that everybody who voted for Trump must be a racist. It would also be identity politics to say "there is a special place in hell for women who don't vote for Hilly Clinton" or to consider black people who vote Republican to be traitors to the race, or white people who date black people to be race traitors, etc. It would also be identity politics exclude black people or women from opportunities afforded white people or men regardless of merit, and also be identity politics to provide scholarships to black people or women regardless of individual circumstance or academic merit.

I think that the needed distinction is between when one merely recognizes objective features of people that are define different categories (all the examples given by others to refute your point) versus viewing or treating people and situations based upon these broad categories rather than individual traits that are actually relevant to the judgment or decision being made.

What term to you apply to what? Are you saying that Othering is excluding people from your group (ie, categorizing people) and Identity Politics is basing policy on those distinctions? If so, would Identity Politics thus necessarily require and include Othering?

 

[Emily Lake]

I think that the two terms have some overlap, but also some important distinctions.

"Identity Politics" is very limited to how presumed identity drives political viewpoints. It's the association of (often) a singular defining characteristic being broad-brushed onto a canvas of policy. For example, making the assumption that black people are democrats, or that white men are republicans is identity politics at its most base. Even more so is the assumption that because a person is black, they should be a democrat, regardless of their personal beliefs, simply because they are black. But it plays into the crafting and adoption of policy as well as platforms intended to inform policy as well. In that sense, there is a lot of risk of otherwise well-intentioned efforts to shift social norms either mutating into identity politics, or simply being perceived of having done so.

"Othering" is very broad, and in general is an expression of the tendency for humans to engage in tribalism. It's defining groups as "them" that are held in contrast to "us". It is almost always exclusionary in nature - it calls out differences in a way that implies a negative connotation to the difference of "them" and a presumption of moral authority on the part of "us". As an example, a whole lot of partisan bickering is othering. There's a lot of rhetoric in political discussions that demeans and demonizes the other party, paints them as villains and bad people, and does so in an incredibly broad and all-encompassing fashion.

Identity politics can certainly result in othering of whatever identity is cast as antithetical to the identity on which the poltiics focused. It's very easy for identity politics focused on increasing equality for LGBTQ people (for example), to quickly morph into an antagonistic approach to cis-people. Similarly, othering can drive identity politics. But the two aren't necessarily interchangeable.

Neither one is, in my opinion, particularly effective if your goal is to enable equality and build an egalitarian society.

- - - Updated - - -

Most of your examples are of the latter, except for the two I bolded. Voting for Trump is an individual chosen action that most certainly does reflect one's moral character and ideology. It is in fact an objectively sound predictor of racism. Odds are very high that most of the 25% of adult Americans who voted for Trump are more racist than whites that did not vote for Trump.
To infer that every single one of them is a racist may require an unreasonable leap rooted in "identity politics", however one can get pretty close without doing so. Trumps rhetoric was so grossly racist and his base support so obviously coming from xenophobic white supremacists that no one but a racist could think he is anything but vile scum and not strongly fear the increased racism his presidency would and is encouraging. That leaves the only plausible non-racists who would vote for him being people who hate him and fear his racist impact but hold their nose and vote for him either out of their own identity politics or because they sincerely think his presidency would help them in ways that outweigh the racism he will engender. Note that the latter motive still means one has a morally questionable selfish disregard for the harm of racism, and the former is just a form of group think not much better than racism.

FYI - this is an excellent example of "othering"

 

[ronburgundy]

I think that the two terms have some overlap, but also some important distinctions.

"Identity Politics" is very limited to how presumed identity drives political viewpoints. It's the association of (often) a singular defining characteristic being broad-brushed onto a canvas of policy. For example, making the assumption that black people are democrats, or that white men are republicans is identity politics at its most base. Even more so is the assumption that because a person is black, they should be a democrat, regardless of their personal beliefs, simply because they are black. But it plays into the crafting and adoption of policy as well as platforms intended to inform policy as well. In that sense, there is a lot of risk of otherwise well-intentioned efforts to shift social norms either mutating into identity politics, or simply being perceived of having done so.

"Othering" is very broad, and in general is an expression of the tendency for humans to engage in tribalism. It's defining groups as "them" that are held in contrast to "us". It is almost always exclusionary in nature - it calls out differences in a way that implies a negative connotation to the difference of "them" and a presumption of moral authority on the part of "us". As an example, a whole lot of partisan bickering is othering. There's a lot of rhetoric in political discussions that demeans and demonizes the other party, paints them as villains and bad people, and does so in an incredibly broad and all-encompassing fashion.

Identity politics can certainly result in othering of whatever identity is cast as antithetical to the identity on which the poltiics focused. It's very easy for identity politics focused on increasing equality for LGBTQ people (for example), to quickly morph into an antagonistic approach to cis-people. Similarly, othering can drive identity politics. But the two aren't necessarily interchangeable.

Neither one is, in my opinion, particularly effective if your goal is to enable equality and build an egalitarian society.

- - - Updated - - -

Most of your examples are of the latter, except for the two I bolded. Voting for Trump is an individual chosen action that most certainly does reflect one's moral character and ideology. It is in fact an objectively sound predictor of racism. Odds are very high that most of the 25% of adult Americans who voted for Trump are more racist than whites that did not vote for Trump.
To infer that every single one of them is a racist may require an unreasonable leap rooted in "identity politics", however one can get pretty close without doing so. Trumps rhetoric was so grossly racist and his base support so obviously coming from xenophobic white supremacists that no one but a racist could think he is anything but vile scum and not strongly fear the increased racism his presidency would and is encouraging. That leaves the only plausible non-racists who would vote for him being people who hate him and fear his racist impact but hold their nose and vote for him either out of their own identity politics or because they sincerely think his presidency would help them in ways that outweigh the racism he will engender. Note that the latter motive still means one has a morally questionable selfish disregard for the harm of racism, and the former is just a form of group think not much better than racism.

FYI - this is an excellent example of "othering"

IOW, "othering" is just pointing out objective empirically supported facts about ways that people differ from each other and how willful actions reflect the underlying traits of people.

 

[ronburgundy]

No, that would be an attempt to identify your politics through group identity rather than politics based on assigned or assumed group identity. Identity politics would be more along the lines of Republicans voting for Trump and backing all he says no matter what it is or opposing everything Obama because he is the other (be it black or be it Democrat). It would also be identity politics to demand that everybody who voted for Trump must be a racist. It would also be identity politics to say "there is a special place in hell for women who don't vote for Hilly Clinton" or to consider black people who vote Republican to be traitors to the race, or white people who date black people to be race traitors, etc. It would also be identity politics exclude black people or women from opportunities afforded white people or men regardless of merit, and also be identity politics to provide scholarships to black people or women regardless of individual circumstance or academic merit.

I think that the needed distinction is between when one merely recognizes objective features of people that are define different categories (all the examples given by others to refute your point) versus viewing or treating people and situations based upon these broad categories rather than individual traits that are actually relevant to the judgment or decision being made.

What term to you apply to what? Are you saying that Othering is excluding people from your group (ie, categorizing people) and Identity Politics is basing policy on those distinctions? If so, would Identity Politics thus necessarily require and include Othering?

I was not actually making a distinction between "othering" and "identity politics". As Emily's post illustrates, "othering" is so broad that it includes saying anything about any variations in people, thus making it it is a meaningless concept.

Rather, I was making a distinction between actual "identity politics" that is irrational and destructive versus the strawman examples that some posters provided to try and discount "identity politics" as being anything negative or inherently prejudicial.

Categorizing and/or judging individuals based upon their already known beliefs or actions (e.g. voting for a known racist) is, by definition, the opposite of prejudice. It's post-judice. In contrast, judging persons based only on knowing their race is the definition of prejudice (e.g., The college applicant has low scores but they are black, so let's accept them anyway; The kid shot by the cops was black, so he probably did something to provoke them).

 

[Emily Lake]

I think that the two terms have some overlap, but also some important distinctions.

"Identity Politics" is very limited to how presumed identity drives political viewpoints. It's the association of (often) a singular defining characteristic being broad-brushed onto a canvas of policy. For example, making the assumption that black people are democrats, or that white men are republicans is identity politics at its most base. Even more so is the assumption that because a person is black, they should be a democrat, regardless of their personal beliefs, simply because they are black. But it plays into the crafting and adoption of policy as well as platforms intended to inform policy as well. In that sense, there is a lot of risk of otherwise well-intentioned efforts to shift social norms either mutating into identity politics, or simply being perceived of having done so.

"Othering" is very broad, and in general is an expression of the tendency for humans to engage in tribalism. It's defining groups as "them" that are held in contrast to "us". It is almost always exclusionary in nature - it calls out differences in a way that implies a negative connotation to the difference of "them" and a presumption of moral authority on the part of "us". As an example, a whole lot of partisan bickering is othering. There's a lot of rhetoric in political discussions that demeans and demonizes the other party, paints them as villains and bad people, and does so in an incredibly broad and all-encompassing fashion.

Identity politics can certainly result in othering of whatever identity is cast as antithetical to the identity on which the poltiics focused. It's very easy for identity politics focused on increasing equality for LGBTQ people (for example), to quickly morph into an antagonistic approach to cis-people. Similarly, othering can drive identity politics. But the two aren't necessarily interchangeable.

Neither one is, in my opinion, particularly effective if your goal is to enable equality and build an egalitarian society.

- - - Updated - - -

Most of your examples are of the latter, except for the two I bolded. Voting for Trump is an individual chosen action that most certainly does reflect one's moral character and ideology. It is in fact an objectively sound predictor of racism. Odds are very high that most of the 25% of adult Americans who voted for Trump are more racist than whites that did not vote for Trump.
To infer that every single one of them is a racist may require an unreasonable leap rooted in "identity politics", however one can get pretty close without doing so. Trumps rhetoric was so grossly racist and his base support so obviously coming from xenophobic white supremacists that no one but a racist could think he is anything but vile scum and not strongly fear the increased racism his presidency would and is encouraging. That leaves the only plausible non-racists who would vote for him being people who hate him and fear his racist impact but hold their nose and vote for him either out of their own identity politics or because they sincerely think his presidency would help them in ways that outweigh the racism he will engender. Note that the latter motive still means one has a morally questionable selfish disregard for the harm of racism, and the former is just a form of group think not much better than racism.

FYI - this is an excellent example of "othering"

IOW, "othering" is just pointing out objective empirically supported facts about ways that people differ from each other and how willful actions reflect the underlying traits of people.

If by "empirically supported facts" you mean "paints those people as villains" and if by "underlying traits" you mean "they're evil and we're good" then yes, that's exactly what "othering" is.

Alternatively, you could read the bolded selection up above and give it a wee bit of contemplation.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

From Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to battling desegregation tooth and nail, othering has been an American tradition for many long years. We had the revolt of the Dixiecrats, the rise of Wallace's American Party and then the Southern strategy. It has been about white supremacy, racism and othering for all our lives. Anybody, white or black, who has fought this over the years has been attacked for it, and we seem to be moving backwards here. Yes, identity politics white supremacist style. It has always been about identity politics in America since the days of slavery.

 

[Emily Lake]

Your timeline is too short. From the birth of civilization to present, othering has been a human tradition for as long as we've had societies. It's not new. It's an aspect of tribalism.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Aristotle - Politics

"It is meet that Hellenes should rule over barbarians; "
as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature one.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Your timeline is too short. From the birth of civilization to present, othering has been a human tradition for as long as we've had societies. It's not new. It's an aspect of tribalism.

My problem with the whole identity politics scam is that this is something the conservatives and ultra-conservatives condemn as some sort of political evil, while it is what has been standard operating procedure since the beginning of the United States. As if it is an invention of dastardly leftists and dindus. Racism is othering with a vengeance.

We may think about predecessors to all of that, but it isn't really the point and allows one to derail the critique of the rising racism we see today, in Trumpland.

 

[ronburgundy]

IOW, "othering" is just pointing out objective empirically supported facts about ways that people differ from each other and how willful actions reflect the underlying traits of people.

If by "empirically supported facts" you mean "paints those people as villains, and if by "underlying traits" you mean "they're evil and we're good" then yes, that's exactly what "othering" is.

No, I mean the objective fact that some people chose to vote for a person whose campaign was based upon promoting racism and xenophobia, and the evidence showing these people are far more likely than the rest of the US population to posses the traits of holding white supremacist and xenophobic beliefs. Viewing such people as immoral is merely applying basic morality that harming innocent people (which racism inherently does) is immoral. By your definition, anyone who says "Members of the KKK are racist scumbags" is "othering", in which case "othering" is great and everyone should be encouraged to do it. If my comments about the racism of Trump supporters is "othering", then so is every instance of pointing out that anyone's chosen actions reflect a negative characteristic, which includes pointing out that a person is engaging in "othering".

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Trump very much engages in identity politics. It is a huge part of his schtick, even moreso than other Republicans. And yes indeed, white racism is historically the biggest identity politics when it comes to race.

Identity politics isn't just that though. It isnt one political side or race. It is a way of looking at things and is the core of prejudice and bigotry. It can and does happen all across the political spectrum and in all "race groups". And it prompts itself across such groupings.

White identity politics and othering of non-white "colored people", and the pushing of such people to be seen as a group very much seeded the identity politics we see today of "people of colour", themselves now insisting on identifying first and foremost as non-white and othering white people (by both that very label and by speaking of white people as a monolithic group). That in turn encourages what remains of white identity politics so we get the likes of Trump and white supremacists becoming more mainstream.

Identity politics, like hatred, isn't exclusive to any political view or to any group of people, but is cyclical and encouraged by itself across such views and groupings.

The cure for hatred isn't more hatred, and the cure for identity politics isn't more identity politics. The cure for identity politics is either individualism or broadening group identity to include everyone (ie, earthlings)

 

[untermensche]

Identity politics means voting for somebody you agree with.

Racists identified with Trump.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Identity politics means voting for somebody you agree with.

No, that's just politics, not identity politics.

 

[repoman]

Identity politics means voting for somebody you agree with.

Racists identified with Trump.

and google is helping to break this racism down

 

[untermensche]

Identity politics means voting for somebody you agree with.

No, that's just politics, not identity politics.

No difference.

It is new double-speak from the right.

Another worthless phrase like: Political correctness or false equivalence.

These are phrases to halt thinking and create division on absurd grounds in people who should be united.

And when you stop thinking you can vote Republican.

 

[Arctish]

It is new double-speak from the right.

I'm starting to think the same thing.

It's like how being called a social justice warrior is now supposedly a bad thing. I think the purpose is to scare off people who might otherwise band together, fight for social justice causes, and oppose the policies Breitbart is peddling. I think the pearl clutching over 'identity politics' is just a ploy to keep political opponents weak and divided.

 

[untermensche]

It is new double-speak from the right.

I'm starting to think the same thing.

It's like how being called a social justice warrior is now supposedly a bad thing. I think the purpose is to scare off people who might otherwise band together, fight for social justice causes, and oppose the policies Breitbart is peddling. I think the pearl clutching over 'identity politics' is just a ploy to keep political opponents weak and divided.

I agree with this 100%.

That is what the right does.

It uses language to stop thought. To make people feel good about not thinking.

You do not have to think about what that person is saying.

Call them a social justice warrior and that troublesome task of thinking isn't necessary.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

It is new double-speak from the right.

Is is abused by the right, but it is still a meaningful concept.

Another worthless phrase like: Political correctness or false equivalence.

Also meaningful concepts.

These are phrases to halt thinking and create division on absurd grounds in people who should be united.

Ironic that you say that when political correctness itself is an attempt to halt thinking.

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I think the pearl clutching over 'identity politics' is just a ploy to keep political opponents weak and divided.

The core concept of identity politics is to keep people divided. That's what it is.

This isn't about left vs right. This is about recognizing people as individuals vs treating them as members of groups.

 

[untermensche]

Ironic that you say that when political correctness itself is an attempt to halt thinking.

No it isn't.

There is no such thing.

It is a phony concept to condemn any message the thrower of the phrase wants to pretend is unworthy without examination.

It is a blanket phrase to stop examination of certain societal abuses.

It does not throw light on anything.

It is a way to preserve the privilege of ruling elites.