White identity politics scores another win

Her had she won vice president, Kamala Harris would have broken two barriers at once, becoming the first woman and also the first Indian American to be elected president. And so naturally, when the Democrat was defeated, there were those in the Republican Party who couldn’t wait to deliver last rights to so called Identity Politics. A quick definition identity politics is what happens when you take a personal characteristic, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and construct a political strategy around that one characteristic. For instance, if a woman candidate makes everything about gender, or if a gay candidate builds a political campaign around his orientation, basically, anything that makes a straight white male feel displaced, uncomfortable, nervous or irrelevant, that’s identity politics, and it’s real bad. At least it is according to straight white men. Now, already those of you who studied US history in college, as I did, should be hearing familiar overtones. You may have read about how in the 1700s Benjamin Franklin used identity politics to try to rally the English to help keep out German immigrants who were flooding into Pennsylvania, or how in the 1800s Chinese immigrants felt the bite of identity politics when racists passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to prevent their kind from entering the country, or how in the 1900s anti Catholic Nativists played on the fears of the English and the German to spread the fear that Italian immigrants were invading the country and taking jobs from other groups. See that’s the dark side of identity politics, but there’s a bright side too. In the 20th century, identity politics, as practiced by the Irish made possible the election of John F Kennedy to Congress, to the Senate and to the White House, when wielded by the Italians. Identity Politics fueled the rise of Fiorello La Guardia as mayor of New York City and Mario Cuomo as governor of New York. For the Jews, identity politics helped shape the careers of New York City Mayor Ed Koch and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Now that I think about it, the definition I offered earlier of identity politics is much too broad. You see, no one ever accuses white men of practicing identity politics, even though they do it all the time, and they do it better than anyone. Donald Trump is a great example. He’s the nation’s victim in chief. He’s constantly aggrieved because as a white man, life has apparently been unbearably difficult. Imagine how much more he could have accomplished in this world had he been born a Latina with a disability, man, some people just have all the luck. But let’s go back and examine what’s happening in the aftermath of Harris’s defeat. In a word, it’s opportunism. You see, there are those on the cultural right who oppose anything that gives a leg up to anyone who doesn’t look like them. They oppose affirmative action, dei multiculturalism, race based scholarships, critical race theory and yes identity politics, those folks were chomping at the bit to make the case that when Americans voted against a woman who was half black and half Indian American, well what they were really doing was delivering a vote of no confidence in identity politics. Hmm, that’s taking the long way home. All right, I’m not sure those dots connect anywhere other than in Mega world. Also, I gotta say, I would find the argument that Trump’s victory repudiated identity politics much more persuasive if the Trump campaign hadn’t printed up all those cool Latinos for Trump yard signs organized so many events targeting Latinos, put Trump before a town hall organized by Spanish language network Univision, and moved quickly to disavow an anti Puerto Rico joke by A racist comedian at a Trump rally, I’d also find the identity politics is dead argument much more persuasive if Trump and the entire Republican Party were not currently gloating over the fact that all that Latino pandering seems to have paid off handsomely. Trump got 46% of Latino vote in the 2024 election, the largest share of the Latino vote earned by any Republican presidential candidate in history. But who’s counting? Why that would be identity politics. See, the Republicans message is clear as mud. Identity Politics is dead for thee, but it’s alive and well and hey, quite useful for me, I.