Fredrick Douglass & Identity Politics
This might upset some folks at the beginning, but it is important and headed to a good place.
Identity politics is quite the rage these days. I think it is well intentioned but doesn’t lead to the place its adherents long for.
Identity politics is the trend in viewing and identifying people primarily as members of a particular group instead of as individuals. According to this view identifying what racial, religious, gender, sexual, ethnic or social group someone belongs to is crucial in the distribution of rights, responsibilities, pride, shame, and guilt in the oppression Olympics game of our day where inequalities and injustices are attempted to be reconciled based on group identity and the perceived victim status of each group. The spectrum is based on the perceived oppressed-ness or perceived oppressor-ness of each identity group. It is primarily a social construct, but it does have its affects on politics.
For an example of how this works, most would probably consider a transgendered, black, migrant, Muslim female to have a pretty high victim status based on her affiliation with all the oppressed victim groups. As such she would be given special rights and considerations, be encouraged to speak out on any number of issues, encouraged to take pride in each of the groups she belongs to, and possibly not held responsible for her words or actions or at least given a pass or held to a lower standard.
On the other end of the spectrum or hierarchy would likely be a heterosexual, white, native born, Christian male. He would be perceived to have a pretty low victim status based on his affiliation with all the oppressor groups. He would be expected to give up certain rights and considerations to others, discouraged from speaking out on any number of issues because his low victim, high oppressor, group identity deprives him of these rights. He would be discouraged from taking pride in being heterosexual, white, Christian, or male. His identity group affiliations would certainly not grant him any special graces when it comes to being responsible for his words and actions.
Identity politics I believe is well-intentioned, it is an attempt to set the world to right and finds its roots in Jesus’ command to care for “the least of these.”
However, there are numerous undesirable problems and consequences with this approach to pursuing a more just world. It keeps us from seeing people and humanizing people as individuals and reduces them to a token, label, or representative of a group. It wrongfully ascribes certain levels of hardship and opportunity based on the group affiliation instead of an individual’s lived experience. It inherently discourages unity, promotes tribalism and fractures society along the very lines it longs to heal – race, gender, etc. It emphasizes differences instead of commonality. In an attempt to correct for injustices it undermines foundational principals of justice in Western civilization like freedom of speech and equality under the law. It shuts down thoughtful debate and a critical exchange of ideas through labeling, name calling, and pigeon-holing.
In short, identity politics isn’t the vehicle to get us to the place we want to go. It will never lead to the “Beloved Community” where people are judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation, or any other social group affiliation.
Luckily you don’t have to take my word for it, because this isn’t the first time this disastrous approach to a better world has been attempted – not even close.
Fredrick Douglass (1818-1895) was an escaped slave, author, orator, social reformer, and perhaps the most effective abolitionist and champion of equal rights our nation has ever known.
In the late 1800s a similar sort of identity politics was emerging as a potential vehicle to drive towards the advancement of justice and civil rights. In 1894 Douglass addressed this trend in a speech he gave in Manassas Virginia called, “Blessings of Liberty and Education.” I believe it was the last speech of his life. Here is a bit of what he said on the subject (excuse the 1800s male-centric language):
We hear, since emancipation, much said by our modern colored leaders in commendation of race pride, race love, race effort, race superiority, race men, and the like. One man is praised for being a race man and another is condemned for not being a race man. In all this talk of race, the motive may be good, but the method is bad. It is an effort to cast out Satan by Beelzebub. The evils which are now crushing the negro to earth have their root and sap, their force and mainspring, in this narrow spirit of race and color, and the negro has no more right to excuse and foster it than have men of any other race. I recognize and adopt no narrow basis for my thoughts, feelings, or modes of action. I would place myself, and I would place you, my young friends, upon grounds vastly higher and broader than any founded upon race or color. Neither law, learning, nor religion, is addressed to any man’s color or race. Science, education, the Word of God, and all the virtues known among men, are recommended to us, not as races, but as men. We are not recommended to love or hate any particular variety of the human family more than any other. Not as Ethiopians; not as Caucasians; not as Mongolians; not as Afro-Americans, or Anglo-Americans, are we addressed, but as men. God and nature speak to our manhood, and to our manhood alone. Here all ideas of duty and moral obligation are predicated. We are accountable only as men. In the language of Scripture, we are called upon to “quit ourselves like men.” To those who are everlastingly prating about race men, I have to say: Gentlemen, you reflect upon your best friends. It was not the race or the color of the negro that won for him the battle of liberty. That great battle was won, not because the victim of slavery was a negro, mulatto, or an Afro-American, but because the victim of slavery was a man and a brother to all other men, a child of God, and could claim with all mankind a common Father, and therefore should be recognized as an accountable being, a subject of government, and entitled to justice, liberty and equality before the law, and everywhere else. Man saw that he had a right to liberty, to education, and to an equal chance with all other men in the common race of life and in the pursuit of happiness. (Read the whole thing HERE).
To repeat a theme in my writing, what Douglass is telling us is that people aren’t color coded and we advance the cause of justice not through identity politics, not through attempting to lift one group up or hold another group down, but by holding up every individual as a child of God, someone uniquely made in the image of God, and extending to them every bit of the rights and responsibilities associated with that high calling and sacred identity.
If we are to have a way forward in our society it will be in the way of Douglass and the Way of Jesus, or not at all. All other avenues are merely paver stones of good intentions leading to a place none of us want to go.
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