The people who complain about identity politics never examine why it became such a thing in the first place.Some white liberals believe that if you just drop identity politics you can enact measures that would still help minorities without making white people mad, that is the crux of the situation. The point of view ignores the racial resentment and history of the country, they romanticize class solidarity and assume that poor whites vote the way they do largely out of ignorance and nothing else. If a politician suggests a solution for problems that are specific to a community, white voters react as if it somehow excludes them. The zero-sum mentality has never left. If you want to see leftist politics without identity politics look at Bill Clinton's era, that would be how it looks from a practical standpoint. White liberals believe it would be some utopian politics where solving inequality and poverty means solving it for everyone else. I even heard them proclaim that if Democrats solve poverty issues it would also help poor black people, they never really got into how some institutions including local government, business and in some places organized labor helped to contribute to that mess. I was listening to Sam Seder's show when he had Thomas Frank, the guy who wrote "What's the matter with Kansas" when he mentioned how labor unions in the past had a history of racism and excluding African Americans and immediately Frank went with "lets be careful and not paint everyone with a huge brush. These are blue collar workers who used unions to dole out jobs to each other, no class solidarity there. Identity politics and PC became huge talking points even though the right uses them just as much as the left, how many of those free speech type get offended or triggered when someone says something about poor whites, they did so with Obama's guns and religion comment.
Bill Clinton was a Republican.
I am tired of people lumping in Obama and Bill Clinton and shyt as leftists.
Bill Clinton installed harsh crime laws and cut welfare...that's not a leftist.
You can install leftist policies without it being about identity.
For example, we can have mandatory maternity leave...all you gotta do is call it parental leave and say expecting parents should be able to enjoy the birth of a child without worrying about losing their job.
Most people would be like..."Damn that makes fukking sense...plus other countries have that shyt too..."
Now make some feminist argument and say women don't need to work at home and at their job and not having maternity leave gives men an unfair advantage in the workplace...see how fast resistance to mandatory maternity assembles.
If you wanna install single payer healthcare, all you gotta say is..."It is ridiculous that we have many USA citizens that cannot afford healthcare coverage in the richest nation in the world. Many of our citizens go bankrupt if they have health insurance."
Now lets make this argument about poor Black and Latinos and how they don't have insurance and next thing you know, single payer health insurance is another "handout".
The reason why identity politics exist is because the Democrats wouldn't be able to win shyt without it.
But these motherfukkers get in off the backs of Black people mostly..and a few White people and a couple of Latinos....and then they'll go do Republican shyt and then blame Republicans for not being able to install leftist policies when anybody with a brain knows the Democrats aren't a leftist party...they just have a few token leftists in it.
Identity politics is a terrible way to do politics. USA citizens that are minorities need to not be so damn insecure and think because if it ain't spelled out specifically just for you...it ain't for you. And the majority doesn't need to feel like if something ain't for you, it's an assault on the status quo that you are used to.
Instead of using rationality...we use our lizard brain and turn it into an Us vs. Them and then have the people at the top reap the benefit.
