Senate Rise Up To The "Identity Politics" Thread

Can you provide any examples of groups that do this? I'm unclear on what an "exclusive political alliance" might be.

The term "identity politics" seems to trigger differing, even mutually-exclusive, assumptions from people across the political spectrum. Without knowing which assumptions you're starting from, I really can't answer your question.

 

But that's not always the case. In fact, I'd argue that identity politics just increasing inequality by turning it into a defining feature for groups that have faced inequality. It limits their growth as a person because instead of being just a [insert_job/education/hobby/interest], it instead turns a trait they had no hand it into what defines them. In my opinion it's just 'separate but equal' with prettier language and on the liberal side of things.

 

Just talking from personal experiences.

One example. Last summer for training in work, they had us split up a few different times into "white" and "people of color" groups with white people only allowed by the facilitator to talk about how privileged we are using discussion questions, and once we came back together we weren't allowed to share what our groups talked about (though sometime a few from the POC group would say after-work they could only answer discussion questions focusing on how white people made them feel inferior or how white people rigged the system against them), and only new discussion items they'd bring up when we came back together. I think they were called affinity circles. And they just really left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, with people in both groups protesting that it wasn't helping and would be better to talk it out together, at least my group, and just served to create racial tension when there wasn't any before. We did this twice a week, for 2 hours each session, for 5 weeks.

 

where was this ?

.

 

Teach For America. It's understandable and with good intention. They've been trying really hard to escape the stigma they earned in the 90's/early00's of just being a bunch of white Ivy League graduates going in to be the "saviors" of poor (usually brown/black) students. But I think they're overcorrecting. I was told affinity circles/groups are a big thing in colleges today and where they got the idea from (I never heard of them in college, but I did graduate from undergrad in '11, which I guess is a while ago now). The theory is that it allows a safe space for people of color to talk about their experiences and unafraid to be honest because of the judgment of white people in the room, and a safe space for white people to open up about race and unafraid to be honest because of the judgment of POC people in the room. But most people in both groups, by the time we got to round 3 or 4, just really disliked it and thought it created more tension and awkwardness.

 

A tad extreme...

 

Yeah that definitely doesn't sound helpful. I participated in a racial justice and equality group that we subbed for chapel at my college once a week, and it was definitely way different. It was a mixture of a few white people and then mostly POC. They let us know, politely, that one of the things they wanted was to be able to talk and have us just listen instead of giving our suggestions. And we white folks agreed that was fine because we were there specifically because we wanted to hear how we could help POC and be better advocates. To me something like that helped, but holy crap the exercise you did sounds counterproductive.

 

Not sure if that refers to me?

I'm a European living in Europe. In the Netherlands in fact where guns are de facto illegal, and I'm very happy they are (or rather I would be if illegal guns weren't apparently so easy to get; there are lots of illegal guns allegedly coming from Yugoslavia where they had some armed conflicts in recent years.) The last US president that I liked, was Jimmy Carter (but I was a kid in those days). Trump often makes me laugh though, and I seldom take offense in what he says. I think he's right that we Europeans have been taking it for granted that U.S. taxpayers pay for our defense (NATO) and that we should cough up more.

I am indeed against any kind of affirmative action. I recognize that some demographic groups are worse off than others, but I don't think that society as a whole has an obligation to 'adjust' that. I'm what Americans would call a leftist though, where it comes to issues like unemployment / dole welfare, healthcare, progressive taxes (the more you earn, the more you pay) etc. The progressive taxes would/could already 'adjust' enough of the perceived privilige of certain groups over others.

Not sure I am interested to discuss all this on a StarWars forum though (as the mod understood correctly, I thought it was about identity politics in the movies — a hot topic on youtube atm.)

 

This isn't Youtube.

 

I have LGBT friends, but screw that purple haired nope over there and don't get me started on tumblerinas who think there are 60,000 genders! Also I'm a right-leaner who thinks Jordan Peterson is legit philosopher and Ben Shapiro knows where it's at.

 

That's okay, you can still learn. There are no lost cases.

 

I think it's pretty well known that I'm not a fan of identity politics or the people who engage in it.

I got one! TERFs in the UK. There's a very powerful feminist quarter in England that is heavily anti-trans and are trying to get any trans acceptance kicked out of Labour party platforms.

 

TERFs attempted to hijack London Pride today and stop the march, by laying down in the road. Somehow, the group forced themselves to the front of the march and led pride.

Really pissed me off.

 

I saw that and was really pissed about it tbh. BLM tried to hijack Pride in Toronto a couple years ago. I'm sick of these outside groups trying to use pride for their own purposes.

 

Screw TERFs

 

My point was not whether or not Youtube is an ideal platform to handle such —or any social/political— topics. There are however several YT channels that deal with the, perceived or real, presence of identity politics in the latest Star Wars movies, and the commotion is not limited to Youtube but present on other social media as well. As this forum community seems to be based around a common interest in things StarWars, it occurs to me that the OP was at least inspired by this commotion; hence my initial misinterpretation of its context.

 

I wasn't and gave zero reference to it.

 

Hylldar, it's not weird to expect as much.
Let me make you familiar with this place. We like to make fun of exclusionary posts like yours.

 

Yeah. We did the "listen, not talk" things in rounds... only in our own racial groups. I think we might have done it once or twice when we all came back together (we did a total of 10-12 sessions over that month), but we weren't allowed to talk about what we had just talked about in our race-based affinity groups, and the new discussion questions we had to answer in rounds when we were back together and mixed were always completely different in tone and topic, focused on teaching instead. It was a very weird experience. I definitely think it's better the way you describe... if anything I feel like it created racial tension when there wouldn't have been any and closed-off possible conversations as a whole group.

Just so you know, this particular subforum is known for being very, well, snarky and sarcastic. Don't take anything personally (unless you get an official mod warning obviously, but follow the forum guidelines and you'll be alright), If I were you I'd just lurk in a few JCC/Senate threads that seem interesting to you to get a feel for the atmosphere here before posting too much more, it's quite a different atmosphere from the other subforums here.

 

Aha. TERFs are indeed terrible. Wikipedia also gives a similar example in US Christian Identity groups, which exist to celebrate WASPs and denigrate minorities.

Still, I am no closer to understanding what @DANNASUK had in mind when he created this thread. TERFs and Christian Identity members are out to try and deny full social and political participation to less-privileged groups. Ghost's experience was disturbing, but its intent was pretty clearly to increase the participation of minorities. Solojones' experience was different yet, and she found it constructive toward the goal of minority inclusion.

Which of the above, if any, did you mean by "identity politics," Dan? The term is just not very precise.

 

Thanks for the kind advice! What I sofar did after I subscribed to this forum, is look at the 'new posts' and see if there is something not involving word games. I barely take into account on what subforum threads are. I suppose I'll learn by running into ridicule and annoyance every now and then