Tag: identity politics

As a result, white racial identity and grievances have become a more potent political force in the United States. During the campaign, he retweeted the claim of an American white nationalist that African Americans killed 81 percent of white homicide victims (the actual number was just 15 percent). For example, in our forthcoming book with Lynn Vavreck, “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America,” we show that whites who believed that whites were experiencing discrimination were more likely to support Trump in both the primary and general elections. White identity politics across the Atlantic White identity can be potent in European politics as well. As we show in “Identity Crisis,” perceptions of discrimination against whites were strongly related to support for the U.K.’s referendum to leave the European Union (a.k.a. Trump himself has become a symbol of white identity politics even in Europe. Whites who perceived a lot of discrimination against whites were much less likely to be unhappy about Trump’s election. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, who urged the crowd to “take back control of their country, take back control of their borders and get back their pride and self-respect.” Although we have focused on Britain, it would not be surprising to find similar results in other European countries where far-right leaders have embraced Trump. Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party attended a Trump rally in 2016. Trump himself has embraced not only Farage but also Marine Le Pen in France.

Assuming the GOP gets 60% of the white-male vote, 60% of the married white-female vote and 40% of the rest of the subgroup votes, Republicans would be tough to beat. Divisive Identity politics works. It can be rationalized as an overdue reset of an American experiment that was morally tainted. Unfortunately, too many people in and out of politics have too much riding on the Balkanization of America as a path to social justice and ideological homogenization. It will take a lot more than a Kanye West selfie and a Sen. Hatch appeal to our common American identity to turn the tide of identity politics. Jay Gilbert Raleigh, N.C. Photo: istock/getty images Sen. Orrin Hatch says “identity politics is cancer on our political culture.” Spoken like a straight, white male. He extols “the American idea that all of us—regardless of color, class or creed—are equal” without grasping that identity politics is making that dream come true. More than 40 years after Roe v. Wade, women’s ability to control whether and when we have children is under attack. LGBTQ Americans are still fighting to enjoy basic rights. For those women who fought to receive a Columbia education, their gender was not, as Sen. Hatch calls it, “an arbitrary difference,” because the university did not see it as arbitrary at all.

At the heart of Mr. West’s message is the idea that all of us—no matter our race, religion or background—have the right to be more than one thing. I grew up in poverty during the Great Depression, the son of blue-collar parents who passionately defended Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. I can be the son of working-class parents and also a pro-business Republican. I can be an ally to the transgender community and also a committed Christian. Identity politics is tribalism by another name. Under this cynical program, the identity of the group subsumes the identity of the individual, allowing little room for independence, self-realization or free thought. Identity politics turns the American idea on its head. Rather than looking beyond arbitrary differences in color, class and creed, identity politics separates us along these lines. In doing so, identity politics conditions us to define ourselves and each other by the groups to which we belong. Identity politics is cancer on our political culture.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal agency that funds university research, is consumed by diversity ideology. The NSF jump-started the implicit-bias industry in the 1990s by underwriting the development of the implicit association test (IAT). One problem: there are often no black or Hispanic M.D.s to evaluate for inclusion in the training grant. If a particular immigrant group in a research trial’s catchment area contains a disproportionate share of young people compared with the aging white population, that immigrant group will be less susceptible to those adult diseases. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires that medical schools maintain detailed diversity metrics on their efforts to interview and hire URM faculty. But identity politics is now altering the standards for scientific competence and the way future scientists are trained. Adding to medical schools’ diversity woes is the fact that the number of male URM student applicants has been declining in recent years, making it even harder to find qualified candidates. Assessing student knowledge of those facts can produce disparate results. Scientific self-esteem is now an academic goal. Needless to say, no female or underrepresented minority faces a threat at Google.

The Washington Post scoop in yesterday's paper said Haspel "sought to withdraw her nomination Friday after some White House officials worried that her role in the interrogation of terrorist suspects could prevent her confirmation by the Senate, according to four senior U.S. Sanders took note in tweeting the following: "There is no one more qualified to be the first woman to lead the CIA than 30+ year CIA veteran Gina Haspel. Well, she is to some extent—just like politicians of both parties have regularly played gender and racial cards for decades when it's in their interest. When Bill Clinton named Janet Reno as first female attorney general and Madeleine Albright as the first female secretary of State, that status was touted, implicitly or otherwise, as an extra reason for supporting her. It's not that they weren't qualified, but the politics of opposing them became a little more complicated. Too tough on terror is a loaded formulation, since the obstacle to her confirmation is her involvement in the CIA's interrogation program, which included such techniques as waterboarding, which critics view as torture. It was, of course, the Bush administration that launched the controversial program after 9/11, when terror topped the nation's agenda. Haspel made the comment about Ronny Jackson—who was forced to withdraw as the VA nominee and then lost his job as White House physician—because she doesn't want to be a distraction, according to the Post. She is, by the way, supported by a number of national security officials from the Obama administration. Senators should ask tough questions of every high-level nominee.

Pelosi's troubling words, dividing rather than uniting, follow the same playbook that lost Democrats the White House and kept them from gaining the congressional majority in 2016. Clinton went so far as to mail physical "Woman Cards" to voters. Sadly, some conservatives also play the identity card, and this is a problem for Republicans as the country continues to diversify. Part of our country's current political and cultural fracturing stems from a generational divide that hews to tribal identities rather than universal recognition of our shared humanity. Neither party represents the United States as it is today." Black GOP presidential support fell to 6% that year, after 39% voted in 1956 for Republican Dwight Eisenhower (a civil rights champion) and 32% for Richard Nixon in 1960. And improvement in the black and Latino labor force under the Trump administration, along with support from iconic black figures like Ben Carson and Kanye West, are likely contributing to President Trump's improving poll numbers among black men. Whether this cultural and political awakening continues among conservatives -- the realization of how much we need to connect with people from every walk of life -- will determine our movement's trajectory and viability in generations to come. And rather than demonizing white men, it's worth asking Pelosi how her comment about "five white guys at the table" squares with Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that people would "not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Democrats who engage in identity politics would do well to look themselves in the mirror, also, to see if they are abiding by Maya Angelou's wise words: "I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.

For me Williams, as everyone would expect, isn’t a job and I always said it’s like another child to me. “Mum loved butterflies, and there were loads in the garden at home,” Claire reveals. The girl thing just doesn’t come into it.” Recently, however, when the subject of gender equality was raised, she leapt on to her soapbox with a gusto of which Ginny would have been proud. “Gender equality is obviously an issue that Williams have been looking at and addressing for a number of years now. She was formidable and brave and what she went through in her life at Williams was amazing.” Few people enjoy two such strong role models as parents, but Claire is reticent when it comes to suggesting what she inherited from each. I have a lot of Dad, but also lot of Mum. “Obviously, it’s not been the start that we’d hoped for, and maybe we’d come into it with a bit of blind positivity, almost, believing we could turn things around in a greater way than we actually had,” Claire admits. “We also made a lot of changes and brought new people into the team last year and maybe our expectations of what they could deliver in the timescale was exaggerated. “I feel a real responsibility and sense of duty to give something back to this team. “And I believe that we have got the best people in place to deliver it, and we’ll just need time in order to do that.

PHOTO PROVIDED LOCK HAVEN — There is a political civil war raging over control of the U.S. presidency, said David Horowitz, conservative writer and founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, to an audience of about 100 students, faculty and community members in Lock Haven University’s Parson Union Building on Monday. “We have respect for the electoral process and we understand that if the other person wins, we have the next few years to organize.” However, Horowitz said, the type of scrutiny surrounding President Donald Trump–a duly elected president, according to Horowitz–was last seen when Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860. “America has a tradition, we’re about compromise because our views are so different. Particularly, Horowitz said, cultural Marxism is found in the education system, and he lamented over Lock Haven University for its lack of conservative professors. “The attacks on America begin with saying that it’s built on slavery and racism, that we are a white supremacist culture, which is ludicrous in this day and age,” Horowitz said. This has never happened in a majority black country or a majority Asian country.” Historically, Horowitz said, “Slavery existed for 3,000 years, and no one said it was immoral until [William] Wilberforce, a white Christian male in England, and Thomas Jefferson wrote it into the Declaration of Independence.” Horowitz called it “truly remarkable” that 87 years after the signing of the Constitution, the U.S. voted to the end the slave trade, which he said it inherited through England. White people, Europeans and the English didn’t go over to Africa and throw nets over black people. “It’s an ideological term, invented by leftists. “Students listen to divisive statements every day on campus,” she said. “I think it speaks well of LHU to permit viewpoint diversity on campus.” The goal behind inviting Horowitz, said Noah Ellison, president of YAL, is to build LHU’s speaker credibility and to demonstrate the school is a place where controversial issues can be discussed.

We all have identities. But there was no comment to Prime Minister Narenda Modi about human rights in India. Canada should have a childcare plan that gives women choices about work and redistributes wealth to young working families. But politicians like Trudeau who toy with identities play a dangerous game. For Liberals, identity politics is a distraction from economic policies that are very hard on many people. So it should be no surprise if Canadians — especially poor and working class people who are most affected — now reject Trudeau and, with him, the empty identity politics he uses as cover. The hollowness of liberal identity politics has Trudeau recognizing the wrongs of colonialism, sexism and racism — then letting the people who have all the power and money keep all the power and money. But liberal identity politics also empowers the most enduring form of identity politics — conservative identity politics. If we are all essentially different and stranded on our little islands of identity, then the point of the alt-right is proven: we are all just tribes in a constant state of war. Visit any schoolyard to see this use of power.

Look around our world. This is the world sketched by American lawyer and academic Amy Chua in her new book, Political Tribes. The US, she says, is "in a perilous new situation: with nearly no one standing up for an America without identity politics: for an American identity that transcends and unites the identities of all the country's subgroups". Professor Chua says the country is divided over race and class: black lives matter versus white lives matter or all lives matter. Professor Chua calls this the WWE tribe, named for their fondness for World Wrestling Entertainment; these are the people who love motorsports — the "NASCAR Nation". Ms Clinton and Mr Trump played identity politics, but Mr Trump did it more effectively. He directly challenges ideas of political correctness and identity. Dr Peterson argues we live between order and chaos. Professor Hollinger doesn't accept the permanence of race or colour; he argues that defenders of multiculturalism need to move to post-ethnic perspective that "favours voluntary over involuntary affiliations". As Amy Chua reminds us, cosmopolitans "don't see is how tribal their cosmopolitanism is".