Tag: Intellectual

WASHINGTON — Progressives have some intellectual and moral work to do. What are cast as political challenges to liberals and the left are also philosophical problems. It's a question joined most pointedly in arguments over "identity politics." All politics is about identity in some way, since all of us think of ourselves as, well, something. To use an example I am especially familiar with: I'm a reasonably well-off white male liberal who grew up in a middle-class family in a working-class city in Massachusetts where Catholicism and trade unions were important parts of life. This limited tour of my political psyche is the sort of exercise all of us can engage in. This alone makes the war on identity a non-starter among progressives and Democrats. On the left, the word "intersectionality" has gained popularity as it deals with the cross-cutting effects of race, gender and class, and there is no doubt that progressive politics will, of necessity, be intersectional. But beyond buzz words, progressives must find a politics that links worker rights with civil rights, racial and gender justice with social justice more broadly. In his book "Modernity and Its Discontents," Yale political scientist Steven B. Smith offered this in an essay on the philosopher Isaiah Berlin: "Identities are not just things we have, they define who we are.

Thinking of the South as having two distinct cultures, one white, one black, as opposed to one culture that was a mixture of the two, is already highly questionable. For these writers, culture and politics were never far apart. And so it is not surprising that many of these arguments were later invoked by people like Powell. Walker’s argument becomes trickier when it involves those black writers who also expressed trepidation about the future of the South’s black culture and wanted to find a way to preserve it. In particular, many of these black intellectuals and activists worried about what would happen if, as Baldwin put it, black culture was integrated into the “burning house” of the United States. Warren and other white Southerners who wanted to see Southern white culture preserved had found few allies within the civil-rights movement; with figures like Baldwin and Carmichael, Warren wanted to show black Americans were making a similar argument. Baldwin and Carmichael, on the other hand, felt they had little in common with someone like Warren. Instead, Powell thought that the only reason diversity could be taken into account was when it was designed to promote “academic freedom.” As Walker notes, this kind of argument, like the Southern moderates’ position examined in his first book, purportedly seeks to protect the “diversity” of cultural institutions but is, in fact, “hostile to aggressive government efforts aimed at achieving equality.” Like Warren, Powell made a case for multicultural pluralism that ultimately weakened the idea of social, as well as cultural, integration. While offering glowing portraits of black culture in the South, Murray also argued in his 1970 The Omni-Americans that it was through these different cultures that a national American culture would emerge. “Ethnic differences,” Murray wrote, “are the very essence of cultural diversity and national creativity.” One could have a cultural pluralism while also not giving way to Warren’s vision of a dual Southern culture, or Powell’s use of “diversity” to defend de facto segregation and racial inequality.

The story itself, although ugly, isn’t that important. But it offers a window into a reality few people, certainly in the news media, are willing to acknowledge: the bad faith that pervades conservative discourse. And yes, I do mean “conservative.” There are dishonest individuals of every political persuasion, but if you’re looking for systematic gaslighting, insistence that up is down and black is white, you’ll find it disproportionately on one side of the political spectrum. And the same kind of bad faith can be seen in other arenas — very much including college campuses. Which brings me back to the Stanford story. Not surprisingly, the invitation provoked student protests. It’s true that self-proclaimed conservatives are pretty scarce among U.S. historians. (There aren’t a lot of liberals in police departments — or, contra Trump, the F.B.I.) Alternatively, scientists may be reluctant to call themselves conservatives because in modern America being a conservative means aligning yourself with a faction that by and large rejects climate science and the theory of evolution. The people making these demands claim to want fairness.

With voting trends focusing less on policy, the catalyst that is springing candidates into political positions is increasingly influenced by the personal qualities they possess, such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion or sexuality. Some people are beginning to allow these factors to play a more significant role in who they cast their ballots for, which can be seen in recent voting trends. Voters’ tendency to gravitate toward candidates belonging to certain groups or social backgrounds in terms of political alliances is known as identity politics. The socially accepted crusade of identity politics augments a movement away from broad-based party politics to valuing a more culturally or socially popular candidate. Ideally, a larger base of the population could be represented by those in political office. People may be discounted for their opinions on certain topics such as Black Lives Matter if they are not black. Judging people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexuality is a form of prejudice. Professor Bret Weinstein of Evergreen State College was candid about his distaste for a college activity called a “Day of Absence” that asked white students to leave campus for the day. The movement was an effort to eliminate identity politics and see people as individuals rather than a group. People should be judged on the content of their character, not on uncontrollable factors such as their gender or ethnicity.