Identity and Politics

I am bothered. Deeply bothered by the insistence of privileged people that "identity politics" is neither helpful nor biblical - did I mention that a good portion of the privileged people causing me bother are Christians?

The basic shape of their argument goes something like this: there is only one race, the human race, and so identity based on perceived race is divisive politics. The intention seems to be a disqualifying of racialized identity from political conversations around such mundane things as justice, equality, voter rights.

And here's the issue I have with the decrying of identity politics by people of privilege, especially in the name of being biblical: it is a rejection of people groups as a whole and a barring of the gate to places of influence and power. This rejection is an abuse of power that travels down two pathways.

First, it is a rejection of the identifier of various people groups that was imposed on those same groups by prior (and present) abuses of power. Black identity was born in the transatlantic slave trade and the colonization of Africa. Indigenous identity was born in the various occupations and oppressions of various colonizing projects around the world. That is not to say that people of colour had no corporate identity prior to the slave trade and colonization. What I mean is their various corporate identities were reduced to a singular characterization by the slave trade and colonial efforts in Africa and across the Atlantic. The same is true for the wide range of Indigenous peoples throughout the world who have experienced occupation and oppression due to colonization. Prior to the appearance of the colonizers on their shores, there existed a multiplicity of indigenous peoples, that were reduced by the colonizing power to a single entity, and thus a single identity that those with power forced on those without.

It is objectionable to have those in power chastise those without for seeking to embrace the identity forced upon them by power, simply because that identity has become a tool with which they can now engage with power on their own terms.

Second, this rejection of a way of viewing identity seeks to diminish and devalue the community that has formed itself and the individuals within it. Having grown up as part of the community that entirely fails to take notice of or honour the distinctions among groups I would have been taught were "other", I can guess at the ongoing violence that has been inflicted and, it seems to me, heightened by first forcing an identity on to groups of people and then rejecting the embrace of that identity by those same groups of people. Is it not a denial of heritage, a diminishing of ancestry, a dismissing of tradition?

It is a changing of the rules to further advantage those with privilege by excluding people from the conversation. Privilege refuses to relinquish its tight hold on power by ensuring those who have access are those who already have access. When others come under the terms laid out by privilege to seek access to power, the rules are changed and the gates are closed. It is a look to the horizon that recognizes the failing and falling of the privileged empire, and a choice to inflict violence through colonial means in an attempt to stave off the final collapse of this particular iteration of privileged power.

And I am bothered by what I see and by what I here. To be honest, I am also bothered by what I say and what I do. So I am going to speak - calling to account those who would abuse their power for the sake of maintaining their privilege - confessing my own failings in recognizing my power and privilege and the ways in which I profit by them. And I am going to act - seeking ways and means to put myself between the power and the powerless - seeking solidarity with the people groups whom a rejection of identity politics seeks to continue to and further marginalize. I will change, at least I will try to change. These protest bones creak from lack of use, and these protest muscles are weak from comfort, and this protest voice is quiet from fear. But I will try to change. I will try to have eyes to see and ears to hear. And I will seek to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. Should I fail, I know I can seek God's forgiveness. Should I not try, how can I look people in the eye, people who are being further marginalized by a rejection of their communal identity, much less ask for their forgiveness? How can any of us?