Conservatives are crying "identity politics" over Sotomayor's nomination, as they would have if Obama had nominated anyone except a white male. The lack of self-awareness in these charges is pretty extreme, but also not surprising. Here are just some examples of conservative identity politics:
- "America is a Christian nation." Arguing that American government should be largely based on a particular religious identity is identity politics.
- "Democrats are socialists." Calling an opposing political party "socialists," when even the left-wing of that party is proposing directing only 3% more of the economy to public social spending, is pure identity politics rather than a charge with any intellectual merit.
- "Marriage is between a man and a woman." Given that marriage has taken on numerous forms throughout history, and still takes on numerous forms throughout the world today, this is not an actual historical argument but instead one based on identity preferences.
- Mocking people because of what they eat, including arugula, is pure identity politics.
- Calling America "the greatest nation on earth" is also pure identity politics. If such claims were simply quantitative, ie that America has the largest economy, or the largest military, that would be one thing. However, abstract claims about qualitative "greatness" are entirely subjective and identity based.
- "Traditional values." Oh yeah, that's identity politics, rather than a historical re-enactment.
And these are just some examples. Much of conservative politics, like all politics, is heavily based in cultural conceptions about identity. This is largely unavoidable, given that how one conceptualizes the world necessarily requires a conceptualization of how oneself fits within that world. To put it a different way, everyone has an ideology, and you can't have an ideology without an identity.
Identity politics are kind of like linguistic accents: everyone has one, but not everyone realizes it. What is frequently distinct about conservative identity politics is its own inability to view itself as identity politics. From such a viewpoint, women, minorities, homosexuals, and non-Christians have identities, but men, whites, straights, and Christians do not. Note how you have never seen a conservative claim a president is engaging in identity politics when he has nominated a white dude for an important government position.
Even beyond this, the least self-aware aspect of the conservative "identity politics" charge is how consistently making that claim has helped push Republicans into minority status. Conservatives have demonized every growing demographic group in the country: non-whites, non-Christians, and the LGBT community. Collectively, these groups vote over 3-1 Democratic, and will compose well over 100% of the population growth in this country over the next few decades (it is over 100% because straight white Christians are actually shrinking in overall number). That a political party could get crushed in two consecutive elections, find itself in a bigger congressional deficit than Democrats have faced in 80 years, and still think that attacking growing demographic groups is a good idea politically is utterly perplexing.
It leads one too think that American conservatism doesn't actually care about winning either elections or policies, and that attacking people with different cultural identities is the entire point of contemporary American conservatism. |
