Problematic Stuff

[Hermit]

If you're not going to read the post, then we're not going to have a good discussion.

Just go back to this post before we proceed to the next step. Address the issue of what identity politics is, then answer my questions rather than evading them. Then we might get a good discussion yet.

[Forty Two]

He's using the wiki definition to oppose the analysis I made using my definition, which I was asked for. I'm not making the argument he wants to make based on the definition he wants to impose.

Stephen Pinker stated it one way - "Identity politics is the syndrome in which people’s beliefs and interests are assumed to be determined by their membership in groups, particularly their sex, race, sexual orientation, and disability status. Its signature is the tic of preceding a statement with “As a,” as if that bore on the cogency of what was to follow." He stated that identity politics is an enemy of reason.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2018/ ... 34610.html

And, of course, asshats like PZ Myers and his ilk (leftist identity politics ideologues) view Pinker as sympathizing with the "alt right."

Don't step out of line, or you're the alt right.

[Forty Two]

If you're not going to read the post, then we're not going to have a good discussion.

Just go back to this post before we proceed to the next step. Address the issue of what identity politics is, then answer my questions rather than evading them. Then we might get a good discussion yet.

I've addressed it by posting my definition of identity politics. That's where you need to go back to. Quoting a vague, imprecise passage from wikipedia doesn't require me to answer you in any certain way. You responded to me by saying "before I read any further..." and then you "evaded" my points. How about you address what I actually said, before I'm required to go off on your tangent?

[pErvinalia]

It might be a case that the definition is evolving right at the present. Probably neither definition is wrong at the moment.

[Forty Two]

Well, there I don't strongly disagree with you, pErvin.

If we remove the argument over the definition of identity politics, I think we could discuss whether there is a difference between the civil rights movement today and, say, Black Lives Matter or perhaps the difference between, say, Martin Luther King's ideology and Linda Sarsour's ideology.

One of the points made in the articles I quoted and cited earlier was that some folks today who are identity politics ideologues would say that color-blind policies are racist - but color-blind policies are precisely what the civil rights movement was working for.

Maybe that's part of it.

[Scot Dutchy]

You really talk a lot of crap.

[Seabass]

Identity politics can be good or bad—it depends on what a particular group's goals are. Frankly, it is absurd to suggest that the civil rights movement and women's suffrage movement had nothing to do with group identity.

[Sean Hayden]

It certainly comes across as a rather shallow revision in order to combat today's 'problems'.

[Hermit]

If you're not going to read the post, then we're not going to have a good discussion.

Just go back to this post before we proceed to the next step. Address the issue of what identity politics is, then answer my questions rather than evading them. Then we might get a good discussion yet.

I've addressed it by posting my definition of identity politics. That's where you need to go back to. Quoting a vague, imprecise passage from wikipedia doesn't require me to answer you in any certain way. You responded to me by saying "before I read any further..." and then you "evaded" my points. How about you address what I actually said, before I'm required to go off on your tangent?

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary you have adopted the meaning of the term in its modern form. In no way does this redefinition place the suffragettes, the American Black civil rights movement and other subgroups of societies at large outside the classical meaning of it. If you want a more precise definition of "identity politics" than the Wikipedia's offering, check the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's treatment of it:

Rather than organizing solely around belief systems, programmatic manifestos, or party affiliation, identity political formations typically aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context. Members of that constituency assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination.

It includes feminism, the American Black civil rights movement and other earlier social identities in the body of the article dealing with the term. As long as you insist on the alt-right definition of "identity politics", there is no point in reading past the point of your post at which I had stopped earlier because ewe are not discussing the same thing.

[Seabass]

It might be a case that the definition is evolving right at the present.

Not really. What Coito's peddling is the standard right-wing tactic of trying to flip the script and push the narrative that it's actually the left that's bigoted, intolerant, and divisive. It's like those homophobic Christian bakers that claim that they're the ones being persecuted when they are forced to bake gay wedding cakes. Or the "war on Christmas" dumbasses who think they're being persecuted when people say "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas".

And sure, some zany SJW types take things too far, as they are wont to do, but the simple fact is that as long as bigotry, oppression, and persecution persist, so, too, will identity politics. What other choice do marginalized groups have?

[Animavore]

Nailed it. That's why I can't talk to deliberate obtuse people like that. They're just out to take you around the garden path.

[cronus]

Nailed it. That's why I can't talk to deliberate obtuse people like that. They're just out to take you around the garden path.

He who gives up poetry for clarity deserves neither.

[Sean Hayden]

the roses are dead
and the violets are too
according to cronus
we all will be soon

[JimC]

Sean's a poet, and he don't know it!

[pErvinalia]

It might be a case that the definition is evolving right at the present.

Not really. What Coito's peddling is the standard right-wing tactic of trying to flip the script and push the narrative that it's actually the left that's bigoted, intolerant, and divisive. It's like those homophobic Christian bakers that claim that they're the ones being persecuted when they are forced to bake gay wedding cakes. Or the "war on Christmas" dumbasses who think they're being persecuted when people say "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas".

And sure, some zany SJW types take things too far, as they are wont to do, but the simple fact is that as long as bigotry, oppression, and persecution persist, so, too, will identity politics. What other choice do marginalized groups have?

Good points.