Over the San Antonio Express-News, Sig Christensen asks why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put an end to Black History Month and other celebrations of identity in the military, but gave a pass to St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a fair question. […]
identity politics
Why the Democrats need to turn away from identity politics and toward a class-based politics
Over at Jacobin, Melissa Naschek interviews New York University sociologist Vivek Chibber about identity politics and the Democratic Party. Here is a taste: Melissa Naschek: The Democratic Party has become almost synonymous with identity politics. How did the Democrats get […]
Liberals “abandoned the truism that arguments are true or false, irrespective of the race or the origins of the person who makes them.”
Michael Ignatieff is the former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Here is a taste of his New York Times piece, “I was born liberal. Defeat taught me our hidden reslience.” Ignatieff writes: “To rebuilt liberalism, we’ll need to […]
Brooks: “I’m also seeing many people who are…so imprisoned by their mental models, they can interpret these results only in identity politics terms”
Today at The New York Times David Brooks offers a stinging critique of identity politics in the wake of the 2024 election. Here are a couple of snippets: Why were so many of our expectations wrong? Well, we all walk […]
The “identity politics” crowd loses Maureen Dowd
Here is a taste of Dowd’s New York Times column today: Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke. Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and […]
David Brooks: “As the left veered toward identitarian performance art, Donald Trump jumped into the class war with both feet.”Â
Check out David Brooks’s New York Times piece, “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?” A taste: The Democratic Party has one job: to combat inequality. Here was a great chasm of inequality right before their noses and somehow […]
The “woke” Left and the Trump Right are possessed
Over the last couple of days I have been teaching the Salem Witch Trials in my colonial America class. So I naturally gravitated to University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson piece at Liberties titled “The Politics of Possession in America.” […]
What has happened to National Public Radio?
By this point some of you have seen Uri Berliner’s piece at The Free Press: “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” The subtitle: “Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says […]
The Author’s Corner with Elizabeth Kalbfleisch
Elizabeth Kalbfleisch is Associate Professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University. This interview is based on her new book, Making the Radical University: Identity and Politics on the American College Campus, 1966–1991 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024). JF: What led […]
Social media “created ‘an alternate universe’ in which identity-based suffering—or merely the claim to such…could be converted into social capital.”
I just finished reading Thomas Chatterton Williams’s fascinating piece at The Atlantic on Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael R. Jackson. Here is a taste: In the summer of 2020, the playwright Michael R. Jackson received an unusual message from a fan of A […]
On the “poverty of anti-wokeness”
Over at Compact, writer Geoff Shullenberger reviews five books on “wokeness.” They are: Frederik deBoer, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement Richard Hanania, The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics Yascha […]
Are the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission really that different?
I just read Zine Magubane’s review of Kenan Malik’s Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy at Catalyst. Malik argues that both the 1619 Project and Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission” fail to recognize the importance […]
Israel-based progressive intellectuals and peace activists call for a “return to a politics based on humanistic and universal principles”
Several dozen Israeli-based academic progressives and peace activists have signed this letter. They are correct to suggest that the usual identity politics we often hear coming out of colleges and universities seem hollow in the wake of October 7, 2023. […]
“Don’t let right-wing culture warriors obscure the fact that some ideas behind this progressive ideology have genuine problems.”
Last week we called your attention to Yascha Mounk’s new book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. Today we want to call your attention to a Mounk piece at The Atlantic based on the […]
Yascha Mounk on identity politics
Mounk, a defender of liberal values and a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, is the author of Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. Jonathan Kay interviews him at Quilette. Here is a taste: Jonathan Kay: […]
Does a fixation with identity politics hurt the fight against racism?
Over at Jacobin, Taj Ali interviews writer Kenan Malik, the author of Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics. Here is a taste: TAJ ALI: You discuss the decline of cross-racial class […]
When Gucci and Judith Butler meet
What happens when Gucci uses a book by philosopher Judith Butler to sell high-priced wallets? Here is Umut Özkırımlı at The Critic: Books as objects of attraction? Is that what brought Butler and Gucci together? I don’t mean the commodification […]
Joyce Carol Oates on writing, memory, Twitter, and identity politics
At age 85, writer Joyce Carol Oates has “so many ideas.” Check out David Marchese’s interview with Oates at The New York Times. Here is a taste: How does support for the idea that diverse voices should be given primacy […]
A “Latino gay man” who is also a pathological liar invokes Rosa Parks
George Santos compares himself to Rosa Parks: This not only shows that Santos has no clue about American history or how to use the past in the present, but it is also the worst form of identity politics. Reminds me […]
Is the real threat to free expression cancel culture or the fear of cancel culture?
Eve Fairbanks, the author of The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning, is a Virginia-born author who currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She writes as a white woman who published a book about race. Here is […]