Identity Politics And The Working Class

Maybe I'm just naïve or just missing it entirely, but I just don't get this enormous push for Democrats to choose between identity politics and the working class. Mark Lilla wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times over that weekend that got a lot of attention with its declaration that "the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end." Lilla's piece starts with a condemnation of Hillary for focusing on identity politics and assumption that this emphasis cost her the election. It proceeds with a few platitudes about the positive effects of affirmative action, the Black Lives Matter movement, and homosexual rights. But it then launches into a tirade about how "the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life." Lilla's prime examples for this fixation is apparently the fact that gender choice is now being made earlier in childhood, that everything kids learn today in high school and college is focused on identity so that they lack the understanding of citizenship and miss the importance of how our founding fathers' granted us the many rights we have, and an anecdotal observation based on what he read in the European media versus the American. He then brings up the old criticism that is heaped on every losing campaign, that it did not have an overarching message that captured "Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny". He then ends the piece by saying that the "whitelash" theory on the election "absolves liberals of not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored. Such people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country). But they are reacting against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they mean by 'political correctness'." 

Then yesterday, the media pushed this meme even further in implying that Bernie Sanders reiterated this thinking when he responded to a Latina's question by saying, "One of the struggles that you’re going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics." That sounds like Bernie is on board with Lilla's approach. Of course, what was left out was what he said before he got around to that part of his answer, namely, "It goes without saying that as we fight to end all forms of discrimination, as we fight to bring more and more women into the political process—Latinas, African-Americans, Native Americans—all of that is enormously important, and count me in as somebody who wants to see that happen. But it is not good enough for somebody to say, “Hey, I’m a Latina. Vote for me.” That is not good enough. I have to know whether that Latina is going to stand up with the working class of this country and is going to take on big-money interests." I'm not sure there is any progressive out there who doesn't agree with that.

To my mind, identity politics and concern with the working and middle class is two sides of the same coin. First of all, most of the groups that are subsumed in identity politics are members of the working class, in particular. One side of the coin is focused on the civil rights of all Americans and fighting the continued discrimination at all levels in this country. When women get equal pay for equal work, that helps the working class. When minorities can get equal access to loans and capital, that helps the working class. When the LGBTQ community is accepted into the mainstream of our society, that helps the working class. Perhaps not all of these changes will specifically help the white working class, but certainly most of them will. Lilla seems particularly blind to this reality. On the flip side of the coin is an economic message that is almost blind to identity politics. Obamacare, even with the flaws inflicted by the GOP, helps the working class. Providing free public education through college will help the working class. Raising taxes on the 1% to pay for improved infrastructure will help the working class. Providing high speed broadband across the country will help the working and middle class. Paid family and medical leave helps the working and middle class. Increasing the overtime cutoff to $46,000 helps the working class. I could go on and on. But you get the idea. These were all issues that Hillary ran on and they all would have had a positive impact for the working and middle class. You can argue that her economic message was not strong enough or didn't get through, but that has nothing to do with identity politics. In fact, Hillary's closing argument to the country by saying, "This is about more than winning an election; it's about the kind of country we want for our kids and grandkids." That certainly sounds like the uplifting theme that Lilla was looking for. And then came the Comey letter.

Lilla's piece, in particular, is so frustrating and annoying. I'm not sure what the Democratic party can do about the curriculum in high school and college. Does he propose that part of the party platform is to abandon Women's Studies or African American History departments in universities? I hope not. And Hillary's campaign slogan of "Stronger Together" seems like a repudiation of everything he says about her in the piece. As Lilla himself point out, "the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which still exists." For him, this example shows that liberals must give up identity politics. Somehow, I think this proves just the opposite. Ever since the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s, the Republican party has been trying to cleave the white working class away from the rest of the working class. They have been playing identity politics for decades. Despite what Lilla may believe, the Trump campaign's open support of white nationalism seems to have had a greatest effect in the areas that were least diverse. Lilla may be correct in interpreting that fact as meaning  the people in those areas "think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored." But, again, I reach the opposite conclusion from Lilla who states, "[s]uch people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country)." I rather happen to thing they are.

The structure of American "democracy" gives enormous power to small and rural states and, because of that, it is easy to reach certain conclusions based on a result that is basically undemocratic. The Democratic message will have received more than 2 million more votes that its opponents. But, in order to win elections in the current structure, Democrats will have to become more forceful with the economic message that appeals to all the working class. And there will certainly be opportunity to do that as the GOP is already abandoning many of its promises to the working class in order to cater to their business interest and the 1%. But there is no reason to abandon civil rights and strictly focus on economic populism. The two actually go hand in hand.