In 2014, former President Bill Clinton expressed his discomfort with identity politics, saying: “I believe that in ways large and small, peaceful and sometimes violent, that the biggest threat to the future of our children and grandchildren is the poison of identity politics that preaches that our differences are far more important than our common humanity.”
Maybe it’s his southern roots, perhaps his political pragmatism. Because while identity politics today and in the latter 20th century were used to empower and fight discrimination, they are not always viewed that way, particularly by white men. The concept of identity politics was named so in the 1970s and has been associated with groups that have been historically marginalized or oppressed. I can’t claim to speak for the former president, but I imagine that Clinton’s impression at that time was that marginalized groups trap themselves in a cycle of backlash by demanding their rights in a way that make a majority of people, especially white people, uncomfortable. That is certainly a sentiment seen and heard more and more often today, following protests in places like Baton Rouge.
{mosads}But the backlash by the majority is highly problematic because it equates identity politics of marginalized folks with violence. Groups like Black Lives Matter, the NAACP, the Human Rights Campaign, the AFL-CIO, and the National Organization for Women all practice various kinds of identity politics, but are also explicitly nonviolent in their battles for greater political, social, and economic equality. They seek to shift public opinion through minority influence, where a majority of people shift their opinions because of the beliefs and behaviors of a minority. This process is how many Americans came to believe women and people of color should be able to vote and own property or that same-sex marriage should not be banned.
But there have been violent forms of political identity, mostly coming from individuals and groups with either extreme beliefs or who were never marginalized to begin with. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups dominated American culture following the Civil War, and they relied on this kind of identity politics.
White identity politics in America are a peculiar perversion of identity politics as we know them, and are exemplified by the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow politics as well as by modern white supremacists. While the identity-based political groups described before emphasize the inherent equality of all human beings, and the need for laws and society to reflect those principles, white political identity has historically been formed around three fundamental ideas completely at odds with those values.
First, race is biologically, or divinely, determined, meaning whites are more evolved than or morally superior to other races and that mixing of races “dilutes” those qualities; secondly, political control by whites is threatened by other races, and loss of white political control would lead to subjugation of, or violence against whites; and lastly integration of races, cultures, and religions is an existential threat to civilization.
These views allow white supremacists and nationalists to cast themselves in the role of the minority, or as the scientifically or religiously “chosen few.” It also allows them to forge a shared identity on the premise that, should they fail to maintain control, they becoming wrongly marginalized by those they rightly marginalized.
Unlike BLM, HRC, the NAACP and other marginalized identity-based groups, white political identity has historically been associated with political violence. The KKK, the White Aryan Resistance, the Aryan Brotherhood, and others claim to protect and defend the interests of “real” white Americans through rhetorical and actual violence. Targets of white identity politics have included Catholics, Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Irish immigrants in the past, and continue to target Black Americans, Jews, Muslims, Latinos, Native Americans, and other people of color today.
Perhaps this is what concerns former President Clinton – that identity politics gone wrong means the rise of groups like the Klan, a violent minority inciting mobs and lynching, riots and hateful propaganda. That is certainly a legitimate concern for white identity politics based on our history – and any other violent, identity-based groups such as ISIS or the Khmer Rouge in 20th century Cambodia. But it is fundamentally wrong to equate groups like Black Lives Matter and its supporters with groups like those.
Identity politics as practiced by marginalized groups around the world are an essential part of undoing the horrible legacy of violent forms of identity politics that continue to terrorize people here and abroad. Backlash against groups like Black Lives Matter or the Human Rights Campaign may be imminent, and people may not like their rhetoric or understand their problems, but their nonviolent calls for attention to the plight of certain groups should not be considered divisive.
We’ve seen more than enough identity-based groups who were divisive to know better.
Voss is currently a graduate student at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in Ann Arbor. He graduated with a B.A. in Political Science from Louisiana State University in 2014 and has worked in Democratic campaign politics and economic development. Follow him on Twitter @JacksonVoss
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