All US Politics Are Identity Politics

One of the terms I see with regularity in the liberal progressive blogosphere is someone writing a comment decrying 'identity politics'. 

After slamming the term, they will then make the case that if identity politics didn't exist, our country would be a better place or whatever point they are trying to make at that time..

News flash, people.  All politics in the United States are identity politics, and that reality of American life ain't going away any time soon.   When you have one ethnic group which has dominated American life since before the founding of the United States, is grudgingly reluctant to share power and engages in the same identity politics decried to keep their hold on the top rungs of society despite their declining population numbers, you can guarantee that identity politics will be hanging around for a while.

So since we know that identity politics are an integral part of the American political landscape, why aren't we factoring that into the way we conduct our civil rights business in the TBLG community?

The Congressional Black, Hispanic and Asian-Pacific caucuses in Congress exist for a reason.  Those caucuses advocate for their ethnic groups interests as public policy is formulated .


We are still acting in the GLBT community as if the country is already 'post racial' and 'colorblind' when it most certainly isn't, and our organizations are not configured to deal with that reality.    They are also not dealing well with the reality that our rainbow community is multicultural, just like the country is.

It's past time that the organizations that claim to represent this diverse rainbow community represent and reflect that diversity.

You need Latino, African American and Asian Pacific islander GLBT people in your orgs to eloquently speak not only for the entire community, but articulate the concerns and policy needs of their specific communities in order to make overall GLBT policy better and more inclusive.

It should be obvious by now that you are not going to get broad based support for BTLG policies that are formulated of, by and for the benefit of predominately upper middle class white GLBT people.


The point is that you can either continue to misfire on gaining LGBT rights by ignoring reality and continuing business as usual or step into the 21st century, realize that we are a multiethnic country that engages in identity politics and calibrate your policies to not only be cognizant of that fact, but calibrate your politics to account for the identity politics that said polices will have to negotiate to become codified into the law of the land.