Christopher T Stout - The Case for Identity Politics: Polarization, Demographic Change, and Racial Appeals

Luis Ricardo Fraga and Paula D. McClain, Editors

The Case for Identity Politics

Christopher T. Stout

University of Virginia Press

CHARLOTTESVILLE AND LONDON

University of Virginia Press

2020 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

First published 2020

ISBN 978-0-8139-4498-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-8139-4499-9 (ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

The publication of The Case for Identity Politics is timely. The work explores a subject that is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago, when I coauthored the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation with Kwame Toure (formerly Stokely Carmichael).

The term identity politics is relatively new in electoral discourse. But it is not new in practice in the United States and other nations, such as South Africa. Identity politics have been practiced in the United States since the founding of the new nation in 1776. The Preamble to the Constitution states: We the People in Order to form a more perfect Union establish Justice and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. That is to say, for the posterity of the kin, kith, and kind of Anglo-Saxon males, who were in effect the People, beneficiaries of this new more perfect Union.

Over time this goal and the more democratic definition of the People has been altered through a long and protracted process, constitutional amendments, a civil war, and other sociopolitical events. Early identity politics changed as new groups were assured rights and gained the franchise. The pundits or politicians did not call this process identity politics. But it was definitely that. Fast-forward to the twentieth century: women got the right to vote on August 18, 1920, and Native Americans in 1924. Black males had a postslavery Reconstruction franchise (the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870), but this was not enforced with teeth until the necessary Voting Rights Act of 1965. And even today blacks and other minorities still face voter-suppression activities.

The term identity politics took center stage during the 2016 presidential election when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, some say because she made vigorous appeals to certain identifiable electoral groups, namely, women, blacks, and Latinos. She was criticized for pandering to these groups. Trump, the victor, too was criticized for pandering (to put it mildly) to whites whose identity with a putative white America was being threatened. And thus, the discourse was changed. Identity politics became viewed as something negative. Nonsense I say.

The negatives associated with asserting group identitywhich I would state more aptly as identity consciousnessare not new. I and my late coauthor Kwame Toure started it allor as some would say, inflamed it allwith the publication of Black Power in 1967. The book invoked identity consciousness, specifically a powerful racial consciousness. We attacked, among other things, institutional racism (a term we introduced) and emphasized the need for racially conscious policies, in contrast to the race-neutral policies that had united white liberals, blacks, and others. What caused the greatest controversy was our calling for blacks to close ranks in order to more effectively pursue their racially conscious political and policy objectives. This alienated whites that had worked with blacks in the civil rights movement. What was misunderstood in the original edition of Black Powerwhich I corrected in the 1992 Afterwordwas that closing ranks and pushing for race-conscious policies were needed so that black interests would not be ignored when their organizations entered into broader coalitions. Case in point: while black organizations enthusiastically supported the Social Security Act of 1935, black domestic and farm workers were locked out of its benefits. The same later held with discrimination against blacks in other federal programs, especially those administered by states and local governments, especially in the South. The reason for closing ranks and raising black voices for racially conscious policies was to get a respected seat at the table of coalition politics. Black power was needed as a precursor for coalition politics, learned and earned the hard way through experience.

I see the spirit of closed ranks in the identity-conscious groups today in that they push vigorously for identity-conscious objectives in the areas of racial justice, womens rights, LGBTQ rights, criminal justice, religious rights, and both sides of the immigration and border security debates. I suggest there should be more emphasis on these previously overlooked groups. These identity-conscious groups should heighten their participation in U.S. politics (i.e., law-abiding participation, as Black Power proposed nothing illegal). They should be proud of their identity: proud to be black, Latino, Native American, women, and LGBTQ, as much as Irish Catholics, Italian Americans, and Polish Americans, and yes, a genuinely patriotic and law-abiding white American identity, have been and continue to be proud of theirs.

But Americans should not only rely on their identity. They must bring that identity into the electoral process. Alone they cannot function effectively. They must push for their seat at the table of coalitions, confident, secure, and from a position of strength. It has to be understood that ultimately coalitions will have to be based not on their identities, but rather on their shared interests. Not one or few groups are going to rule in the future. Those that will must of necessity turn identity into common interest, form coalitions, learn how and when to organize and to compromise. For too long Americans have used its multiracial, multiethnic, multigender, multicultural political process to divide and rule. They must now use identity for a more positive goal.

Charles V. Hamilton

This book would not have been written but for three important conferences around deracialization as an electoral strategy. The first was Black Politics in a Colour-Blind Era: Re-Examining Deracialisation, which was hosted by Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and organized by Desmond King and Richard Johnson. It was through the discussions at this conference that I thought more critically about deracialization as campaign tool. Following this, I attended Black Power at 50, a conference hosted by Columbia University and organized by Frederick Harris and Kimberly Johnson celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, which was cowritten by Charles V. Hamilton and the late Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael). In preparation for this conference, I wrote a chapter in which I compared my previous work to Hamiltons seminal work on deracialization. This ten-page manuscript has been expanded to become this book. Finally, I fleshed out many of the ideas that appear in this book at the conference Black Politics after Obama hosted by the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University and organized by Andra Gillespie. I can say with certainty that without these opportunities to be around wonderful scholars doing amazing research on the campaign strategies of underrepresented groups I would not have pursued or completed this project. I am grateful for all of the organizers for putting these important conferences together and for including me. This book is a testament to their hard work and generosity.