@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Anyway, I do think you are pushing against what is termed in right wing media as "identity politics". Here's a fine example from a week ago...
Quote:Tucker Carlson: ‘Identity politics will destroy this country faster than a foreign invasion’
When it is used in this way (and this is the way it is most commonly used) it is really a push back against the values of, and the necessary speech regarding, civil rights.
You know the bigotry that Al Smith faced as a consequence of his Catholic faith and background. How could it have been possible to push back against and correct this situation without doing exactly what blacks, latinos, gays, women, etc have been and are doing? You possibly get that "the war on christmas" or the "war on christianity" or the "war on the white race" are all examples of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, etc doing identity politics (just in a propagandist way).
Identity politics - as termed by Tucker Carlson - is "really a pushback against the values of, and the necessary speech regarding civil rights"??
An interesting, but unfounded, and somewhat contradictory proposition. It appears you are saying that resistance to the prejudgments of others based on superficial observations, (i.e. black, Jewish, Catholic, etc. ) requires the "pushback" of equivalent counter prejudgments against the supposed perpetrators. In my experience of life, that is merely a formula for the perpetuation of such prejudgments and continued conflict.
In an epidemic, infecting others with the toxin, removes the differences but doesn't solve the problem.
Indeed it is a rebirth of the motivation for the Inquisitions of the late Middle Age as established religious & political institutions in Europe attempted to resist new ideas emerging in the so called enlightenment. The practitioners of such Identity politics have become the inquisitors of the current age, and my bet is they will be no more successful than their predecessors.
I much prefer Martin Luther King's exhortation that "we judge others by the content of their characters, and not the color of their skin".
As a matter of historical fact the main element of the assimilation of Jews; as well as Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholics in this country was not achieved by counter identity politics at all. Instead they created (and paid for) their own schools systems, which generally performed better than their public alternatives, and after they passed through the predictable stages of organized crime and athletics, they rose in the middle class largely as a result of their own efforts ( and a few political protective organizations such as Tammany Hall). A few generations later they had their own self respect and the (often grudgingly given) respect of others. Soon enough none of it mattered very much any more.
Indeed much the same process is occurring among African Americans, largely at their own initiatives, though we often fail to note the many examples of it. I believe that for the most part the so called "required" elements of affirmative action you have suggested have done more harm to both sides than good.
I met an engaging interesting guy named Jason Riley at a summer place in Sonoma County. He's from Buffalo NY , but he's more Black than Irish. I later learned he's the Author of "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals make it harder for Blacks" , and a prominent commentator among some, largely conservative, organizations. It's an interesting read, and he makes some particularly trenchant points about unintended side effects.
On a broader scale, in an age in which we have diluted family structures and the associated roles of fathers and mothers in the raising of children, I find it perversely predictable that we are now resorting to notions of "toxic masculinity" as a means of restoring and protecting the roles and freedom of women.
I find the babble of this so called identity politics to be simply tragi comic bullshit wrapped in a thin veneer.
By the way, How is life up there in Vancouver Island? I do hope you are well & content.
