Bottom line: We don’t live in that world right now. Getting to that world takes actual work on YOUR (on all our) part. Those of us who aren’t white cisgendered men have far more hoops to jump through just to get basic respect and equal treatment before the law. If you want a world where you can very much evaluate a person on their individual merits and not be prone to systemic discrimination, you have to fix the world where those of us who aren’t white cisgendered men are judged far more critically. 
8 Likes
…I wasn’t asking for fun about a contrived situation, I clearly asked about the real one, which is not fun for a lot of people. And you didn’t really answer, did you.
For the record, and in case it isn’t obvious, when people use the term “identity politics” they are usually explicitly excluding people like Trump who play to white resentment. The term then becomes the perception that a non-white (or non-male) candidate is pushed forward in order to appear to an (imaginary) voting bloc, which has some inherently racist (or sexist) assumptions embedded in it.
You shouldn’t be surprised to find that terms usually used in a discriminatory way stick in people’s craws, as you put it. The smart and understanding thing to do would be to apologize, say that’s not what you meant, and find a term that doesn’t have those kinds of connotations, if you don’t intend them.
11 Likes
Then it’s a crappy hypothetical, because it doesn’t line up even rhetorically with reality. There have been a parade of unqualified candidates, politicians, and administrators who are white wealthy failsons from both US political parties. I challenge you to find one unqualified minority put forward by the Democratic Party in the last half century.
That’s where the common usage falls apart and reveals a racist, misogynistic underlying meaning.
10 Likes
it was my craw, and i’m sorry to put you so on the spot. it’s actually because it was such a casual mention – as if the term had a common understanding – while previously it’s only something i’ve only ever heard steve bannon say.
this was the calculation that white voters made in nominating biden. there were plenty of great candidates, but of the top tier candidates biden was the white straight male ( okay, him and tom steyer and bloomberg. but neither of those last two had traction; just money )
so again – unless you’re willing to offer any actual instances of the contrary – it’s white men who are getting the easy ride into politics ( jobs, you name it ) because of their identity.
if there’s an identity politics to hate – that’s the one i personally would target. not some mythical “unqualified minority candidates” that the term seems to mean.
11 Likes
8 Likes
I don’t have any standards. I lost interest in this off-topic discussion a few posts ago. I failed to express myself clearly in my initial post, and I failed to bail out when I should have. I’m not hear to virtue signal or debate the finer points of our world’s social and political problems.
This is my formal apology that I used a term that I thought I knew what it meant, but the vast majority of you felt it meant something differently. If I can’t write to my audience then I fail to communicate effectively.
1 Like
Closed at the request of the OP.
/s
7 Likes
