I don’t think so. I think we have identity politics because a lonnnnnng time ago, the while males wanted to play stickball. They thought: we can’t have all these girls and disabled people on the teams; we want to play a REAL game, where we can beat the shit out of each other like real men and curse and spit like real men and fart and laugh and be real men. That’s where it came from. The rest is history. Wonderful, glorious, triumphant for white men history.
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Right, white men invented it.
I suppose before white people existed everything was super peaceful and egalitarian, there were certainly no “us vs them” politics going on before that. Ancient China certainly had no social strife, nor did ancient Africans. The Inca were almost certainly a social utopia where no one was oppressed. I think actually the Maya referred to their nation as “the land of opportunity.” The ancient middle East of course never had slavery or social oppression. Those Bedouin tribes? They were all the best of friends! The Yanomami are also well known for the hospitality.
I suppose the white men are the ones who taught the chimps to fight each other too. I bet in fact that Rockefeller guy is the one who taught those two groups in New Guinea to hate each other (which didn’t work out well for him!).
It’s so nice to know that all of humanity’s social problems are explained simply and totally by the actions of a single group.
Well, all those people were white back then. They only darkened when the real white men took their furs and moved up to the Caucasus.
No, some people have be categorized as inferior, lesser than, and have thus been denied access to resources and often, basic human rights. to think otherwise is ahistorical.
As to new identities being created, such as “gamer”, “polyamourous”, what have you - if someone claims that, and expects to be treated as a human being, while claiming that, what’s the problem? Why does it have some negative effect on you? I think people get to decide who they are and why they feel the way they do. Why do you get to decide who gets basic human rights and who doesn’t? What makes you so special in deciding how people should be in this world and how they construct their identity? How is people making decisions about how they present themselves to the rest of the world something that’s “not sustainable”?
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white men created the category of white men, in order to benefit them. It’s a super unstable category of being, which has changed over time. it’s a social construct, just like everything else. It’s been a super-violent and destructive one at that.
And, FYI, not a single person thinks that white men are the only source of strife in history. The point is that we live in a world that is a direct result of the construction of whiteness and male domination. We’re still dealing with the effects of colonialism, racism, and the modern modes of creating genders. We’re dealing with these because they are ours to deal with, not because white men are the only people in history who have done bad things. We’re dealing with them because there are far too many people who still deny that these things were destructive. As long as assholes walk around spouting garbage-talk like “oh, slavery wasn’t so bad” or “cops should protect themselves against dangerous, unarmed black youths” or “women should get into the kitchen, because they are too emotional to lead a country” or whatever bullshit comes into their head, we’re talking about this shit, because it’s still happening and we still need to talk about it.
As far as I can see it, you can either come to the table, listen to others,and try to make it better, or you can continue to deny that there is a problem. We’d rather have you here at the table, frankly, because we can only make it all better together.
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