American identity politics

And how it went from inclusion to division, by Amy Chua in The Guardian. Years ago liberals used language that was framed in national unity, universal human rights and equal opportunity, transcending identity differences. But conservatives were calling this "color blindness" in an effort to minimize or eliminate policies enacted to address real identity differences, like race. In response liberals began to get more identity specific and demand recognition for those differences. They came to recognize that speaking in universal terms masked those real differences and contributed to the problem.


Unfortunately identity politics has gone to the extreme, isolating people within their racial, gender and other groupings and not seeing the connections to the nation or world as a whole. And if one doesn't accept such isolated framing then they must automatically be labelled racist or misogynist, etc. Another problem is sub-dividing identities ad infinitum and demanding recognition for the minutest of differences. This creates an "oppression Olympics" with each group's real oppression being compared with the others in a battle for supremacy.

But it's not just a liberal problem. The conservatives, including and especially Dump, are rife with real racism, misogyny and xenophobia. They make whites the ultimate endangered and discriminated against group and blame anyone not white male for this problem. Granted this is only exacerbated by  liberal hatred for this constituency. So in defense they fight back, often reinforcing their own hatred and prejudice to the extreme from the alt-right. All of which furthers the division between liberals and conservatives.