3B
Wednesday, February 7, 2018 // The Statement
Critical Questions: Identity Politics
A
re Middle Eastern and
Northern African people
Caucasian,
African
or
Asian? Last November, the
group of students who identify as ME/
NA said no to all three and demanded
to be recognized as a distinct category
by the University of Michigan through
their #WeExist campaign.
It makes sense that ME/NA students
would want their own identity in
official records. Though many of
them have fair skin and their families
originate from the continents of Asia
and Africa, their group has different
needs when compared to whites, Blacks
and Asians. (I, as a personal opinion,
would also want to split “Asian” into
East, Southeast and South, as each of
those groups’ needs are also wholly
different).
The
#WeExist
campaign
is
an
example of a campaign of identity
politics, or a brand of politics in
which
racial,
cultural,
religious,
socioeconomic or other groups pursue
their own interests in isolation from
the rest of the body politic.
The expression “identity politics”
became the subject of much negative
attention during the 2016 presidential
election, and it hasn’t been getting a
good rep since then.
The left heard of it in regard to
white
identity
politics,
in
which
white Americans—who are finding
their share of the population and
influence
decreasing—voted
for
a
candidate who spoke to their concerns
while marginalized groups suffered.
Meanwhile, the right accused Hillary
Clinton of pandering to voters of
different racial groups to court votes.
Even Bernie Sanders, the furthest-
left candidate, later criticized the
Democrats’
emphasis
on
identity
politics.
Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
even went on to say in his book, “The
Disuniting of America”, that focusing
on our differences more than our
similarities will result in a “cult of
ethnicity” that will disintegrate the
cooperative, compromise-based model
of the United States’s democracy.
It has been observed since ancient
times that the democratic process
goes smoothly if the constituents
are
homogeneous.
Elites
in
the
Athenian and Roman republics had
a common, unwavering background
that was not subject to compromise.
In an increasingly multicultural and
polarized world, are identity politics
and democracy compatible?
A 2016 survey of major democracies
by the United Nation World Happiness
Report offers a bleak picture. For one,
the happiest nations in the world are
“fairly
homogeneous
nations
with
strong social safety nets” without the
same kind of racial identity politics
that exists in the U.S.
However, identity isn’t just about
race; it encompasses gender, religion,
ethnicity and a variety of other factors
that make up a human being. Some of
my international friends like to tell me,
“Americans are obsessed with race.”
But the example of Taiwan shows other
countries can be just as “obsessed”
with identity as we are, yet still thrive.
In
Taiwan’s
2016
election,
the
Democratic Progressive Party, headed
by Tsai Ing-wen, won by a landslide.
Their victory was helped largely by an
identity shift in Taiwan.
Two months before the election,
Chou Tzu-yu, a Taiwanese singer in
the K-pop girl group TWICE, was
berated by Chinese netizens who were
offended by her display of a Republic
of China flag during an appearance
on a Korean TV show. The other
members of TWICE showed the flags
of South Korea and Japan, signaling
the countries they came from.
The incident resulted in TWICE
being barred from Chinese television
and Tzu-yu being forced to pull out of
an endorsement, causing the president
of her record company to apologize
to the Chinese media. Tzu-yu also
released an apology on the day before
Taiwan’s elections, affirming there is
only one China and she is proud to be
Chinese.
Tzu-yu’s apology was met with
outrage in Taiwan, and may have
influenced the election results by 1 to 2
percent in favor of Tsai, who supports
Taiwanese independence. Why did this
happen?
In Taiwan, a majority of citizens
now identify as solely Taiwanese (as
opposed to Chinese or a combination of
the two). Though the People’s Republic
of China tries to push a narrative of
eventual reunification, this becomes
more unrealistic as the identity of the
island’s people is shifting.
Two years before the elections,
university students stormed Taiwan’s
legislature, protesting against what
they saw as former President Ma Ying-
jeou’s closed-door efforts to rapidly
integrate the island’s economy with
that of the mainland.
That identity politics can coexist
with democracy in Taiwan shows
its universal nature, for we are all
embedded in some sort of identity.
However,
we
cannot
just
stay
within our identity groups and expect
everyone to listen to every one of our
demands, especially if our group is
smaller and weaker. That is the kind
of identity politics that was criticized
during the 2016 elections.
Here is where coalition building
comes in; when we make temporary
alliances with other groups to achieve
a common goal.
Sometimes the alliance is difficult
to forge, especially if your group and
another group seem radically different,
or even outright antagonistic. For
example, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that
rich industrialists prevented the white
and Black working class from allying
themselves through the invocation
of racist attitudes against African
Americans.
Despite this, psychology experiments
demonstrate that if group members
contact each other and find even
simple commonalities (if both sides
agreed the roads were bad in their
municipality, for instance), there is
more goodwill and trust. University of
Oxford psychologist Miles Hewstone
found this to be true with groups as
separated and distrusting of each
other as Protestants and Catholics in
Northern Ireland.
Moreover, though people in our
identity groups may share a common
thread, at the same time we are
composed of multiple identities; this
is known as intersectionality. I am
Japanese-American, a straight male, a
New Jerseyan, an out-of-state student,
an immigrant and a non-practicing
Buddhist. Each of these aspects is
inseparable from my existence.
You cannot talk about economic
inequality without talking about race
and gender. You cannot talk about mass
incarceration without talking about
Black males and institutional racism.
You cannot talk about American jobs
being shipped away without talking
about middle-class whites. You cannot
talk about affirmative action without
talking about being dark-skinned and
low-income.
Our racial, socioeconomic, sexual,
cultural and religious identities are
so intertwined that simply offering
solutions across the board targeting
only one of these aspects will not work.
Simply fixing economic inequality will
not lead to true equality for minorities,
as there are more institutional hurdles
to climb over.
Similarly, not all people in a given
group are the same. Just because
President
Donald
Trump
made
comments
about
undocumented
immigrants does not mean Latinos
who are here legally will all vote for
Democrats (in fact, 28 percent of them
voted for Trump, slightly more support
than what Mitt Romney received 4
years earlier).
Contrary to what some pundits
think, identity politics is a universal
phenomenon
and
the
U.S.
just
expresses it differently from other
countries as a reflection of its own
unique racial history. Our democracy
will not collapse because of identity
politics; rather, it can survive and
thrive if we learn to compromise and
respect each others’ differences.
BY ISHI MORI, COLUMNIST
ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY KOFFSKY