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Identity Politics


  • Can the Left Take Back Identity Politics?

    by Umut Özkırımlı

    Recovering the liberatory potential of identity politics means going back to the term's source—the Combahee River Collective—and recognizing its radical roots and embrace of coalition-building and politics.



  • What Has Black Lives Matter Achieved? A New Critique from the Left

    by Jay Caspian Kang

    Political scientist Cedric Johnson argues in a new book that protest movements have fixated on racial identity at the expense of making a broad critique of how policing defends an unequal and exploitative society and building a bigger coalition for change. Writer Jay Caspian Kang puts this argument in the context of debates about identity politics from the center to the left.



  • The Crisis of the Intellectuals

    by Ibram X. Kendi

    A dire health crisis forced the author to ask what his intellectual work was ultimately for. Intellectuals more broadly need a similar push from the dire state of democracy, and should be assured that when they face pushback about being "illiberal" or "presentist" or violating the traditions of their discipline, they're on the right track. 



  • The Defeat of Identity Politics

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò argues that the rhetoric of diversity has allowed an "elite capture" of racial justice movements that strips those movements of the impulse to transform society. Historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor reviews his new book of essays.



  • ‘Despised’ Review: The Left and the Working Class

    by Jonathan Rose

    Historian Jonathan Rose reviews a book by British firefighter and "left conservative" Paul Embery which identifies the collapse of both working class communities and open debate in Britain as factors in the demise of Labour as a political force. 



  • The Wages of Whiteness (Review Essay)

    Hari Kunzru's review essay examines the current vogue for white antiracism (and antiracist training) through the history of whiteness as a political and academic concept, concluding that many  of the most popular books and multicultural pieties strip the idea of its structural elements and reduce it to a question of personal purification. 



  • Another Kind of “Identity Politics”

    by John Fea

    Is Mark Lilla right that liberals need to get beyond identity politics?  And just what do we mean by identity politics anyway?