The End of Identity Liberalism | The New York Times
I found this article interesting, and one that surely can prompt discussion/debate. I saw it first on Facebook (which means it's probably fake news, especially since it is from NYT, lol), and there it is getting a good deal of discussion. Surprisingly, all my liberal friends "liked" the post. Not sure why, when it is the type of liberalism that I think is near the heart of why there is a divide in the country.
I will note that prejudice, racism and sexism can all suck whenever they rear their ugly head, but in my experience, liberals act as if they are far removed from such (ugly) behavior and only one side is engaging in the negativity that comes from this. Honestly, of all the liberals I know, they all express prejudice of some sort, and at times, it's a little ugly. Conservatives as well. But the how to correct it is where I see the debate occurring and how politics routinely is framed. Conservatives are perhaps a bit more passive in how to correct it, and liberals aggressive. In being aggressive, it has manifested as identity politics, and is really just another form of class struggle(s).
As I see it, and going with sound bite rhetoric, conservatives want all of us getting over the hump, while downplaying the existence of the privileged class. While liberals want the privileged class to be ignored in terms of superficial politics and help minorities get over the hump first/foremost. And if that process occurs through a form of institutional prejudice that seeks to dissuade the traditionalists from helping (in any way), so be it - cause ya know, liberals have the (ahem) right principles to move us forward.
But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life. At a very young age our children are being encouraged to talk about their individual identities, even before they have them. By the time they reach college many assume that diversity discourse exhausts political discourse, and have shockingly little to say about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good. In large part this is because of high school history curriculums, which anachronistically project the identity politics of today back onto the past, creating a distorted picture of the major forces and individuals that shaped our country. (The achievements of women’s rights movements, for instance, were real and important, but you cannot understand them if you do not first understand the founding fathers’ achievement in establishing a system of government based on the guarantee of rights.)
I found this article interesting, and one that surely can prompt discussion/debate. I saw it first on Facebook (which means it's probably fake news, especially since it is from NYT, lol), and there it is getting a good deal of discussion. Surprisingly, all my liberal friends "liked" the post. Not sure why, when it is the type of liberalism that I think is near the heart of why there is a divide in the country.
I will note that prejudice, racism and sexism can all suck whenever they rear their ugly head, but in my experience, liberals act as if they are far removed from such (ugly) behavior and only one side is engaging in the negativity that comes from this. Honestly, of all the liberals I know, they all express prejudice of some sort, and at times, it's a little ugly. Conservatives as well. But the how to correct it is where I see the debate occurring and how politics routinely is framed. Conservatives are perhaps a bit more passive in how to correct it, and liberals aggressive. In being aggressive, it has manifested as identity politics, and is really just another form of class struggle(s).
As I see it, and going with sound bite rhetoric, conservatives want all of us getting over the hump, while downplaying the existence of the privileged class. While liberals want the privileged class to be ignored in terms of superficial politics and help minorities get over the hump first/foremost. And if that process occurs through a form of institutional prejudice that seeks to dissuade the traditionalists from helping (in any way), so be it - cause ya know, liberals have the (ahem) right principles to move us forward.