Identity Politics
How did identity politics emerge, and has it gone too far?
In this modern era there are a lot of issues which point to an inequality amongst certain social groups or races. These issues led to the emergence of Identity Politics all over the world and had risen and established themselves. Laura Maguire stated that “Identity politics is when people of a particular race, ethnicity, gender, or religion form alliances and organize politically to defend their group’s interests.” Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ and the Feminist movement are some examples of this kind of politics.
According to Jonathan Haidt, there are two kinds of identity politics where one is the gathering of specific groups to voice their concerns towards a specific topic such as oppression of their group, and the other type of identity politics is the gathering of a group to confront a third-party. The former kind of identity politics is good because it voices out topics that are unfair, or unjustified towards a specific group. This can create awareness in a peaceful manner. Meanwhile the latter kind of identity politics may be more dangerous. The gathering of a group may lead to riots which are very violent and could leave people injured, and may cause damage to public or private property.
In my opinion Identity Politics is mostly present in the United States but is slowly growing amongst other countries. This has positives and negatives as described, if we focus on the awareness of ideas rather than leading riots and being violent it can help our nations grow for the better. Has it gone to far? I would say it has gone far in the US since it is where it started but if we can slowly dissect and study this we can avoid the destruction and work on collaboration.
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