Rimu's blog

If people are especially concerned about oppression of indigenous people or other oppressed groups then I'm really happy about them trying to do something about that. There are often very real issues of discrimination which need to be addressed.

But in my view we need to be very careful of identity politics, because when taken to extremes it breeds an us vs them, insider vs outsider attitude that undermines the wider group and alienates people. Identity politics is about fighting for the rights of people of that identity, not for the rights of all. People who are heavily engaged in identity politics will always put the interests of people in their identity group first before the interests of larger social movements in which they are embedded (if they are embedded), such as the Occupy Wall St movement.

A recent example of identity politics gone sour was Margaret Mutu, decrying racism while completely unable to perceive her own racism. But identity politics is not just a race thing - people can also identify themselves by class, religion, sexual orientation or just about any other differentiating feature that is difficult to change.

If all that identity politicians did was fight for the rights of their group then that would be totally fine - they are completely entitied to do so and it is a good thing that they do. Where things get dicy is when the pluralistic egalitarianism of larger social movements is exploited and hijacked by groups that are in it for themselves. Unless people can offer to others the same pluralistic egalitarianism that is being extended to them then they have no right to take it from others and use it for their own ends.