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Identity Politics

5 min read

Part of Elections and politics.

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Every episode (4)

Who argued it

Alan Dershowitz · David Bernstein · Mark Milke · Jacob Sullum

Meritocracy · Civil Liberties · Public Policy · Criminal Justice Reform · First Amendment · Federalism

Background

Hate crimes and the creation of special classes

In a 2009 episode, Bob Zadek framed hate-crimes legislation as a question of identity politics, asking whether “somebody’s life worth more than somebody else’s, or are we all worth the same?” He cited a 1998 book, Criminal Law and Identity Politics by Jacobs and Potter, and a New York Times review of it which observed that hate crimes “are not meant to be enforced; rather, they are legislated and dispensed by politicians eager to award symbolic attention and protection to particular interest groups.” Zadek called this “the crassest form of pandering.” Hate Crimes Legislation (2009)

Guest Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason Magazine, agreed that political motivation was real but cautioned against concluding the laws go unused. He said people do receive more severe penalties based on their beliefs, in some cases “twice as severe,” and gave the example of identical crimes with identical harm where an anti-Semitic motive yields a penalty “twice as long.” Zadek added the qualifier of perceived anti-Semitic reasons, and Sullum recalled a California case he had written about in which a victim was not in fact Jewish but was perceived to be, and the hate-crime statute was still triggered. Hate Crimes Legislation (2009)

Classifications, money and political incentives

A 2022 episode with David Bernstein examined the federal racial and ethnic classifications. Zadek argued the system was not merely bureaucratic convenience but “about the money,” since classification brings economic and other benefits and creates opportunities for pandering by elected officials, “as they did with hate crimes.” Bernstein said Caspar Weinberger, as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1973, created the classifications aiming at bureaucratic convenience, and that they were not controversial at the time the way the Bakke case was. When published in the Federal Register, Bernstein said, the classifications stated they were not meant to be used for qualifications for any government program, but they were immediately used that way. Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022)

Bernstein described subsequent jockeying over categories: the Asian group was expanded to include Indians, then Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Nepalese, and a Middle Eastern category was being sought. He said that at the elite level the idea of an “Asian American” identity is accepted without question, but at the grassroots only 35% of people within the category consider themselves Asian American even as a secondary identity. He cited NPR election coverage that called it the Asian American vote while reporting from a Chinese American Democratic headquarters in Los Angeles and a Korean American lobby in North Carolina. Bernstein said groups seeking political power want to homogenize vastly different cultures, ethnic groups and religions into one flat category that is easier to manipulate and easier to get stuff for. Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022)

Victim culture and group identity

A 2021 episode with Mark Milke, author of The Victim Cult, discussed the rise of victim culture, described in the episode summary as the shift of focus on historical and perceived grievances from seeking justice to becoming a political tactic. The episode examined historical examples including post-WWI Germany and the Palestinian leadership, contrasted them with the resilience of the Asian American community, and critiqued the impact of microaggressions and group identity on college campuses and public policy. Understanding the Victim Cult (2021)

Identity politics, censorship and democracy

In a 2019 episode on social media censorship, Bill Ottman said Twitter policy forbids misgendering and that people have been banned for saying a man is not a woman, which he placed within “the political polarization, the identity politics game that is being played.” He said the controversial thing about hate speech policies is that what is hate speech to one person is not to another, and that Twitter’s policy is political. Social Media Censorship (2019)

In a 2017 episode on Venezuela, Fergus Hodgson said Hugo Chávez “played class or identity politics to the limit,” renaming the country the Bolivarian Republic, changing the flag, confiscating private property, and setting up socialist programs for targeted demographics. Hodgson said Chávez created a new generation of beneficiaries and oligarchs under Chavismo, so there was a change of power rather than liberalization. Venezuela on the Brink with Fergus Hodgson (2017)

Zadek drew a lesson from this, asking whether once a person identifies as a member of a group rather than as a citizen of a country, the group becomes the entire universe and the country becomes the loser, and said this seemed to be happening in the United States as well, though not with the extremes described in Venezuela. Hodgson said Chavistas wear red as a display of solidarity while opponents wear white, a clear distinction between backers of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and its opponents. Venezuela on the Brink with Fergus Hodgson (2017)

Across episodes

Identity politics runs through episodes from 2009 to 2022, with the 2009 hate-crimes discussion and the 2022 classifications discussion making the same argument about politicians awarding benefits to particular groups, and the 2017 Venezuela episode and 2021 victim-culture episode extending the theme to democratic breakdown and grievance culture; the episodes show no single developed arc across the treatments.

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