#Identity — The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Space Karen is a monster. They had opportunities to unionize but they succumbed to pressure from Elongated Muskrat and Texas Republicans and now they’ll be living on the production line. How stupid are you to reject unionization? Now they’re slaves like every other non-union employee in the country.

Republicans in red states pass laws called “right to work”, which is more Republican name trickery. “Right to work” laws prevent unions/organized labor. What it literally means is that companies have the right to make YOU work without any benefits, for minimum wage, without any right to protest wage theft or unsafe conditions, no recourse against unfair labor practices, and to put you on “on demand schedules,” The latter means no set regular hours, 9-5 today then 9-9 the day after, then 1-8, or no hours at all for days or weeks until you quit and can’t collect. “On demand scheduling” is abosolutely cruel. You never get to recover properly, you can never make plans outside of work, you can’t attend school or have a second job, and you miss out on all the major life events of your family. This leads to resentment, divorce, and alienated children who feel unloved.

Even blue states have bare minimum labor laws in place to control abuses by employers. Try going to the state for help in a dispute with your boss. Try hiring a lawyer when you’re poor or even if you’re not lawyers don’t want to touch these cases.

We are already a nation of hopeless wage slaves. Biden and the Democrats are making progress in passing laws to protect workers and unions but it will all be swept away if Republicans regain the White House and Congress. Some people won’t learn until they’re chained to a machine in a building with suicide nets outside the windows like in China.

It took almost two hundred years to get unions, workers rights, and work place safety laws put into place. They’ve nearly all been eroded into a forgotten past since Republican Ronald Reagan, and Fox News, was elected in 1980. Nearly all of you reading this don’t even know a time when workers only needed one job to support a home and family, had pensions, and had health insurance that was provided. Now you live with 2-3 jobs, have no health insurance, can’t afford a home (or rent), can’t afford college or even a new car, and make less than your grandparents. The media glosses this over calling the extra jobs “side hustles” and your lack of a career with dignity is because you’re a generation of “self starters.”

You weren’t born to be a wage slave for billionaire oligarchs and the petty tyrants they hire to be middle managers. Spread the word and unionize. Fight for it. People in the 1800’s literally battled armed mercenaries, cops, and the military for the right to union jobs that let them live and earn with dignity. Don’t let their spilled blood and deaths be in vain. The United Auto Workers and other unions tried repeatedly to get Tesla unionized. Unions are out there and willing to help. It only takes a few phone calls to get the ball rolling.

Muskrat promised his workers free frozen yogurt and a roller coaster ride from the parking lot to factory if they voted against unions, I shit you not. He never delivered either. He did spend millions on union avoidance firms to come in and lie and scare workers into voting no. Now they’re treated like cotton plantation slaves and told they will be literally living on a production line.

To put this into the identity politics millennials are drawn to, unions are the only working environment where marginalized people are protected and have recourse against discrimination and mistreatment in the workplace. If you are mistreated you can file a grievance and if the management doesn’t redress the issue then they are taken to contractually mandated arbitration or court with union supplied lawyers. If you have never worked in a union shop you have no idea what it’s like to not be fearful, to have dignity, and to know people are obligated to protect you from management.

It’s the only non-union automaker in the country.

[literally-just-for-this-project]

Sources

Abuelezam, Nadia N., Awad, Germine H., Ajrouch, Kristine J., and Matthew Jaber Stiffler. 2022. “Lack of Arab or Middle Eastern and North African Health Data Undermines Assessment of Health Disparities.” American Journal of Public Health 112(2):209–12

Awad, Germine H., Hanan Hashem, and Hien Nguyen. 2021. “Identity and Ethnic/Racial Self-Labeling among Americans of Arab or Middle Eastern and North African Descent.” Identity 21(2):115–30

Arab American. “Dept. of Justice Affirms Arab Race in 1909: The Arab American Historical Foundation Home.” Arab American. Retrieved April 26, 2023 (https://www.arabamericanhistory.org/archives/dept-of-justice-affirms-arab-race-in-1909/).

Beydoun, Khaled A. 2014. “Between Muslim and White: The Legal Construction of Arab American Identity.” SSRN. Retrieved September 25, 2022 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2529506)

The Federal Register. Federal Register :: Request Access. Retrieved April 13, 2023 (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/27/2023-01635/initial-proposals-for-u pdating-ombs-race-and-ethnicity-statistical-standards).

Griffith, Bryan. 2002. “Immigrants from the Middle East.” CIS.org. Retrieved September 25, 2022 (https://cis.org/Report/Immigrants-Middle-East).

Haney-López Ian. 2006. in White by law: The Legal Construction of Race (Critical America). New York University Press.

Maghbouleh, Neda, Ariela Schachter, and René D. Flores. 2022. “Middle Eastern and North African Americans May Not Be Perceived, nor Perceive Themselves, to Be White.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119(7).

Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration,. 1997. “Recommendations From the Interagency Committee for the Review of the Racial and Ethnic Standards to the Office of Management and Budget Concerning Changes to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.” 62 FR 36874, Retrieved September 25, 2022

Anon. n.d. “Middle East/North Africa (MENA).” United States Trade Representative. (https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/middle-east/north-africa). 

Anon. n.d. “Middle Eastern and North African Americans May Not Be Perceived ... - PNAS.” 

Fukuyama, Francis. 2019. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York, NY: Picador. 

Louise Cainkar. n.d. “MENA Americans: A Socially Disadvantaged Group.” 

(https://www2.mu.edu/social-cultural-sciences/directory/documents/cainkar-mena-reports.pdf). 

Mora, G. Cristina. 2014. Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Aziz, Sahar F. 2020. “Legally White, Socially Brown: Racialization of Middle Eastern Americans.” SSRN Electronic Journal.

Blake, John. 2010. “Arab- and Persian-American Campaign: 'Check It Right' on Census.” CNN. Retrieved April 26, 2023 (https://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/01/census.check.it.right.campaign/).

Krogstad, Jens Manuel. 2020. “Census Bureau Explores New Middle East/North Africa Ethnic Category.” Pew Research Center. Retrieved April 26, 2023 (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/03/24/census-bureau-explores-new-middle-eastnorth-africa-ethnic-category/).

[balioc]

BALIOC’S READING LIST, 2019 EDITION

This list counts only published books, consumed in published-book format, that I read for the first time and finished.  No rereads, nothing abandoned halfway through, no Internet detritus of any kind, etc.  Also no children’s picture books.

1. In a Time of Treason, David Keck

2. A King In Cobwebs, David Keck

3. War In Human Civilization, Azar Gat

4. The Kingdom of Copper, S. A. Chakraborty

5. The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, Winifred Fallers Sullivan

6. The Winter of the Witch, Katherine Arden

7. Out of the Silent Planet, C. S. Lewis

8. Perelandra, C. S. Lewis

9. The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis

10. Underlord, Will Wight

11. The Devil-Wives of Li Fong, E. Hoffman Price

12. How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States, Daniel Immerwahr

13. The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie

14. The Rage of Dragons, Evan Winter

15. The Bird King, G. Willow Wilson

16. A Betrayal In Winter, Daniel Abraham

17. An Autumn War, Daniel Abraham

18. The Price of Spring, Daniel Abraham

19. Chartism, Thomas Carlyle

20. Impro: Improvisation and the Theater, Keith Johnstone

21. A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

22. Foundryside, Robert Jackson Bennett

23. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest Stats, James C. Scott

24. The Ruin of Kings, Jenn Lyons

25. Ship of Smoke and Steel, Django Wexler

26. Pan, Knut Hamsun

27. The Unbound Empire, Melissa Caruso

28. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation For Failure, Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt

29. Empire of Sand, Tasha Suri

30. Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson

31. A Brightness Long Ago, Guy Gavriel Kay

32. The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip

33. Heir of Sea and Fire, Patricia McKillip

34. Harpist In the Wind, Patricia McKillip

35. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Francis Fukuyama

36. Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire

37. The Witchwood Crown, Tad Williams

38. Empire of Grass, Tad Williams

39. Ten Restaurants That Changed America, Paul Freedman

40. The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon

41. The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith

42. Wyrms, Orson Scott Card

43. Seedfolks, Paul Fleischman

44. The Axe and the Throne, M. D. Ireman

45. The Sun King, Nancy Mitford

46. The Demons of King Solomon, various (ed. Aaron J. French)

47. Towards a New Socialism,  W. Paul Cockshott & Allin F. Cottrell

48. The Oracle Glass, Judith Merkle Riley

49. The Orphans of Raspay, Lois McMaster Bujold

50. Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness In the West, Cormac McCarthy

51. Lent, Jo Walton

52. Empress of Forever, Max Gladstone

53. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah

54. The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead

55. The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism, Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski

56. Turning Darkness Into Light, Marie Brennan

57. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell

58. The Initiate Brother, Sean Russell

59. Gatherer of Clouds, Sean Russell

60. Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics, Mary Eberstadt

61. The New Achilles, Christian Cameron

62. World Without End, Sean Russell

63. Sea Without a Shore, Sean Russell

64. Uncrowned, Will Wight

65. A Brief History of Indonesia: Sultans, Spices, and Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of Southeast Asia's Largest Nation, Tim Hannigan

66. The Vagrant, Peter Newman

67. Jade War, Fonda Lee

68. The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith

69. The Hod King, Josiah Bancroft

70. The Name of All Things, Jenn Lyons

71. Cold Iron, Miles Cameron [Christian Cameron]

72. Dark Forge, Miles Cameron [Christian Cameron]

73. Emily of New Moon, Lucy Maude Montgomery

74. Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, Ben Mcintyre

75. The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow

76. Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, David Bowles

77. Flowers In the Mirror, Li Ruzhen

78. Bright Steel, Miles Cameron [Christian Cameron]

79. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Dave Grossman

80. That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis

***********

Plausible works of improving nonfiction consumed in 2019: 19

Works consumed in 2019 by women: 24

Works consumed in 2019 by men: 55

Works consumed in 2018 by both men and women: 1

Balioc’s Choice Award, fiction division: Lent

>>>> Honorable mention: A Betrayal in Winter et al

Balioc’s Choice Award, nonfiction division: Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

>>>> Honorable mention: War In Human Civilization

Cultural Heritage Award For “Holy Crap This Will Fuck You Up”: The Great Divorce

Cultural Heritage Award For “This Will Not Fuck You Up Nearly as Much as the Author Thinks It Will, or Maybe I Was Just In a Cranky Un-Receptive Frame of Mind”: That Hideous Strength

**********

A year of progress, I think.  This is probably About Enough Reading.  More nonfiction than before, although not enough (and too many things that I wanted to be Really Enlightening turned out to be duds).  More literary classics too.  A lot of modern genre fiction that was pretty-good-but-definitely-not-great.

[berniesrevolution]

History is having its revenge on Francis Fukuyama. In 1992, at the height of post-Cold War liberal exuberance, the American political theorist wrote in The End of History and the Last Man: “What we may be witnessing… is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Twenty-six years later, from the US to Russia, Turkey to Poland, and Hungary to Italy, an Illiberal International is advancing. Fukuyama’s new book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (his ninth) seeks to grapple with these forces. But when I met the 65-year-old Stanford academic at our offices in London, he was careful to emphasise the continuity in his thought. “What I said back then [1992] is that one of the problems with modern democracy is that it provides peace and prosperity but people want more than that… liberal democracies don’t even try to define what a good life is, it’s left up to individuals, who feel alienated, without purpose, and that’s why joining these identity groups gives them some sense of community.”

His critics, he said, “probably didn’t read to the end of the actual book [The End of History], the Last Man part, which was really all about some of the potential threats to democracy.”

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama was born in Chicago in 1952 (he now lives with his wife in California) to a Japanese-American father (Fukuyama’s paternal grandfather emigrated to the US in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese war) and a Japanese mother. He never learned his ancestral language and simply describes himself as American: “It just wasn’t fashionable to be ethnic when I was growing up.”

Fukuyama, who studied political philosophy under Allan Bloom, the author of The Closing of the American Mind, at Cornell University, initially identified with the neoconservative movement: he was mentored by Paul Wolfowitz while a government official during the Reagan-Bush years. But by late 2003, Fukuyama had recanted his support for the Iraq war, which he now regards as a defining error alongside financial deregulation and the euro’s inept creation. “These are all elite-driven policies that turned out to be pretty disastrous, there’s some reason for ordinary people to be upset.”

The End of History was a rebuke to Marxists who regarded communism as humanity’s final ideological stage. How, I asked Fukuyama, did he view the resurgence of the socialist left in the UK and the US? “It all depends on what you mean by socialism. Ownership of the means of production – except in areas where it’s clearly called for, like public utilities – I don’t think that’s going to work.

“If you mean redistributive programmes that try to redress this big imbalance in both incomes and wealth that has emerged then, yes, I think not only can it come back, it ought to come back. This extended period, which started with Reagan and Thatcher, in which a certain set of ideas about the benefits of unregulated markets took hold, in many ways it’s had a disastrous effect.”

He added, to my surprise: “At this juncture, it seems to me that certain things Karl Marx said are turning out to be true. He talked about the crisis of overproduction… that workers would be impoverished and there would be insufficient demand.”  Yet the only plausible systemic rival to liberal democracy, Fukuyama said, was not socialism but China’s state capitalist model. “The Chinese are arguing openly that it is a superior one because they can guarantee stability and economic growth over the long run in a way that democracy can’t… if in another 30 years, they’re bigger than the US, Chinese people are richer and the country is still holding together, I would say they’ve got a real argument.” But he cautioned that “the real test of the regime” would be how it fared in an economic crisis.

(Continue Reading)

[stoweboyd]

2019-01-02 Daybook

Unlike my newsletter, this daybook exists for me: to act as a second memory (or first one) about what I have bumped into on the web. This also means I will retain things I need to refer to in the future, or just read later on. So I am partitioning the 'read later' section to the end for convenience, and things for Work Futures at the top.

It's strange to rely on different sorts of tags. I want to be able to use Tumblr tags, like 'stoweboyd.com/tagged/naomi-stanford' to search across all posts. And I want to be able to find a #readlater section in a specific post like 'stoweboyd.com/post/181646961067/2019-01-02-daybook#readlater'.

work futures

…

What are the ‘first principles’ of organization design? | Naomi Stanford wonders if there are 'first principles' to organizational design. (I start with the larger concern of whether organizations can if fact be 'designed'. They can be influenced in a mazillion ways, certainly. But her question is important in aeither mindset.) She likens this to the notion of first principles for child rearing, which is an interesting take.

…

Why open offices suck and how to fix them | Katharine Schwab points out that open offices are sexist, bad for productivity, and make people miserable. Why can't we end this trend?

…

Are Bosses Dictators? | Joshua Rothman reviews the arguments against dictatorial work regimes offered by philosopher Elizabeth Anderson in Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It). She pushes for more democratic norms in business, which she calls 'public government', governance where the governed have a large voice. This is not the case in 'private government', where rules are imposed without the active consent of the governed, as is the case in many businesses. Rothman believes the subtitle refers to a harsh reality:

We don't talk about it is that we don't want to acknowledge how much the rhetoric of American freedom outruns the constraints of private government.

…

Five workplace predictions for 2019 | Jena McGregor gets past the obvious bets -- like #MeToo, more sexual misconduct coming to light, increased need for diversity, etc. -- and digs into new territory for 2019:

Benefits: Family leave for non-parents will become more common

Compensation: A wage gap between old and new workers will create new headaches

Privacy: Workers will demand that employers do more to insure their personal data

Office Design: The office phone booth will become a workplace staple

WORKPLACE TECH: Email will move past its peak and continue its demise

I call outright shenanigans on No. 5, and wonder how far workers will be able to push on No. 3 given corporate hunger to know what workers are up to.

…

How Federal Workers Could Fight the Shutdown | Ben Beckett and Ryan Haney wonder why furloughed federal workers aren't protesting?

Federal workers have dealt with low pay, degraded working conditions, and repeated employer lockouts. If they want to improve their conditions, they’ll have to organize.

Did you know that federal employees can unionize, they are barred from collective bargaining on wages, hours, working conditions, benefits, or job classifications. It is also illegal for thm to strike, picket, or engage in 'concerted action' on the job, all of which are legal for other sorts of workers.

…

The 'Future Book' Is Here, but It's Not What We Expected | Craig Mod makes a deeply important statement about email, perhaps the best reason it seems to never die:

There’s something almost ahistorical about email, existing outside the normal flow of technological progress. It works and has worked, reliably, for decades. There’s no central email authority. Most bookish people use it. Today I’m convinced you could skip a website, Facebook page, or Twitter account, and launch a publishing company on email alone.

general

…

Francis Fukuyama Postpones the End of History | Louis Menard recapitulates the history of Francis Fukuyama End of History thesis, culminating with his new book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. Menard thinks Fukuyama's efforts to tie everything going on in today's world to identity politics fails.

read later

A Kingdom from Dust

…

Culture and the Real Impact of Change Agents - Part 1 | Celine Schillinger

[gnosticgnoob]

Francis Fukuyama doing an Ask Me Anything session this fine Thursday evening

[algebraicvarietyshow]

“Fukuyama thinks he knows what that something is, and his answer is summed up in the title of his new book, “Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The demand for recognition, Fukuyama says, is the “master concept” that explains all the contemporary dissatisfactions with the global liberal order: Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Xi Jinping, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, gay marriage, isis, Brexit, resurgent European nationalisms, anti-immigration political movements, campus identity politics, and the election of Donald Trump. It also explains the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Chinese Communism, the civil-rights movement, the women’s movement, multiculturalism, and the thought of Luther, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, and Simone de Beauvoir. Oh, and the whole business begins with Plato’s Republic. Fukuyama covers all of this in less than two hundred pages. How does he do it?

Not well. Some of the problem comes from misunderstanding figures like Beauvoir and Freud; some comes from reducing the work of complex writers like Rousseau and Nietzsche to a single philosophical bullet point. A lot comes from the astonishingly blasé assumption—which was also the astonishingly blasé assumption of “The End of History?”—that Western thought is universal thought. But the whole project, trying to fit Vladimir Putin into the same analytic paradigm as Black Lives Matter and tracing them both back to Martin Luther, is far-fetched. It’s a case of Great Booksism: history as a chain of paper dolls cut out of books that only a tiny fraction of human beings have even heard of. Fukuyama is a smart man, but no one could have made this argument work.”

[infosasha]

Identity: The Demand For Dignity And The Politics Of Resentment Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics And The Struggle For Recognition

Identity: The Demand For Dignity And The Politics Of Resentment Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics And The Struggle For Recognition

Inside Congress: A Guide for Navigating the Politics of the House and Senate Floors 107.0 RON Cartepedia Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team 248.0 RON Cartepedia Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions 134.0 RON Cartepedia Oglinda pentru luna plina/ Mirror for the full Moon | Andrei Gamart 49.0 RON…

[contempoyanna]

Politics has Identity?

Identity. 

Each one of us has it - whether as an individual, a community, a nation, or a species.

Heywood (2011) formally defines identity as a relatively stable sense of selfhood; it may be personal identity or your identity as an individual, a social identity shared with your group, or a human identity which you share with practically everyone. 

However, has it ever crossed your mind that our identity may have an effect or become a tool, particularly, in politics? Of course, we would also wonder how this is so, right?

Did that confuse you? Of course it did - at least, it was supposed to.

Interested? Then please do spare me some of your precious time and grab a snack or drink - both if you want - since this might be a bit of a lengthy chat. 

Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s worth your time. 

Identity + Identity Politics: connection?

Recall that I did mention identity affecting politics or having it become a tool for political motives or purposes. Well, what I meant by this was because of identity politics - pretty sure a lot of us are familiar especially in this generation where it became kinda popular. 

How so?

Despite "identity” being a fairly new term having been used in the 1950s, popularized by the psychologist Erik Erikson, identity has come to have many definitions as of today. 

Identity may refer to something as simple as our basic information to some sort of complex ideas, such as social roles or categories that one fits in - in this case, identity has always existed (Fukuyama, 2018). 

Fukuyama (2018) has used the term ‘identity’ in such a way that he may portray its significance to contemporary politics. 

He points out that identity grows from a contrast between one’s true inner self and the outer world, commonly known as society, which does not exactly recognize the worth or dignity of the individual’s inner self.

This is where identity politics comes in.

Nowadays, almost everyone values the authentic inner self we each have and claims that outer society is systematically incorrect and unfair with its judgement of the former. 

Thus, conformity should not be the norm but instead it is society that ought to change. 

Of course, this is all rooted with the sense of recognition that each individual should have - in a broader scale, the recognition of the identity of a nation or a state; which usually results in political struggles as we can see from human history itself. (Hedel did present that the struggle for acknowledgement or recognition was what fueled human history)

Identity politics comprises a large portion of these struggles: democratic revolution to new social movements,  nationalism to Islamism, and the politics on college university campuses (Fukuyama, 2018). 

Wait... what exactly is Identity Politics?

(source:https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/03/18/the-dutch-election-suggests-a-new-kind-of-identity-politics)

Instead of an established political personality (or characteristic) with a consistent ideology, Identity Politics is an orientation about social theorizing and political practice (Heywood, 2011). 

It helps us become liable to question about for whose progress is being done (Garza, 2019). Additionally, it may also refer to social campaigns that aim to gain “recognition of historically oppressed ethnocultural or racialized groups” (Kobayashi, 2009).

Identity Politics: Two Forms

Commonality 

According to Jonathan Heidt (he’s a speaker on the YouTube video I watched so I’ll just link the video at the end of this section), there were two methods as to how identity politics is organized. 

Commonality is one of the two and is actually seen as the best method to use identity politics. In this situation, the civic leaders, for example, will gather a large number of people and appeal to them by stating what is common between them. 

Which will then be followed by “telling them that some of our brothers and sisters are being denied equal access, equal opportunity or equal dignity”.

Martin Luther King is one of the examples used by Heidt to further visualize how commonality is in identity politics.

Common Enemy

Ever heard of the Bedouin notion: “Me against my brother, me and my brother against our cousin, me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger”?

Well, according to Heidt, this is a common principle of social psychology which drives Common-Enemy Identity Politics.

In this case, a person or group unites with the thought that “they are the enemy, they are the cause of these issues, of these inequalities, etc.”. Hence, the name common enemy. However, this is not practical and is seen as the “very bad” side of identity politics. 

(Personally, I think Nazi Germany is an example of this since they viewed the Jews as a common enemy - or maybe I’m wrong about this one) 

source:  There are two kinds of identity politics. One is good. The other, very bad. | Jonathan Haidt

Okay. So how did this emerge?

For starters, the term ‘identity politics’ was actually coined by Barbara Smith, an American feminist, and the Combahee River Collective in year 1974.

Back then, identity politics emerged from the growing need to reform various campaigns that had “prioritized the monotony of sameness over the strategic value of difference” until then (Garza, 2019). 

The context for this emergence was due to the embedded racism and discrimination in the system despite segregation law was no longer implemented in that year.

Garza (2019) states that in the most simple way, and I quote, “identity politics is the assertion that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.”, end quote.

But... has it gone too far?

In my own opinion, I do believe that identity politics has gone too far in this generation. 

Instead of achieving the purpose of inclusivity of everyone, identity politics turned for the worst and divided the people. In which, the speech climate, that Heidt mentioned in the video, plays a critical part on this subdivision.

(I do not want to offend anyone therefore please educate me if I do have the wrong views.)

Identity politics has come to the point that we are limited to give out opinions in order to not be publicly humiliated - or as millennials call it - cancelled.  With the rise of cancel culture, hearing the motto “silence is safer” is not really that shocking. 

A lot of people would rather stay quiet despite having different opinions on multiple issues in order to avoid conflict and being cancelled for sharing an opinion in good faith, as Heidt said. 

Conclusion?

Is identity politics bad? 

Not necessarily. In fact, identity politics has actually been one of the good political approaches (in my opinion) that resulted in the success of social advocacy campaigns. 

I still do stand by my opinion that identity politics has gone too far since it was supposed to promote inclusivity but in recent times has more on displayed exclusivity and division amongst the population. 

But well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed and feel free to drop an ask if you think that there is something unclear or you want to discuss it. 

REFERENCES

Fukuyama, F. (2018). The Politics of Dignity. In IDENTITY: The Demand for Dignity and Politics of Resentment (1st ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Garza, A. (2019). Identity Politics: Friend or Foe? Othering & Belonging Institute. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/identity-politics-friend-or-foe

Heywood, A. (2011). Identity, Culture and Challenges to the West. In Global Politics (pp. 181–187). Palgrave Macmillan.

Kobayashi, A. (2009). Identity Politics. In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (pp. 282–286). Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-008044910-4.00960-3

[marcopuntozip]

The People Versus: Francis Fukuyama – Noisɘy Italia

Bella pe’ tutti, io so’ FF aka Francis Fukuyama aka LIL Liberal e oggi risponderò a ‘n po’ de commenti vostri sotto ai libri miei. Partiamo da quelli ar pezzo mio più famoso, The End of History and the Last Man, che immagino avrà generato ‘na valanga di stronzetti impanati e scrocchierelli. Haters, let’s do this. 

Neffa4ever86 scrive: «Questa storia della democrazia liberale come definitiva espressione della politica e della società umana non ha nessuna attinenza con la realtà e produce più danni che altro». Allora, caro Neffa4ever86, io ‘a società umana e ‘a politica le affronto, non come te che manco c’hai la faccia de manifestatte cor tu vero nome, Bufu tubercolotico. Annamo ar prossimo BIATCH!

TobSur scrive: «Dissing alla Sinistra hegeliana: checked. Dissing al progressismo: checked. Dissing al Positivismo: checked. Bella per Fukuyama». Bella pe’ te TobSur, grazie che me segui. One fratm, one love.

«Citi tanto Hegel ma se lo avessi letto un pochino capiresti quante cazzate dici e quanto Hegel non c’entri un cazzo con le tue idee» commenta Gesù. Bro, io Hegel l’ho letto al terzo anno de Classico, anche più de 'na vorta. Tu, caro figlio de Dio, che sostieni che er patriarca da’a filosofia da’a storia e da’a dialettica tra padrone e servitù non c’entri 'n cazzo con la filosofia mia da’a storia e con la idea mia da’a centralità der thymos ne’e dinamiche sociali, pensi ‘nvece d’averlo letto bene, quando hai finito er diciassettesimo anno de Psicopedagogico? Ma mori.

SenzaDiscoIoPatisco dice solo: «Fallito». Beh, se ave’ scritto ‘n libro che è stato tradotto in più de 20 lingue, che ha infiammato il dibattito politico e accademico mondiale e che porta pure mo’ a parlarne dopo quarant’anni dalla sua pubblicazione, mi rende ‘n fallito, allora so’ contento d’esse’ ‘n fallito. Te, invece, che scrivi “fallito” sotto i libri deji altri, non pensi d’essere un fallito? 

«Boh, sinceramente non so come tu faccia a sostenere che la società in cui viviamo sia perfetta e non necessiti miglioramenti. Ma sei mai uscito un attimo dalla tua villetta in Pennsylvania?». MA PERCHÉ ME DOVETE FA’ INCAZZA’ A POSTA? PORCAMADOSKA! IO NN’ HO MAI DETTO CHE ‘A LIBBBERAL DEMOCRACY SIA ‘A FORMA POLITICA PERFETTA, CAPACE DE PORTA’ BENESSERE E PACE PE’ TUTTI. NON È ‘R PARADISO TERRESTRE. È SEMPLICEMENTE QUELLA CHE PIÙ PERMETTE DE SODDISFA’ ER DESIDERIO DE RICONOSCIMENTO INTRINSECO NELL’OMO. PRIMA AVEVAMO ‘A MEGALOTIMIA, E STORICAMENTE SI È VISTO QUANTO FOSSE 'NA ZUCCHINA ‘N CULO PE’ LL’OCCIDENTE, PE’ ‘E CONTRADDIZIONI CHE SUSCITAVA. ORA C’AVEMO IL LIBBERALISMO DEMOCRATICO, E CIÒ SEMBRA PERMETTERE AR NOSTRO FURORE DE NON SFOCIA’ PIÙ IN IDIOSINCRASIE ECCESSIVE. PORCODIAZ. NON ME RIMPETE PIÙ ‘R CAZZO CO STA STORIA.

«Finalmente un libro dove non ci sono tette e culi, ma solo filosofia old school. Questo farà bene alla scena. Grande Fukuyama». Grazie, Sdrumox. Sinceramente non me ne frega ‘n cazzo de’a scena, preferisco solo scrivere di ciò che me ‘nteressa.

Adesso passiamo ad uno de’ libri mia più recenti, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

«Everybody: speriamo in un futuro migliore. Fukuyama: hold my beer...». TTstraT, non capisco se m’insulti o se me vuoi bene. Comunque io TI  LOVVO DI BENEEEE!! Kiss kiss.

«Vedo che il professore continua ad abbracciare le sue idee neoconservatrici. Complimenti». T’AMMAZZO DIOCARO! No, ok, sto calmo. Non capisco se cerchi d’esse’ provocatorio o descrittivo. Io cerco soltanto de studia’ ‘e fondamenta de’e dinamiche politiche che ce governano, ner modo più oggettivo possibbile. L’identità, in ‘sto momento, è ‘r topos che alimenta molte de’e funzioni nostre, quindi era necessario analizzarlo. Se pensi che quello c’ho scritto, o er modo in cui l’ho riportato, siano n’ gran paio de palle, dimostramelo. Altrimenti, torna a gioca’ a Minecraft e lascia la ricerca accademica a chi ‘a sa fa’.

«Professore, ma lei se le fa le seghe sugli Hentai?». Io le seghe me le faccio davanti a tu’ madre. E vengo solo su tu’ sorella.

Beh, penso che possa basta’ così. Ringrazio Noisey per avemme invitato. Bella pe’ tutti.

[cnbnews]

作者： 韩家亮

5月29日，亚特兰大，示威者焚烧警车 （图源：Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images）

网友云齐天在华夏论坛开了一线：秦晖：身份政治、阶级政治和宪政危机–从美国“黑白矛盾”谈起，我进线一看，原来是秦晖的油管。我马上头大：几年看不到一篇大陆人有质量的文章，又来一个。我讲过多次，大陆社科哲学各科学者中很少有人具有大三以上的程度，很多连大一都没有。我又是讲求学术严谨的人，极少看油管。所以我留言一贴，希望有人总结一下（take-away）。出乎我意料之外，云齐天的take-away很好。下面是云齐天原帖照抄：

……………………………………

我只在multi-tasking时记下来不全的几点（不是原话，是我的理解）：

-要区别制度性歧视与个人偏见。

-得到社会福利应是因为穷而不是因为肤色。

-受害者身份是不应该世袭的。

-政治正确不能靠权力强加于人。自然状态下的个人或团体（包括商业公司）的行为不应用过度使用政治正确。

-拆历史雕像是否可以被接受要看是否符合法定程序。

-做为最不知道反思的中国人有什么资格批评别人过度反思？

-要区分阶级政治与身份政治。

……………………………………

虽然有些问题，但已经有相当的意思。在此之前我已经开始写一篇关于身份政治的网文，下面我就把草稿加以修改搬过来（这样读者可能有个对照，便于理解）。还需要几篇文章才可能点评[1]。

身份政治这个课题非常大，许多西方学者教授也搞不清楚。我最近的一篇网文解释了什么是种族和种族冲突[2]。现在这篇正式开始考虑身份政治、种族、宗教。实际上这些课题每一个都可以非常大，这里只作些入门介绍，然后给读者提供一张继续学习的路线图（roadmap）。

@身份政治（英文：Identity Politics）及美国黑人人权运动

身份政治是比较新的政治词汇，随着美国黑人争取民权运动才开始进入美国政治。后来身份政治又扩展到其他政治领域。因为这个词汇最近才用在政治上，所以常常被错误引用或被误解引起争议。读者最好具备几本较好的参考书，边学习边查找。主要参考书我推荐哥伦比亚大学著名人文教授Mark Lilla的《The Once and Future Liberal–After Identity Politics》[3]。Lilla属于左派/自由派，他有些观点我不赞同。但他是我所尊敬的一位学者因为他思路和推理清楚（这有些类似于我尊重华盛顿邮报专栏作家/CNN GPS主持人Fareed Zakaria）。无论左派还是右派，只要讲的内容有价值就应该认真考虑。Lilla常写一些通俗读物解释一些重要词汇或观点。我读过好几本他的书，质量都很高。他的这本书主要目的是总结自由派的过去，展望自由派的将来，所以有此这书名。身份政治只是[2]中很小一部分。注意Lilla的这本书属于通俗读物，要真正搞懂一些问题需要参考深得多的专著或论文，例如福山的新书《Identity》[4]。但福山的书建立在黑格尔哲学上，对大多数读者来说太深太难。[4]起码要有相关学士水平加上福山两部政治秩序书（研究生基础课），可能还需要更高深的基础。我是在纽约时报书评上第一次得知[4]。读了[4]以后再看那篇书评，明显纽约时报书评的作者没有读懂这本书。另外我也曾看到较差西方大学Identity Politics方面教材，记得质量很差。读者最好同时有[3,4]，学习时交叉参考使用。

如[3]所说，身份政治这个词基本上1960年代才开始使用于美国政治。但身份政治属于人类社会本性，所以历史上长期存在（这点[4]的解释全面的多）。[3]从Pseudo-Politics一章开始讨论身份政治。62－64页指出美国的身份政治早在殖民时代就开始了，不过那时没有使用身份政治这个词。大家一般知道最早的美国殖民地是英国清教徒寻求宗教信仰自由建立的（至少开始时是这样）。从某种角度看这些清教徒是在寻求一种身份，它不同与原来英国或欧洲的身份。后来移民美国的其他种族和教派的人越来越多。而且新移民常常对原来种族（ethnicities）的忠诚超过对（美国）民主的承诺。也就是说新移民认同自己的种族先于认同美国。所以大批移民开始时，那时美国政府和公民要求移民家庭必须先被安格鲁-新教文化同化才能成为美国公民。

这里应该初步介绍为什么美国特殊（exceptional)，当然应该先讲英国特殊。这种特殊不是指race而是指ethnicity。英国的种族属于安格鲁－萨克森族（[2]讲到中文的种族对应于两个词：race和ethnicity；race本身无法定义）。所以讲到英国的ethnicity就是指安格鲁－萨克森族包含其主导宗教（宗教是ethnicity的一重要因素）。（古代中国认为中国是世界文明中心也属于一种特殊。）

罗马帝国灭亡后，基督教存在两大教派：天主教和东正教。欧洲（特别是西欧）主要是天主教。希腊属东正教。1517年马丁路德倡导的宗教改革后天主教又分成两大教派：新教（也称基督教）和天主教。英国的宗教非常特殊（简单介绍这点恐怕就需要十几篇文章），基本上属于新教。

英国人（后来美国人）认为自己是神所特意拣选的（chosen），所以exceptional。在世间表现为英国（美国）为山巅之城。这有不同的理解，但有不少人领悟为神的祝福，包括国家强大。英国称霸世界许多年，称为日不落帝国。有些人称之因为英国/美国exceptional。新教是否有优势曾在社会学、经济学、政治学、神学里有过激烈讨论。许多人可能听说过麦克斯・韦伯的一本书《新教伦理与资本主义精神》。实际上事情要复杂得多。

因为同化和忠于国家的问题，早期美国要求新移民先接受安格鲁-新教文化以后再成为美国公民。就是说如果新移民不是从安格鲁-新教文化来的，就应该先被逐步同化。

美国西奥多・罗斯福总统（1901-1909）执政时期要求所有种族，包括安格鲁-新教，都要进入“大熔炉”。结果产生的美国文化一半同化一半熔化，即安格鲁-新教文化+新移民文化形成一种新文化=‘美国文化’。

[3]的64-66页专门讨论美国黑人问题。注意[3]特意提到黑人与其它种族不同。（部分）美国白人强加黑人身上Negro的称呼（百度翻译为黑人，好像应该翻译成黑鬼更合适），成为一种羞辱的身份（Shameful Identity）。这种身份引起一种反弹，美国黑人认可一种以受苦和羞辱的身份，由此而来的反抗，不屈服，和特殊成就。顺便提及根据真实事迹改编的电影Green Book（2018），描写几十年前美国南方种族歧视的状况。此电影曾得到奥斯卡金奖。

上面身份政治以及它与美国黑白种族关系只是开了个头。虽然话不多，读者要真正理解身份政治必须反复认真思考这些以及查询相关书籍文章。下一篇我将讨论身份政治与宗教的关系。这里我想指出这里的四个要点。

一）美国的华裔和其它族裔移民与美国黑人/非裔在身份政治方面遇到不同的挑战。无论华裔站在哪一边都可能存在问题。

二）早期华裔在美国受歧视以致产生排华法案本质上与黑人受歧视不同，至少不完全相同。

三）美国黑白种族冲突问题的真正解决必须通过正确理解圣经，宪法和政治历史的基础上才可能解决。注意马丁路德金领导的民权运动就是根据圣经和美国宪法[5]。

四）类似冲突不仅发生在美国，也存在于其它国家（特别是移民国家，例如澳洲[6]），不过一般来说程度上缓和多了。

注释：

（1）华夏论坛：秦晖：身份政治、阶级政治和宪政危机–从美国“黑白矛盾”谈起

（2）韩家亮：什么是种族和种族冲突？http://hx.cnd.org/?p=185652

（3）Mark Lilla，The Once and Future Liberal–After Identity Politics,HarperCollins,2017

（4）Francis Fukuyama,“Identity:the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment,”Picador,2019.

（5）马丁路德金：发自伯明翰监狱的一封信“Letter from aBirmingham Jail[King,Jr.]“

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

（6）Amy McQuire WaPo 6-18 Australia is outraged over George Floyd.But what about black lives on our shores?

相关链接：

1）韩家亮：与任赜商榷自由主义http://hx.cnd.org/?p=153945

2）韩家亮：与吴华扬商榷：陈果仁案和身份认同

3）韩家亮：边境建墙与移民政策

4）韩家亮：英国脱欧的利弊

5）韩家亮：平等的意义http://hx.cnd.org/?p=166239

6）韩家亮：法律前面人人平等是什么意思?http://hx.cnd.org/?p=168938

7）韩家亮：身份和国家认同以及相关政治http://hx.cnd.org/?p=172663

8）韩家亮：法治的思考和探索：西方、中国http://hx.cnd.org/?p=176571

(文章仅代表作者个人立场和观点)

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中国强推港区国安法 欧盟对港限制出口

中国盗砂船掏空澎湖周边海域， 台方今后将把盗采船拍卖船员判刑

中国线下银行网点半年关闭千余家

美媒：谁在搅黄习近平的“中国梦”?

文昭：中共向全球中国人徵税，「虽远必割」时代到来！香港立法会选举或推迟一年，借疫生事引发对决

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来源:华夏文摘

原文链接：韩家亮：从BLM和身份政治谈起(图) - 新闻评论

本文标签：中国, 宗教, 文化, 澳洲, 种族, 移民, 美国, 英国, 黑人

[sternejp]

#reading #lesen #lire #francisfukuyama #identity the Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (名古屋大学附属図書館支援事業) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6j4f41D-gN/?igshid=ey1z10jdg1rw

[wolfandpravato]

Some tentative thoughts about the NFL national anthem controversy

I don’t have firm views about the NFL players kneeling during the national anthem; it strikes me as more of a political, business and ethical question than a legal one and is thus outside my core areas of expertise. But I thought I’d pass along a few tentative thoughts I had on the matter.

1. Just to get the legal questions out of the way, the First Amendment of course doesn’t constrain NFL owners from firing employees for kneeling during the national anthem — or, for that matter, from insisting that they kneel, or that they go along with their teammates’ views. The First Amendment applies only to government action, and football teams aren’t constrained by it. Some state laws, though, may restrict employers from retaliating for their employees’ political activity; some apply only to off-the-job speech, but others might apply to on-the-job speech as well (see p. 304). I don’t have much to add on that beyond what I said in the article I just linked to; the rest of the items below, starting with No. 3, will generally speak to the ethical question of what should be done, not the legal question of what may be done.

2. I don’t think presidents and other politicians should be calling for the firing of private employees for their speech; but while I think such calls are generally beneath the dignity of the office, and outside government officials’ proper bailiwick, they are generally the exercise of the politicians’ own First Amendment rights. (Compare the reactions by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and then-first-lady and expected senatorial candidate Hillary Clinton to the anti-foreigner, anti-gay, and anti-New York remarks by Atlanta Braves player John Rocker in 1999.) When the statements carry a threat of governmental retaliation if the employee isn’t fired, then they stop being protected and may themselves become First Amendment violations. See, e.g., Okwedy v. Molinari (2d Cir. 2003). But I haven’t seen such a threat in the Trump tweets I’ve read, and it seems unlikely to be implicit, especially since the NFL has little legal interaction with the president.

My guess, incidentally, is that Trump’s statements are highly unlikely to lead to any firings and may not even have been aimed at doing so — instead, they are an attempt to make a political point with the public and thus play into Trump’s broader political plans. Time will tell whether they have succeeded in this mission or have backfired.

3. As I understand the custom, standing for the national anthem is a sign of respect for the nation, just like standing in court when a judge enters is a sign of respect for the judicial system. Deliberately and visibly declining to stand is thus reasonably understood as a sign of disrespect for the nation.

It’s not a vulgar gesture (compare, say, giving the flag the finger). It’s not a loud gesture. Like with much symbolic expression, people can interpret it in many ways; consider the controversy about how displays of the Confederate battle flag should be understood. But I think such kneeling is reasonably understood not just as a deliberate gesture of disagreement with the nation’s policies but also as a deliberate gesture of disrespect.

Football, like other forms of entertainment, trades on public goodwill; so do football players, like other entertainers. Unsurprisingly, fans who believe players are disrespecting something important to the fans will be upset with the players and the teams. And that is especially so when the players are seen as disrespecting something connected to the fans’ identity — whether the fans’ country, the fans’ race, the fans’ religion, the fans’ sexual orientation or whatever else.

4. The players are using the national anthem as a means of conveying a political message. But the custom of playing the anthem, and of having people stand during the anthem, itself conveys a political message. The players may thus be “politicizing” the event in the sense of making an extra political statement, and one that’s especially noticeable because it’s unusual. But the event was political to begin with, even if the political force has in some measure faded through repetition.

5. People understandably resent when people whom they’ve paid to do something, and whom they are watching in the anticipation of doing that, take over part of the event with their own political message.

To give an analogy from my own life, faculty often appear onstage during graduation. If I displayed a slogan while doing that (even just briefly), or waved whatever flag I wanted to wave, people in the audience might be understandably annoyed. They paid (indirectly) a lot of money to watch a graduation, not my own political expression. My employers might understandably be annoyed as well. (I think the point holds regardless of whether I teach at a public or private school, but for the sake of analogy assume I’m teaching at a private school.) Likewise if a player appears on the field wearing a Confederate patch, or expressing his views about abortion, or kneeling during the national anthem.

6. This having been said, it seems to me the players have a particularly strong basis for being entitled not to stand if they so choose: They aren’t simply trying to say something — they’re trying to abstain from being pressed into saying something.

They aren’t just choosing between expressing nothing and (on employer time and with a vast employer-supplied audience) expressing their own message. Rather, they have to choose between being seen (by a vast employer-supplied audience) as expressing something they don’t believe and visibly abstaining in a way that expresses something else (again, in front of a vast employer-supplied audience).

It’s one thing to expect someone not to express a political view while on the clock, especially if he is free to express it on his own time. It’s a graver imposition, I think, to demand that the person express a political view (or be seen as expressing it), even when he is on the clock.

It might be something we would normally demand of, say, spokespeople or others who are paid to convey an organization’s message; if you’re paid specifically to express, say, the ACLU’s or the NRA’s view, you have little ethical basis for refusing to express those views. But it isn’t something we should normally demand, I think, of most employees. In that respect, a football player who wants to refrain from standing during the national anthem may have a stronger claim than one who wants to sing his own preferred song, or wear his own preferred flag on his uniform.

7. One analogy, just because it’s always helpful to think how things might come out from the other political side: Say that some football team tells its players to wear rainbow pins as a sign of support for gay rights, and one of the players declines.

He isn’t asking to wear, say, a “homosexuality is an abomination” pin; his views on gay rights may be complex (perhaps he supports gay rights in some measure but thinks the rainbow pin has come to symbolize a broader view that he doesn’t endorse). He just wants to abstain from wearing the pin, though his not wearing the pin will indeed be seen as sending a message (perhaps even more obviously than wearing the pin, alongside all the other teammates, would have).

What should we think about this? True, his not wearing the pin might alienate some fans who view the action as an attack on their or their friends’ sexual orientation; likewise, not standing during the anthem might alienate some fans who view the action as an attack on their country. Again, focusing on ethics rather than the law, should the employer tolerate both refusals, just one of them, or neither?

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/09/28/some-tentative-thoughts-about-the-nfl-national-anthem-controversy/

[itunesbooks]

Identity - Francis Fukuyama

Identity The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment Francis Fukuyama Genre: Political Science Price: $13.99 Publish Date: September 11, 2018 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Seller: Macmillan The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. Identity is an urgent and necessary book—a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict. http://bit.ly/2VinLUS

[stoweboyd]

Joan Williams plots a course for the Dems to recover working class whites, saying ‘Donald Trump feeds off class resentment. Let’s stop making his job easier’.

[...] we must attend to what the sociologists Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb call the “hidden injuries of class.” These are dramatized by a recent employment study, in which the sociologists Lauren A. Rivera and Andras Tilcsik sent 316 law firms résumés with identical and impressive work and academic credentials, but different cues about social class. The study found that men who listed hobbies like sailing and listening to classical music had a callback rate 12 times higher than those of men who signaled working-class origins, by mentioning country music, for example.

Politically, the biggest “hidden injury” is the hollowing out of the middle class in advanced industrialized countries. For two generations after World War II, working-class whites in the United States enjoyed a middle-class standard of living, only to lose it in recent decades. Does their sense of entitlement reflect white privilege? Sure it does. Even in the glory days, when blue-collar whites’ wages were spiraling up and the Federal Housing Administration was helping them buy homes, those jobs and houses were not equally available to African-Americans. Far from it.

But something is seriously off when privileged whites dismiss the economic pain of less privileged whites on grounds that those other whites have white privilege. Everyone should have access to good housing and good jobs. That’s the point.

Two changes are required for Democrats to diminish the 39-point margin by which whites without college degrees voted for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton.

This first concerns social honor. Too often in otherwise polite society, elites (progressives emphatically included) unselfconsciously belittle working-class whites. We hear talk of “trailer trash” in “flyover states” afflicted by “plumber’s butt” — open class insults that pass for wit. This condescension affects political campaigns, as in Hillary Clinton’s comment about “deplorables” and Barack Obama’s about people who “cling to guns or religion.”

[...]

The second is for Democrats to advocate an agenda attractive to low-income and working-class Americans of all races: creating good jobs for high school graduates. The college-for-all experiment did not work. Two-thirds of Americans are not college graduates. We need to continue to make college more accessible, but we also need to improve the economic prospects of Americans without college degrees.

[...]

Democrats have given Republicans the priceless gift of letting them be the party that talks more about good jobs for working-class Americans.

[...]

We need to return to the agenda articulated more than 50 years ago by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Equality means dignity,” he said. “And dignity demands a job and a paycheck that lasts through the week.” Dr. King died trying to create an interracial coalition to meet this basic human right. Democrats need to take up that mantle and stop sleepwalking our way to the next electoral defeat.

The answer to good jobs for high school graduates is a huge infrastructure push, long overdue, and which could take a decade or more. So far, the GOP hasn’t gotten its act together and passed that, spending their time on tax cuts for the rich in proposed tax reforms and tax cuts for the rich in proposed healthcare reform, neither of which are certain, to say the least. Maybe they’ll get around to it, but maybe they’ll fumble an easy win for excruciating quagmires. 

The rest of her program requires the Dems to adopt pragmatic good manners: working class whites are challenged by the same forces as everyone else in the postnormal economy, and it’s high time Democratic orthodoxy reform around that. 

The largest challenge for the Dems may be accepting the realignment away from left-versus-right and accepting the primacy of up-versus-down politics, and picking the correct side: can the Dems reorient away from neoliberal globalism, and put the needs and challenges of American workers ahead of the metropolitan elite? Will the Democrats stop treating populism as a dirty word?

Williams new book, White Working Class: Overcoming Lass Cluelessness in America, has just been released. Here’s the publisher blurb:

Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite--journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In "White Working Class," Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the "New York Times," explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness. Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness. "White Working Class" is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, "White Working Class" will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.

[lollipoplollipopoh]

Are 'identity politics’ really a threat to democracy? | Upfront by Al Jazeera English In a special interview, we ask Francis Fukuyama, whose latest book is titled Identity: the Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, if identity politics are really damaging democracy. #Aljazeeraenglish #News