identity politics

• idpol, IDPOL (abbreviations)

identity politics (uncountable)

1. (politics) Politics focusing on the self-interest and perspectives of people in various groupings, such as ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

   Synonym: identitarian polititics

   • 1985 August 24, Paulla Ebron, Myrna James, Helen Moores, Rachel Tallen, Frances White, Elise Young, “Confronting Racism and Anti-Semitism”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 7, page 4:

     Both of you spoke from a perspective that some have called identity politics. This approach began as a way for black women to create space for themselves in feminist and black movements by asserting their identity. It has evolved into a framework that recognizes difference but builds barriers rather than bridges among us by not also discussing ways we learn from each other or ways we are connected.

   • 1997, Richard Dyer, White, →ISBN, page 8:

     The history of identity politics has however been marked by the increasingly strong and heard voices of, for instance, non-white and working-class women, lesbians and gay men, who do not entirely recognise themselves in these ‘As a…’ claims.

   • 2000, George Schöpflin, Nations, Identity, Power: The New Politics of Europe, page 9:

     There are those who contest the very idea of identity politics or try to reduce it to a minimum. They would prefer that rights be derived wholly from function and reason. Then, there are those who like some identities but not others. Ranged against them, as it were, are the identity politicians, who insist that all problems are derived from identity and should be solved by the criteria of identity.

   • 2021 February 2, Katharine Murphy, “Scott Morrison must heed the lesson of Donald Trump and slap down Craig Kelly”, in The Guardian‎:

     Muzzling Kelly also elevates a semi-professional obscurantist to the status of free speech martyr, and that invites a cacophonous pile-on from the rightwing bobble heads who screech about the left’s obsession with identity politics while shovelling identity politics at their audiences.

   • 2022 March 8, Andrew Anthony, “Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama review – a defence of liberalism… from a former neocon”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     The pursuit of individual autonomy or “self-actualisation”, for example, has become mired in an identity politics that subsumes the individual into rigidly defined groupings based on ethnicity, gender or sexuality.

• identitarian
• identity politician