Tag Archives: identity politics

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The Oregon Department of Education’s Ever-Expanding List of Maligned Minorities

A just-released Education Update sent out by Colt Gill, the Director of the Oregon Department of Education, notes that his department and the Oregon Health Authority have created a toolkit centering on safety, health and belonging as schools transition to face covering optional policies.

In his determination to cover all his bases, he says the goal of the toolkit is to create safe, supportive, welcoming schools, particularly for “students who experience disability and those who are Black, Indigenous, Latina/o/x/e, People of Color, Tribal members, and/or are members of the LGBTQ2SIA+ community.”

Good grief! 

Gill clearly sees the K-12 education universe as nothing more than an assemblage of distinct and maligned minorities. This is the kind of identity politics that foments perilous division of our state and our country. Rather than emphasizing common values and interest, Gill’s identity politics stresses differences and creates a feeling of ‘zero-sum’ competition between groups. 

In a Medium article, Benjamin Morawek posited that there are two types of identity politics.

“The first kind is what I call inclusive identity politics and it is synonymous with the term “common-humanity identity politics” used by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind. This kind of identity politics, they explain, mobilizes identity “in ways that emphasize an overarching common humanity while making the case that some fellow human beings are denied dignity and rights because they belong to a particular group. This is the identity politics of the civil rights movement and a shining example of its use is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.”

 “… the second kind of identity politics, exclusive identity politics, calls for the value of marginalized groups based on the very identity that makes them different,” Morawek wrote.  As Oberlin College professor Sonia Kruks said in Retrieving Experience, “The demand is not for inclusion within the fold of ‘universal humankind’ … nor is it for respect ‘in spite of’ one’s differences. Rather, what is demanded is respect for oneself as different.”

One problem with Gill’s identify politics is that it leads to even more minority designations. “Once identity politics gains momentum, it inevitably subdivides, giving rise to ever-proliferating group identities demanding recognition,” says Amy Chua in Political Tribes.

Gill’s reference to “the LGBTQ2SIA+ community” illustrates this point. 

The Oregon Department of Education says this  “…means a term that encompasses multiple gender identities and sexual orientations including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Two-Spirit, Intersex, and Asexual. The plus sign (“+”) recognizes that there are myriad ways to describe gender identities and sexual orientations.”

“Originally LGB, variants over the years have ranged from GLBT to LGBTI to LGBTQQIAAP as preferred terminology shifted and identity groups quarreled about who should be included and who come first,” Chua wrote. 

“How can we come together on anything big…when we keep slicing ourselves into smaller factions?”, wrote Carlos Lozada in The Washington Post. “Down this road lies, ultimately, state breakdown and failure,” warns Stanford University political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, in Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

At some point, the left is going to tie itself up in knots trying to categorize everybody. In the meantime, the country will slowly break down into warring factions and we will all pay the price.

More to read

Teaching Race in Kindergarten: Oregon’s new standards for social science exchange colorblindness for racialism. This is not progress.

Oregon’s New Ethnic Studies Standards: Identity Politics Run Amok

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Want to see where identity politics is taking us?

Tucked into the massive year-end deal President Trump finally signed to fund the government and coronavirus relief are provisions to fund a National Museum of the American Latino and an American Women’s History Museum as part of the Smithsonian Institution. They will supplement more than 19 museums, galleries, gardens, and a zoo the Smithsonian Institution already operates.

At some point, I guess, every sliver of the American population is going to get its own Smithsonian museum. 

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama declared, “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” Not so much now. 

Now we are more a fragmented America that has shifted away from inclusion to exclusion and the proliferation of group identities. Maybe the members of each segmented group feel better about themselves, but it’s at the expense of national cohesion and productive discourse and too often leads to multiple categories of aggrieved, mutually antagonistic people. 

Look at how identity fixation has already led to unwarranted minor and extreme accusations of cultural appropriation and the obscene cancelling of people caught in the spotlight.

“Democratic societies are fracturing into segments based on ever-narrower identities, threatening the possibility of deliberation and collective action by society as a whole,” wrote Francis Fukuyama, a prominent American writer and political theorist. “This is a road that leads only to state breakdown and, ultimately, failure.”

After we build American Latino and Women’s museums, are we going to be pressured to build separate museums honoring the contributions of German, Polish, Irish, French, Scottish, Puerto Rican, Dutch, Swedish, Chinese, Russian, Filipino, and Norwegian Americans? How about the contributions of men, the disabled or other yet-to-be-contrived categories of people?

There are already 11 Smithsonian Institution museums and galleries at the National Mall in Washington D.C., so finding space for two more on the mall will be hard. Finding room for 15 more will be impossible.

But arguing against more identity museums will be hard in the current climate, partly because politicians see advantage in pandering to special interests.. 

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) tried to kill funding for the new American Latino and Women’s museums. “The last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups,”” he said. “At this moment in the history of our diverse nation, we need our federal government and the Smithsonian Institution itself to pull us closer together and not further apart.”

His objection was met with withering criticism by other members from both sides of the aisle.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) responded with high dudgeon, calling Lee’s objections to the Latino museum  “outrageous,” and saying Lee “…stands in the way of the hopes and dreams and aspirations of seeing Americans of Latino descent having their dreams fulfilled and being recognized.” 

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) slammed Lee for trying to block a women’s museum “in a year where we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.” 

Members also cited the conclusion of a congressional commission formed to study the potential for an American museum of women’s history that, “America needs and deserves a physical national museum dedicated to showcasing the historical experiences and impact of women in this country.”

In the end, funding for both museums came through. Expected to stand on or near the National Mall, the proposed museums will be the first to join the Smithsonian since the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in September 2016.  

But will they really be cause for celebration?

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Identity Politics Run Amok at the University of Denver

dufreespeechwall

Free Speech Wall at the University of Denver

Their heads full of self-righteousness and the angst of youth, too many campus activists seem determined to impose identity politics on campuses.

In 2015, some students at Princeton University acting under the banner of the Black Justice League demanded “cultural competency training” for faculty and staff, required classes on “marginalized peoples,” and a dedicated space on campus for black students.

The same misguided thinking has now infected my alma mater, the University of Denver.

In September 2016, the message “Disrupt the Peace, White Silence = Violence, White People Do Something, #BlackLivesMatter,” was painted on the university’s Free Speech Wall. The Wall was subsequently defaced to change the message , leading to a sit-in, a march and an Oct. 7 meeting with the school’s chancellor, Rebecca Chopp.

At that meeting, the Black Student Alliance presented the chancellor with a list of demands, including:

  • That a former mascot, called Boone (after Daniel Boone), be prohibited at any DU events because it is “representative of the western extinction of Native American culture” and that another mascot be picked “that celebrates inclusion and diversity while also acknowledging the history of the university’s part in violence against Native Americans”
  • That DU stop calling the students, teams, etc. “Pioneers”, which they’ve been doing since 1925, because “The term ‘pioneer’ is highly problematic for many, especially Native American students, as it is defined as a person who is among the first to explore or settle a new country or area.
  • That all students applying to DU be required to write an essay articulating their understanding of Inclusive Excellence.
  • That all students complete a curriculum in “Race, Inequality & Social Change” in order to earn a degree.
  • That DU establish an Ethnic Studies Department.
  • That DU provide a budget for the following heritage/history month programs and events:

February – Black History Month

March – Women’s History Month

May – Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month

June – LGBT Pride Month

September – Latinx Heritage Month

October – LGBT History Month

November – Native American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month

In a counterintuitive move, a group of student leaders subsequently imposed restrictions on what could be written on the Free Speech Wall and a camera was installed to monitor who’s writing what there.

Hate speech has also been prohibited on the Wall. Hate speech “may take the form of direct or indirect offensive slurs, jokes, messages, or attacks on members of the DU community based on their race, gender, ethnic origin, religion, abilities, socioeconomic background, or sexual orientation,” a memo said.

The memo concluded with the nonsensical comment that “…these guidelines are not intended to restrict free expression; rather they are a means through which we can continue to thrive as an inclusive community with a shared value system and many varied viewpoints.”

Is all this really where we want our universities to go —coercive cultural sensitivity training, the Orwellian suppression of free speech in the name of supporting openness, the elimination of historical references that don’t conform to modern sensibilities, the imposition of identity politics?

The fact is, erasing history solves nothing. Nor does mandated cultural awareness. And the explosion of racial and ethnic heritage months is taking us all in the wrong direction. What we really need is to incorporate recognition and appreciation of various heritages into the daily flow of our calendar and lives.