OPINION: The demise of identity politics

“Identity Politics” is a blanket expression covering elements such as Social Justice, Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Cultural Sensitivity, Implicit Bias, Critical Race Theory, Tokenism, Structural Inequality, etc. where the focus is to classify individuals into ever shrinking groups based on some attribute. The very nature of Identity Politics dooms it to ultimately fail. The only question is how many institutions it will drag to their demise.  

Progressives create entire protected classes of people where members obtain some benefit from identifying with others in their class. The class attribute could be race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, economic status or any other identifiable characteristic that would allow segregation. These would then be identified as victims or oppressed while those outside the class would be labeled “privileged” or “oppressors.” It is then argued that victims or oppressed deserve compensation in some way from the oppressors.  

The idea that there are protected classes that need special legal protections crept into legislation in the form of hate crimes and hate speech. There is a penalty if you assault someone but there is an additional penalty if you assault someone because they are in a protected class. All men are created equal but progressive lawmakers make some more equal than others.  

Protected class advantages were further expanded with DEI because DEI gave hiring preference to members of a protected class. However, companies that embraced DEI found themselves with a numerical problem as there were simply not enough members in a protected class to satisfy the need. Suppose a company needs to hire someone with a particular set of skills possessed by 1% of the population and those skills are held by 1% regardless of class.  

DEI demands that you can’t consider all the candidates in all the classes but only consider the candidates in a protected class. If one company needs to find one person to fill a position then that can likely be accomplished. But what if there are 1,000 companies looking for 100 people each? There may not be enough available candidates in the protected class to fulfil the need and since DEI takes precedence then that company must settle for less qualified candidates. This isn’t saying that members of a protected class are less qualified, but it is a mathematical fact that there are less people in a smaller group than in a larger group. Companies with DEI are at a competitive disadvantage over companies without DEI.  

Identity Politics also works in the inverse. Progressives define a class of people who are undesirable, say felons for example. Most everybody can agree that felons should not have concealed carry permits so a class is defined and a right is restricted under the law. Once a precedent is established it then becomes a matter of expanding the class to include people who commit a misdemeanor or who have restraining order or who attend a public institution or work in certain occupations or…. Eventually through incremental changes the class can be expanded to encompass a large portion of the population. Attacks on civil liberties that cannot be done all at once can be accomplished slowly through incrementalism.  

One of the more pernicious and unexpected aspects of Identity Politics is the internal strife that DEI triggers within DEI departments themselves. DEI departments or agencies have the mission to ensure equity, which is impossible to achieve as long as humans are involved. What is equitable or fair is a subjective determination made by each individual. There is no mutually agreed standard of fairness so everybody’s idea of what is fair is different. Since DEI departments are on a mission to root out unfair situations and since what is unfair is subjective then DEI department employees will find unfair situations everywhere, especially within the DEI department itself, where employees spend most of their time.  

White liberal DEI managers are finding themselves outed by their own employees. This creates a nightmare for the company’s Human Resources department, which explains why so many Fortune 500 companies that were previously DEI proponents are now abolishing entire DEI departments. DEI is bad for employee morale and the bottom line. 

The threat of being canceled is the primary enforcement mechanism of identity politics. Say the wrong thing against a protected class and you put everything you hold precious at risk. Here again there are no standards, no bright line, there is only a subjective blur. One minute you are living your life as you always have and the next you are labeled a racist or a homophobe, or a supremacist or a Christian Nationalist or an extremist or…the list goes on. But the cutting edge on these insults has started to dull. Overuse has blunted their effectiveness to the degree of becoming ineffective. People can adapt to almost anything, including false accusations of being a racist.  

Identity Politics is destined to fail because of its very essence. Politics is about growing consensus and uniting people around ideas. Identity Politics is about division. It’s about separating people by attributes. However, each group created can be further divided by some imagined minor difference. This parsing continues until only a single unique individual remains, and where is the power in that?  

Cancel Culture has run its course and DEI has been exposed as a net destructive force. We are witnessing in real time the implosion of Identity Politics. The Democrat Party who was the vanguard of promoting DEI is among the first to fall from its effects. Democrats are fractured and effectively leaderless. Meanwhile the country is uniting around one simple principle. 

We are ALL Americans, and that is all you need to be great. 

It’s just common sense.

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Brent Regan is chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.