i've been thinking about identity politics
stay with me
The alternate title to this was: is it time to reduce the weight of identity in our assessment of effective representation? But then I was like, well, that’s a bit of a mouthful.
Listen, I’m not saying identity politics is dead. I don’t even believe it necessarily should be. But I do think, times being what they are, it’s worth taking a hard look at our reasons and motivations for placing our full, undivided, unflinching support behind certain people, their ideologies, and the products they try to sell us.
We could talk, of course, about the brand of skin-deep feminism displayed by and with the Blue Origin all-female space flight. We laughed, didn’t we? Oh, how we laughed.
But mostly, if I can be totally frank, it was an exercise in quiet anguish.
For The Guardian,
wrote about the 11-minute flight of fancy:[T]he flight served as a kind of perverse funeral for the America that once enabled both scientific advancement and feminist progress – a spectacle that mocked these aspirations by appropriating them for such an indulgent and morally hollow purpose.
…
These women, who have placed themselves as representatives for all women with their promotion of the flight – positioning themselves as aspirational models of femininity – have presented a profoundly antifeminist vision of what womankind’s future is: dependent on men, confined to triviality, and deeply, deeply silly.
The crew was, as we all now know, captained by Lauren Sánchez, a woman (hence the feminism) and a third-generation Mexican-American. She is engaged to Jeff Bezos, the adopted son of a Cuban immigrant. If I relied solely on their gender and/or ethnic identities to form my opinion of them, I’d be liable to believe that as an immigrant and a Latina and a woman, I might have a solid foundation of shared values with them.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Bezos runs Amazon, a company responsible for running entire industries out of business and for treating labor laws as pesky obstacles to be defeated. Sánchez is not only engaged to Bezos, but has also sat at Donald Trump’s table, presumably performing her approximation of a smile and uncaring of the fact that this president (like many before him) is responsible for the continued disparagement and criminalization of immigrants like her ancestors, refugees like her future husband’s father.
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There’s the unending Republican cadre of representational disappointments, of course. Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz. Kristi Noem. Karoline Leavitt. Latinos and women, in this instance, whose words and actions do nothing but undermine their respective identities. People on a lifelong quest to answer the question: how does the body survive when it’s been intentionally disentwined from the soul?
But I don’t even have to go to the GOP to seek disappointment. Not when my own provides it so freely. Let’s take a brief look at Kirsten Gillibrand, junior senator from New York who, at the height of #MeToo, helped usher fellow Democrat Al Franken’s exit from the Senate due to the multiple sexual assault allegations against him.1
What does Gillibrand have to say now regarding disgraced New York governor and current mayor hopeful Andrew Cuomo, a man who the Justice Department just last year ruled to have subjected multiple state employees to sexual harassment and retaliation?
Her response to the NY1 reporter’s question as to whether she would support a Cuomo mayoral nomination appears to have been prepared by the Veep staff room, in that it expresses nothing but cowardly neutrality:
He has a lot of talent as an executive, he’s been a very strong governor and done very good things for New York, but he has admitted and he has said he’s made mistakes, mistakes that he regrets … So it’s really up to the voters. This is a country that believes in second chances… It’s not up to me.” (NY1 via X)
If I were a more empathetic person, I’d be concerned for her spinal health.
Is it even worth mentioning that Gillibrand has not spoken out about her constituent Mahmoud Khalil’s detainment over protected speech except for a tepid March 11 statement that I could only find on facebook (?) and not her official website, her Twitter, or her Instagram accounts?
Would it surprise you to know that when Khalil’s wife Dr. Noor Abdalla—American citizen, New Yorker, woman—gave birth to their first child a few days ago while her husband remains in a Louisiana detention facility over the alleged crime of criticizing a foreign nation-state, the only sound Senator Gillibrand, supposed feminist and defender of women’s rights, treated us to … was silence?
No, I don’t think it would surprise you.
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Indeed, the first elected official to show and deliver real pressure regarding the recent cases of due process-free deportations was Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, who upon the wrongful deportation of his constituent Kilmar Ábrego García, flew to El Salvador, and used his power as a U.S. senator to repeatedly insist on speaking with Ábrego García, then held prisoner at El Salvador’s mega-prison CECOT, until he was finally granted the ability to meet with him. Since this visit, we’ve learned that Ábrego García has been moved to a different detention center.
I’m sure many of you felt the same way, but it’s hard to explain the relief I felt upon seeing someone with the institutional power to take action and make a change actually do so. And no, I’m sorry to say that a long televised speech does not count as action. Last week, I frankly felt more represented by Van Hollen than I have felt by most elected officials over the last two years. And as far as I can tell, the only connective tissue between us is our sense of right and wrong. Not nothing, I guess.
Following the Maryland senator’s example, Senator Peter Welch of Vermont has visited Mohsen Mahdawi, his constituent (and, like Khalil, a Columbia student) who was detained during his U.S. citizenship exam over—again—protected speech.
On Tuesday, a congressional delegation from Massachusetts that included Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern and Senator Ed Markey visited the Louisiana facility detaining both their constituent, Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the aforementioned Khalil.
Further visits to detention facilities by Democratic representatives, including Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon, are in process.
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I realize some of you will be willfully obtuse about this and conclude that what I am positing is that we have to hand it to the white men of Congress, or that we shouldn’t demand more representation for historically underrepresented groups in the halls of Congress and other government chambers, or that white men are the only ones doing anything about the present injustices. Thanks to my keen and increasingly depressing observation of media literacy’s decline, I have armed myself with patience in preparation of such a (wrong) conclusion.
Because no, as DEI initiatives and programs are being decimated at the hands of the GOP, I am absolutely not arguing against diversity, equity, or inclusion in and outside of government. Today, I am specifically talking about the high worth we place on identity when it comes to assessing a politician’s representation, often to the exclusion of other, more salient factors.
Here’s what I am saying: effective representation can no longer be judged—if it ever could—on the sole basis of a shared identity with an elected official. It is not enough. We can start there, if we must and if we’d like, but then: what else?
If I vote to elect someone because they’re a woman and I’m a woman and I make certain assumptions about their beliefs based on that commonality, but they then govern the way I expect most white men to govern, then what have I accomplished? What have we accomplished? A purely demographic shift? At the end of the day, if policies and platforms remain stagnant, what impact does a shared identity really have?
Let me pick on her again: despite both of us being women, I do not feel represented by someone like Gillibrand, who speaks up only for some women and only when she finds it politically expedient to do so. Whatever her gender identity and the influence she might profess the same to wield on her politics, given the above, it is ideologically incurious and inconsistent of me to support the senator from New York.
And another: right now I feel more represented by Pete Buttigieg, who has often annoyed me and whose last name I’ve only recently figured out, going on his little podcast tour to try to undo some of the damage right-wing media has wrought, using his not insignificant communication skills, than I do by Barack Obama, who despite still being the de facto leader of our party, has been content to say all of nothing as we watch the quick eradication of due process by the Trump administration.2
What is power for, if it sits unused and untested? The negotiation of Netflix production contracts?
These are not things I’m happy about, by the way. I’m not a fan of disappointment, and you only have to scroll the newsletter to note I famously hate complimenting any politician. As I think we all should be, I’m committed to high standards from those who vow to represent the people. I do not buy into the electoral position as mere job theory of government. There is a vocational element to it; I refuse to consider the effectiveness of a politician in the same vein I consider that of a Best Buy assistant manager.
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When I’ve relied on and allowed identity to inform my politics to some degree, it has been because I have made assumptions about the way someone’s experiences—presumably, somewhat similar to mine as immigrants, women, and/or minorities—have shaped and led to positions agreeable with my own. It is not, to be clear, an irrational method. My assumptions have often yielded true.3 I only have to look at the fourteen signatories of the March letter demanding Khalil’s release, for instance.
But the assumptions have not yielded satisfactory results often enough to avoid being questioned. It’s something I’ve personally found quite challenging, to be honest.
I’ve had to realize, however, that if assumptions are to be anything, they are to be a starting point. That’s it. When we allow them to be both starting and ending points, we stand to lose—by allowing elected officials and those in power to rely on little more than the lowest common denominators to justify anything less than competent, sufficient representation. We deserve more. And if I have to praise a man named Christopher Van Hollen from Maryland for setting an example, well, then, so be it.
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I don’t now and I didn’t then disagree with her actions regarding Franken, by the way. It’s the inconsistency that grates.
Some of you will read this and want to comment “let him rest! he did enough!” And if that is you, I need you to ask yourself why you are treating a former president like a retired middle school teacher. Jimmy Carter was out there building houses until his dying breath.
See: AOC, Cori Bush, Julian and Joaquin Castro, Pramila Jayapal, Sara Jacobs, Jamaal Bowman, the aforementioned Pressley and García. Occasionally, Katie Porter, when she’s not taking part in inane photo ops. Do I always agree with them? No. But my assumptions, for the most part, have held.
>I refuse to consider the effectiveness of a politician in the same vein I consider that of a Best Buy assistant manager.
What an amazing line. Thank you!! I am so fed up with the collective "hands in the air" approach to the DNC.
Your point about the danger of this strategy being the beginning AND the end is spot on for me. It reminds me of all the cliche comments people make when an underrepresented person is elected, ie “thanks to Kamala now MY daughter knows she can be vp someday.” As if the only criteria for success is winning the seat, not what you do with it. Maybe this also speaks to our problem of engaging with elections and ignoring all the politics that follow.
Thanks for always offering such poignant (and hilarious) analysis and commentary.