How to Unlock Identity Politics
I have decided we Americans are laboring under a dangerous illusion at this time in our history which is that we actually are our identities. We aren’t. While we are a lot of different things, our identities are a construct in the same way our genders are a construct.
I’ll say it again: Identity is a construct.
We aren’t our identities—we have identities. In the same sense as we have green eyes or red hair. It’s not likely you’d ever hear me say, I am red hair.
Could it be that our brakes-on insistence that we are these identities that we have—and nothing else—is what is causing the devastating polarization in our country? I think so.
Opinion Writer at Large Charlie Warzel writes in “Trump Fades, but the Culture War Doomloop Is Eternal,” his essay in this morning’s New York Times, “Donald Trump’s win in 2016 never brought his followers the cultural power they’d hoped it would. Quite the opposite, it prompted many cultural institutions—from professional sports to Hollywood to oppose Mr. Trump and his political project with more fervor.
“That reaction helped fuel a sort of Möbius strip of grievance: We came to power because we were the overlooked, hated silent majority. But, when we came to power, our opposition hated us and treated us unfairly. The result of that treatment is the loss of our power and proof that the system is rigged against us. Once again, we’re the overlooked, silent majority.”
For as long as a portion of our citizenry constructs their identity around an overlooked, oppositional, unfair stance, Mr. Warzel is right. The culture wars will be eternal. And isn’t that just plain sad?
We have forgotten, in a sort of culture war smog, that we construct our own identities. No one else can do it for us. Identity construction is an inside-out job. It can’t really be done any other way, not really.
But … can our identity constructs be outwardly focused? Yes. Keeping up with the Joneses, anyone? And can that wreak utter havoc on the zeitgeist of a culture? It sure can. We know this because it sure has.
Here’s a good example. Charles M. Blow, writing of his usual ambivalence toward President Obama, errs on the side of begrudging admiration for “His presence as president was his greatest symbol of change: a smart, competent Black man, devoid of personal scandal, who brought class and professionalism to the White House. He changed the idea of what was possible to America—including its children—and enshrined Black excellence at the highest level of government as just another normal thing.”
But what Mr. Blow giveth, he also taketh away. “The politician may be popular, but the activist will rarely be. The politician can unify, but the activist often divides. The politician seeks to unify people around a set of beliefs. The activist seeks to right a wrong that has been held up by a set of beliefs. In short, the politician navigates the system, while the activist defies it.”
Mr. Blow seems decidedly sad that Mr. Obama is not an activist.
Mr. Obama never once claimed to be an activist. That’s not part of his identity construct. His identity is built on the scaffolding of polity which, according to the illustrious OED comes from Greek roots meaning city. It is defined as an organized society. A person’s identity constructed around polity must needs be a politician.
I’m sorry for Mr. Blow’s disappointment. “Obama is a good man and a great politician. History will always record him as such. But he is not an activist. He is not the person who can or will push for the immediate alleviation of oppression. That is just not who he is or how his power was derived.”
It's easy to see the construct of Mr. Obama’s public identity. It’s that identity that three former presidents are employing to bring faith in the new Covid vaccine to the American populace. Mr. Obama is even thinking of taping his inoculation, as social proof of his endorsement.
Opinion Columnist Frank Bruni writes this morning, “‘Deep state’ isn’t the right term—its overtone is too clandestine, its undertone too nefarious—but let’s go with it, co-opt it, turn a put-down into a point of honor, the way gay rights activists did with ‘queer’ and anti-Trump feminists did with ‘nasty woman.’”
His point is that election officials all over the country used their constructed identities as upholders of the rule of law, and fair and free elections, to report the facts about the votes in this election. He means, “Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, who supervises its elections,” and “Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager,” and many, many other Americans who stood against the self-serving rhetoric of the current incumbent.
Mr. Bruni, in this quote, gives us an identity clue. I wonder if you can spot it. “Also in my deep state: Judge Stephanos Bibas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, a Trump appointee who, in a blistering ruling on Friday, rejected the president’s efforts to invalidate millions of Pennsylvania ballots. ‘Voters, not lawyers, choose the president,’ he wrote on behalf of the three judges hearing the case, all appointed by Republicans. ‘Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.’ Such statements of the obvious, and such sweet, sweet relief.”
Did you see his clue? I’m guessing you didn’t. Here, I’ll give you another one. This time, from the always-delicious Roger Cohen’s op-ed. “President Trump is not yet gone, but he’s muted, marginalized and moribund. … That insidious, wheedling, plaintive voice from the Oval Office, oozing self-obsession, got inside everyone’s heads. Mr. Trump’s political genius lay in his feel for the dark side of human nature and his ferocious, social media-propelled energy in appealing to it. The volume has dropped as the nightmare recedes. Suddenly there is mental space to think again.”
Mr. Cohen continues, “There is plenty to think about.”
Mr. Bruni wrote about “my deep state,” no one else’s his own. My was your clue.
Mr. Cohen wrote about “mental space … to think again.”
We must learn once again to think about the identities we construct. They are our own, whether we are happy in them or not. The most extraordinary thing about identities—those ego-constructs we have—is that, by deliberate intention, they can be changed.
Hamlet, well, perhaps William Shakespeare or—dare I say her name, Emilia Bassano Lanier—said it best in Act II, Scene 2 of his eponymous tragedy. Hamlet is chatting with his favorite sidekicks, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whereupon Rosencrantz disagrees with his thane’s declaration that Denmark is a prison.
Hamlet replies: “Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.”
Here is how you construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct identity, Beloved. You try them on, as you would clothing, and determine whether you like them, they fit you, you can see yourself wearing them, and are comfortable and self-representative. And you discard old aspects of identity that you have outgrown, and you put on new aspects of identity that you wish to grow into. We do it all the time.
When we get stuck in identity, Beloved, we cause ourselves and others untold pain. If you are ready to finish with an old identity, great. Let it go. If you are willing to try on a new one, great. Go for it. If you find you don’t like this new one, you can let it go just like the one you’d outgrown.
This is how we ease off the knees-locked, brakes-always-on gridlock that we’ve created in our own country, and move on.
Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her website is susancorso.com.