The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Edited by Hugh LaFollette, print pages 2534–2542.

© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

DOI: 10.1002/ 9781444367072.wbiee436

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Identity, Politics ofLinda Nicholson

The phrase “identity politics” refers to a type of political movement where the issue

of social identity is a central concern of the political movement itself. The phrase

emerged in the early 1970s, in particular with reference to the kind of political turn

taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s by many of those fighting on behalf of Afri-

can Americans and women in the United States.

Prior to this turn, the political movements associated with each group were pri-

marily rights-based movements. With respect to African Americans, the movement

was identified as a movement for civil rights (see civil rights); with respect to

women, it was identified as a women’s rights movement. The issue of social identity

played a relatively minor role in both these movements; insofar as identity was dis-

cussed at all, this was done mostly in order to deny that blacks or women were dif-

ferent from whites or men. The denial of difference followed from the political goals

of these movements. Both wanted to criminalize public forms of discrimination

against blacks and women respectively – discrimination that was often justified by

claims that blacks and women were biologically different from whites and men.

Activists in these movements denied the existence of biologically based differences

in order to demand, for blacks and women, inclusion into mainstream American

society on the same terms as were available to whites and men.

But after the successful passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which criminalized

public discrimination against members of both groups, activists, particularly

younger ones, became less focused on inclusion. Instead, in the creation of Black

Power and women’s liberation, such activists became more concerned with defining

and revaluing what it meant to be black and female and with developing political

demands that emerged out of the particular needs and experiences of blacks and

women. They sought to mobilize African Americans and women so as to form polit-

ical movements that took pride in many of the characteristics associated with their

respective groups and that differentiated them both from whites and from men.

Other political groups, such as gays and lesbians, Latinos and Latinas, and Native

Americans, similarly turned away from a politics of inclusion to one that focused

rather on the specific disadvantages and positive attributes of their members. As the

meaning and social consequences of each group’s identity became issues of central

importance to the political struggles of these groups, so did the phrase “identity

politics” begin to be used to describe this new type of politics. One of the earliest

definitions of identity politics can be found in the 1979 founding statement of the

Combahee River Collective – an activist organization based in Boston:

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This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics.

We believe that the most profound and potentially the most radical politics comes

directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppres-

sion. (Combahee River Collective 2007: 65)

This turn to a politics where issues of identity were central led to the emergence of

the label “identity politics.” The turn and its attendant label have generated diverse

reactions. Many have been highly critical of this turn; others have been more sup-

portive. Intertwined with these different reactions are different descriptions of what

identity politics means and different explanations as to why it came into existence.

Therefore any depiction of identity politics must take into account these diverse

descriptions and explanations. Let me begin by focusing on the descriptions and

explanations given by those who have largely supported the turn.

Those who argued for Black Power and for women’s liberation did not challenge

the legitimacy and utility of the earlier civil rights and women’s rights movements.

Instead, they argued that these movements, while necessary, were insufficient for

attaining social justice. The limits of rights-based movements such as these could

be found in the limits of the criminalization of discrimination itself. The criminali-

zation of discrimination against blacks as blacks, or against women as women,

would not challenge discrimination against those values and practices that had

become historically associated with each group; therefore it would not challenge

the continued dominance of those values and practices associated with white peo-

ple and with men. For example, while legal measures would prohibit employers

from refusing to hire a person on the grounds that that person was a woman or

black, they would not prohibit the same employer from refusing to hire the same

person if that person did not appear “tough enough” for the job or did not speak

standard English.

Supporters of Black Power and of women’s liberation argued that, without a chal-

lenge to the unquestioned acceptance of such dominant norms, only a small number

of blacks and women would be helped: those who, in their speech, behavior, or

appearance, were already for the most part in conformity with existing norms of

what is a desirable speech, behavior, and appearance. But, as supporters claimed, this

describes only a small percentage of blacks and of women – specifically, those

already privileged blacks and women who had access to the kinds of education and

socialization that would familiarize them with the dominant norms. Enabling access

for the vast majority of blacks and women required tackling not only the explicit

issue of discrimination, but larger questions as to the norms and values that domi-

nate our existing institutions of public life.

Proponents of identity politics viewed the values and norms that were dominant

in social life as arbitrarily created and in many respects inferior to those associated

with the life practices of previously excluded groups – such as their own. They

claimed that criminalizing discrimination without questioning the dominance of

such norms not only would end up by limiting access to a few, but would put pres-

sure on all upwardly mobile blacks to act more like whites, and on women to act

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more like men. The end result would be a public world even more extensively dom-

inated by such problematic norms and values.

Moreover, proponents of identity politics believed that there were other reasons

why the criminalization of discrimination alone was an insufficient goal. The existing

social order, as they saw it, was in need of radical changes brought to its institutions;

such changes were necessary for the true advancement of blacks and women. For

example, in the case of African Americans, activists claimed the need for greater com-

munity control over institutions related to schooling – a control that was necessary if

these institutions were to respond more fully to the specific needs of African American

children. African American activists claimed that African Americans needed greater

ownership and control over the businesses that operated within their local communi-

ties. Women’s liberation activists argued that changes needed to be made to the divi-

sion of labor within the family (see family). Given the unequal familial demands on

women’s time, the criminalization of discrimination would not, just by itself, over-

come the barriers that women faced. Other changes – such as women’s greater access

to birth control, abortion, and childcare – would also be required if women were to

function in a state of equality with men (see birth control; abortion). Also, these

activists claimed that the criminalization of discrimination would not eliminate the

routine sexual harassment that women faced in many social institutions, or the phys-

ical battering that many experienced at home (see domestic violence).

Both African American and women’s liberation activists also believed that real

social justice required fundamental changes to the existing institutions of knowl-

edge and cultural production. Both saw the present institutions as being biased

against African Americans and women, as ignoring the contributions of both to the

histories that were taught in schools, and as representing only poorly the artistic,

literary, and musical contributions of present-day African American and female art-

ists, writers, and intellectuals. African American and women’s liberation activists

proposed the creation of special programs in secondary and higher education to

compensate for this bias. For similar reasons they also proposed the creation of

African American and feminist publishing houses, recording companies, television

stations, musical festivals, and other forms of cultural production.

Finally, many within both movements claimed that, since the task of figuring out

what African Americans and women truly needed in order to achieve equality with

whites and men was so complex, it was necessary for African Americans and women

to be centrally involved in this discovery process. These activists argued that the

oppression of members of their respective groups was sustained in part through

their members’ own internalization of dominant ideas of social justice – ideas

derived from whites and men. For African Americans and for women, to discover in

truth the kind of social world that would be best for both required separating, at

least temporarily, from whites and men. In the safety of their own social spaces,

African Americans and women would more likely be able to think for themselves

about the kind of social order they wished to create. Only in such contexts could

they shake off socially inherited tendencies to defer, in leadership and in thinking,

to whites and to men. Moreover, through such separation, African Americans and

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women could establish the kind of solidarity with members of their own groups that

would constitute a significant power base (see power). The strength of such solidar-

ity would enable each group to make demands on white people and on men that

could not be made without such a unified base.

In short, identity politics represented a more extensive challenge to the existing

social order than was present in the earlier civil rights and women’s rights

movements. Those involved in creating this newer politics demanded a revaluing of

the meaning of blackness and of womanhood, radical changes to existing institu-

tions, and the coming together of blacks and women to create institutions that would

respond to the unique needs of each.

Since the creation of identity politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, various

criticisms have been raised to this type of politics. They can be grouped into three

major categories: (1) criticisms that took issue with the idea of group-specific

demands; (2) criticisms that deplored the emphasis on culture found in identity

political movements; and (3) criticisms that challenged the ideas of blackness and

womanhood proposed by identity politics. Let me elaborate on each of these criti-

cisms, and also on some of the responses that have been advanced to each.

Many of those who have criticized identity politics differentiate the politics of the

civil rights movement from Black Power and that of the women’s rights movement

from women’s liberation. Such critics recognize that blacks and women had been

excluded for centuries from full participation in many areas of social life, and that

movements like the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement were

necessary to end this exclusion. But, as the critics argue, the goals of these rights-

based movements were not group-specific. Demands for the right to live where one

wanted, or for opportunities in education or employment that matched one’s abili-

ties, were not goals specific to being a black or a woman; these were goals that all

human beings shared. But when those fighting on behalf of women and of African

Americans began to emphasize goals more specific to the needs of their group, the

politics of these groups became “interest group politics” – in other words politics

that emerged in order to meet the specific interests of a particular group. And, by

being group-specific, such politics pitted the interests of the group against the inter-

ests of others. Consequently, when the civil rights movement metamorphosed into

Black Power and the women’s rights movement metamorphosed into women’s lib-

eration, the newly formed politics became divisive, tearing apart the bonds that

united Americans as a whole.

A spokesperson for this type of criticism is Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. As the title of his

book The Disuniting of America (1991) suggests, Schlesinger believes that identity

politics has torn the American polity apart, creating a Balkanization of American pub-

lic life. Schlesinger is not opposed to all the calls for the satisfaction of group-specific

needs, or for statements of group-specific pride. He claims that a certain acknowledg-

ment of difference is important for reminding the American public of the complexity

and diversity that have been an important part of the history and culture of the United

States (see multiculturalism). He argues, however, that, when this emphasis on dif-

ference becomes too heavily associated with a sense of victimization and with the belief

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that only members of a group can understand and express the needs of that group – as

happened, he claims, with certain versions of Afrocentrism – then the emphasis on

difference becomes counterproductive to the development of American society.

This argument, that identity politics has been overly divisive, has been countered

by Linda Alcoff (2006). Alcoff notes that, while Schlesinger differentiates between

forms of identity politics, in his more general claims about it he tends to equate it

with its worst forms (2006: 18). Moreover, Alcoff claims that there are other insidious

aspects of Schlesinger’s critique of identity politics. On the one hand, Schlesinger

counters ethnic identification through the idea of America as a melting pot – a pot

where none of the ingredients possesses priority in strength or in value. On the

other hand, there are places in Schlesinger’s argument where he also claims the supe-

riority of certain European values. Does this inconsistency not point to a general

problem with many of the arguments against identity politics, as Alcoff suggests?

Can they be consistent? In other words, is it possible to advance an identity-free

political ideal? Do not all such ideals implicitly presuppose commitment to some

substantive identity (Alcoff 2006: 17–18)? Alcoff ’s point here recalls a criticism that

was advanced by advocates of Black Power and women’s liberation against the earlier

civil rights and women’s rights movements: that the calls for integration made by

these movements invariably ended up asking blacks and women to adopt the norms

and values of those already in power – whites and men.

A second type of criticism of identity politics has aimed at Black Power’s and wom-

en’s liberation’s emphasis on culture. Focusing on women’s liberation, Alice Echols

(1989) argues that the emphasis on cultural issues in women’s liberation was not

found in the early years of this movement – that is, in the late 1960s. Echols labels the

dominant political tendency of late 1960s’ women’s liberation “radical feminism,” dis-

tinguishing it from the “cultural feminism” that she claims took over in the early

1970s. She argues that in the late 1960s radical feminists focused heavily on instigat-

ing institutional changes throughout American society. In those years radical femi-

nists focused, for example, on changes that needed to be made to the family, changes

that could free women from the kinds of domestic responsibilities that prevented

them from pursuing lives outside of the family (see motherhood). Radical feminists

fought for safe, effective birth control, for community controlled day-care centers,

and for the repeal of laws prohibiting women’s access to abortions (Echols 1989: 3–5).

However, by the early 1970s women’s liberation became dominated by activists who

were focused less on institutional change and more on building a separatist women’s

“culture.” This emphasis on “cultural change” led to a highlighting of personal rather

than social transformation and to a politics that became more individualist and less

activist (1989: 5).

Adolph Reed (2007) makes a similar argument about Black Power. Reed claims

that the emphasis placed by Black Power activists on celebrating the distinctiveness

of African and African American culture came at the expense of a challenge to the

kinds of economic issues that affected more seriously African American life.

Moreover, he argues that even the emphasis on culture was misguided, in that the

distinctive African American “culture” that Black Power activists celebrated was an

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artificial culture, bearing only a limited relation to the realities of present and past

African American life:

This yearning was hypostatized to the level of a “black culture” – a romantic retrieval

of a vanishing black particularity … In that sense, the nationalist elaboration of Black

Power was naïve both in that it was not sufficiently self-conscious and in that it mistook

artifacts of culture for its totality and froze them into an ahistorical theory of

authenticity. … [A]bstracted from its concrete historical context, black culture lost its

dynamism and took on the commodity form (e.g. red, black and green flags, dashikis,

Afro-Sheen “blaxploitation” films, collections of bad poetry …). (Reed 2007: 35–6)

Various arguments have been made that counter this type of criticism of identity

politics. Countering the argument that Black Power created a false image of authen-

tic black culture, Alcoff (2006: 36) claims that this is a problem with a certain repre-

sentation of black identity, not with the attempt to construct a new version of black

identity per se. And, countering both Echols’ and Reed’s critique of identity politics’

overemphasis on culture at the expense of institutional and economic change, Alcoff

argues that such critiques are misguided in their attempts to separate out identity

politics’ focus on culture from its focus on institutional and economic change. She

lauds identity political activists for correctly recognizing that substantial changes to

the latter required an emphasis on the former. Thus, to the extent that cultural issues

surrounding the implied inferiority of a particular group have served as the basis

upon which that group has been denied access to political institutions or opportuni-

ties for economic advancement, a focus on such cultural issues was necessary in

order to advance the possibilities for such access and advancement.

Can we really make a neat separation between racial ideology, psychic processes of

internalized superiority, and the economic hierarchy of resource distribution? Clearly

these are bound up together, mutually reinforcing. Eurocentric vanguard narratives

are critical tools used to justify the existing hierarchies of ascriptive class segments.

(Alcoff 2006: 33; see racism)

Countering Reed’s argument that identity politics’ emphasis on culture was the cause

of an African American and general New Left turn away from issues of economic

redistribution in the 1960s and 1970s, I have argued that this type of account put

forth by Reed (as well as by other leftist critics of identity politics) lacks historical

accuracy (Nicholson 1989: 575–9). It implies that the 1960s was a period that was

open to a political mobilization focused on economic redistribution. But, I argue,

this was not the case; on the contrary, in the 1960s and 1970s the New Left in

general – including its African American and women’s liberation political contingent

– represented the politics of a very small part of the US population. While the New

Left was able to contribute to the growing acceptance of civil rights for African

Americans, able to mobilize a certain number of young people opposed to the draft

and to the Vietnam War, and able to generate from within its ranks a women’s

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liberation movement, it could not have mobilized a mass movement around wealth

redistribution. This was proven by Martin Luther King’s inability to mobilize any

significant following for his Poor People’s Campaign (see king, jr., martin luther).

Thus, after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Bills were passed in the 1960s and after

the Vietnam War ended in the early 1970s, the New Left was left without issues that

could reach a large population, outside of itself. This, and not the emergence of wom-

en’s liberation and of Black Power, was the cause of the demise of the New Left in the

1970s.

There is, however, one argument against identity politics that even those who

have otherwise supported this type of politics have recognized as legitimate: the

conceptions of identity put forth by identity politics activists in the early years of

women’s liberation and Black Power were highly problematic. In the 1970s and

1980s some of those who had otherwise supported many aspects of women’s libera-

tion and Black Power began to argue that the ideas of “black” and “woman” that both

movements supported were homogeneous in ways that excluded many. Feminists

such as Benita Roth (2004), Beverly Guy-Sheftall (1995), E. Francis White (2001),

and Kimberly Springer (2005) claimed that the women’s liberation movement

privileged the perspectives of white women, and that the Black Power movement

privileged a type of hypermasculinity and heterosexuality. In sum, some of those

otherwise supportive of women’s liberation and Black Power began to argue that

both movements needed more complex ways of formulating what it meant to be

black and what it meant to be a woman if these movements were not to privilege

dominant subgroups within these two categories.

One consequence, from within these movements, of the focus on the complex-

ity of identity has been an outpouring of scholarship on the issue of identity per

se from people otherwise sympathetic to these movements. Feminist scholars in

the 1980s and 1990s began to argue that the various identities that constitute an

individual do not function in isolated ways. Elizabeth Spelman (1988) argued

against understanding the different categories of identity as isolated, or (as she

described it) as “popbeads” that can be separated from one another for analytic

purposes. Deborah King (1988) similarly claimed that such a way of understand-

ing identity led us to think of individual identity as the sum of falsely separated

categories rather than in a multiplicative way. Kimberle Crenshaw (1994a, 1994b,

1997) expanded on these ideas in her introduction to the concept of “intersec-

tionality” – a concept that emphasizes how identity categories intersect in the life

stories of individuals. Finally Judith Butler (1990, 1993, 1997, 2002), with her

focus on performative identity, has elaborated on many of the complex ways in

which identity functions.

These new understandings of the complexity of identity have been in accord with

the widespread recognition that the politics of “race” and “gender” have themselves

become more complex in the period since the 1960s and 1970s (see race). With the

election of an African American man to the US presidency and with many women

in positions of political leadership, some have claimed that we are in a “post-black”

and “post-feminist” era. Others have countered that race and gender continue to

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matter, although in more subtle and complicated ways (Nicholson 2008). History

will determine the degree to which and the ways in which identity continues to

matter, and consequently the degree to which and ways in which identity politics

will continue to be a subject of political debate.

See also: abortion; birth control; civil rights; domestic violence;

family; king, jr., martin luther; motherhood; multiculturalism; power;

race; racism

REFERENCES

Alcoff, Linda Martin 2006. Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Butler, Judith 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:

Routledge.

Butler, Judith 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York:

Routledge.

Butler, Judith 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press.

Butler, Judith 2002. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.

Combahee River Collective 2007. “A Black Feminist Statement,” in Linda Nicholson (ed.),

The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory. New York: Routledge, pp. 63–70.

Crenshaw, Kimberle 1994a. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black

Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist

Politics,” in Alison M. Jaggar (ed.), Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist

Social Ethics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 39–61.

Crenshaw, Kimberle 1994b. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and

Violence against Women of Color,” in Martha Albertson Fineman and Roxanne

Mykitiuk (eds.), The Public Nature of Private Violence: The Discovery of Domestic

Violence. New York: Routledge, pp. 93–129.

Crenshaw, Kimberle 1997. “Intersectionality and Identity Politics: Learning from Violence

against Women of Color,” in Mary Lyndon Shanley and Uma Narayan (eds.),

Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives. University Park: Pennsylvania

State University Press, pp. 178–93.

Echols, Alice 1989. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975, Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

Guy-Sheftall, Beverly 1995. “Introduction: The Evolution of Feminist Consciousness among

African American Women,” in Beverly Guy-Sheftall (ed.), Words of Fire: An Anthology

of African–American Feminist Thought. New York: New Press, pp. 117–49.

King, Deborah 1988. “Multiple Jeopardy: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology,” Signs:

Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 14, pp. 42–72.

Nicholson, Linda 1989. “Review of Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country,” Constellations,

vol. 5, pp. 575–9.

Nicholson, Linda 2008. “Identity after Identity Politics,” Journal of Law and Policy, vol. 33, no.

43, pp. 43–74. At http://law.wustl.edu/journal/33/Nicholson.pdf, accessed March 8, 2012.

Reed, Jr., Adolph L. (2007). “Black Particularity Reconsidered.” At http://libcom.org/library/

black-particularity-reconsidered-adolph-l-reed-jr, accessed March 9, 2012.

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Roth, Benita 2004. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist

Movements in America’s Second Wave. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur 1991. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.

New York: W. W. Norton.

Spelman, Elizabeth 1988. Inessential Woman. Boston, MA: Beacon.

Springer, Kimberly 2005. Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

White, E. Francis 2001. Dark Continents of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of

Respectability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

FURTHER READINGS

Alcoff, Linda Martin (ed.) 2006. Identity Politics Reconsidered. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Alcoff, Linda Martin, and Eduardo Mendieta (eds.) 2002. Identities: A Reader. Malden, MA:

Blackwell.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (eds.) 1995. The Ethics of Identity.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gitlin, Todd 1995. The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked with Culture

Wars. New York: Henry Holt.

Glaude, Eddie S. (ed.) 2002. Is It Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black

Nationalism. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Hayes, Cressida 2007. “Identity Politics,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press.

Hollinger, David 1995. Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books.

Nicholson, Linda 2008. Identity Before Identity Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Ryan, Barbara (ed.) 2001. Identity Politics in the Women’s Movement. New York: New York

University Press.

Young, Iris Marion 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University

Press.