Woke Identitarianism

Maizie same here.
I managed to read the article, too much meaningless jargon for me to absorb. For example -
"It is strongly influenced by critical-race theory, standpoint epistemology and intersectionality. "
I was going to add the saying "why not call a... a ...". But that's racist.
So what do you think personally, Baggs?

Imam has now started writing for the Daily Mail, so her views will become more mainstream.

She'll have to modify her vocabulary a bit. Quite frankly, I found it difficult to make head or tail of what she was saying and I'm very impressed by those of you who have managed to understand and respond to it.

I'm a disappointed with Birbalsingh. She started and runs a truly excellent Free School.

WW ???

furret you are right. The slang “woke” and identitarianism, should of course not be used in the same sentence.

Oh I stand corrected?

Did I mention identity politics? I thought that was somebody else.

furret just to add that identity politics and the identitarian movement are different.?

The Identitarian movement or Identitarianism is a post-World War II European far-right political ideology asserting the right of Europeans and peoples of European descent to culture and territories claimed to belong exclusively to them.

While on rare occasions condemning racism and promoting ethnopluralist society, it argues that particular modes of being are customary to particular groups of people, mainly based on ideas of thinkers influenced by Nazi theories.

Some Identitarians explicitly espouse ideas of xenophobia and racialism, but most limit their public statements to more docile language. Some among them promote the creation of white ethno-states, to the exclusion of migrants and non-white residents.

The movement is most notable in Europe. It also has adherents among North American, Australian, and New Zealander white nationalists.The United States–based Southern Poverty Law Center considers many of these organisations to be hate groups.

Modified from Wikipedia

No criticism of you baggs but the article is a very badly constructed and poorly argued.

Imam has now started writing for the Daily Mail, so her views will become more mainstream.

They are part of Young's "Free Speech Union".

growstuff. I didn't realise Toby Young was part of this little circle. The man who thought it would be a doddle to open and run a "free" school without any teaching experience, and who resigned not that long afterwards, saying he didn't think it was going to be that difficult!

The man who has discussed his support for "progressive eugenics" (apparently, selecting embryos for higher intelligence - fortunately for him it didn't exist when he was conceived) and who stated recently ""spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayer's money."

Nice people.

All of them, by the way, are part of a clique centred round "Spike", the Spectator and Toby Young.

Baggs Katharine Birbalsingh is the daughter of an eminent Professor of English. It annoys me that she even brings race into arguments. Given the circles in which she was brought up and has subsequently moved, it is entirely possible that she hasn't experienced the kind of racism which the children whom she now champions, have experienced.

Thanks for posting that Eloethan. Strangely enough, my own MP (Kemi Badenoch) has sometimes related an identical background. She now denies that structural racism exists, although she has in the past related about how she was viewed at a school in London. She has also told a few not quite true stories (lies) about her upbringing in Nigeria, where her mother is a professor and her father a doctor, working for the WHO. She also spent some of her childhood in America, while her father was at Harvard. It's a little worrying because she is now the Minister for Equalities.

She dismisses people who claim there is racism with the same kind of argument as Priti Patel did ie. "I'm a black woman and I'm successful, so therefore there isn't any racism".

It must be a Conservative narrative.

Well, it's quite interesting that Ms Iman was a Brexit Party candidate for Leeds North East, so hardly apolitical.

Also interestingly, in an essay/article she wrote in 2017 she seemed to have a very different take on the issue of racism:

" Like many other black people, for a long time I felt cheated - no matter what I achieved or how hard I strived I could not escape the structural oppression associatiated with "blackness".

She said her mother was highly educated, and she herself attended private schools and boarding school at secondary level but later moved to a local school. She quotes her new headmaster as saying, when she said she was nervous starting a new school:

"There are plenty of black people here, don't you worry".

Given that sort of comment, the division across racial lines that she found in the local school is hardly surprising, neither is the commonplace racism that she experienced. She says she "longed for acceptance" and, perhaps because of these feelings of loneliness and alienation, she began finding out a lot more about her Yoruba heritage and "found pride and stability with it".

She concludes: "It shows that even relatively privileged black people struggle to escape the constraints of racism. We are seen as being a skin colour before we are seen as a person."

It then seems rather perverse of her to be lauding the great strides that have been made in race relations over the last decades. Perhaps, given her upper middle class family background and a good educational grounding, including university, the issue of being black is not now so significant for her as it continues to be for others. As she says, class is also a major issue, but if you are working class and black you have two sets of prejudices to contend with instead of one.

I think to say "some argue that the appeal of a colour blind society is is in itself a racist idea" and "we should emphasize racial difference and think along racial lines" is a misrepresentation. Given all the negative stereotypes that black people have experienced, it may be seen as important to recognise and celebrate your race rather than be made to feel ashamed of it.

She goes on to say that there is now a growing movement which puts forward the idea that "every aspect, every facet and every detail of our lives, history and culture are explicitly or implicitly complicit in racism" and that there are now "hierarchies of victimhood" - the higher in this hierarchy you are, the more superior you are.

I think she misrepresents by exaggeration these so-called "woke" ideas (I do hate that word). Undoubtedly the UK (and many other countries) has a history of the most cruel and inexcusable racism from which we have all benefited. We are not to blame for what has happened historically but we are complicit in that racism if we continue to deny its current existence and to celebrate the British Empire and the people who helped to maintain its power and influence by means of subjugation and exploitation.

Perhaps Ms Iman saw it as a sign she had finally been accepted when she was given the opportunity to stand as a (failed) candidate for the Brexit Party in Leeds North East - that her colour was finally irrelevant. Some might think that, rather than being "colour blind", the Brexit Party would have found her a particularly suitable candidate to distance itself from UKIP, which even Farage had said he could no longer support because of its racism. Or perhaps she reached the conclusion that if you, as a black person, took a contrary view on the issue of racism, you would corner a "niche" market and be more able to further your journalistic ambitions.

...before I saw...

That post was written before your latest, ww, which sort of answers my question.

So, ww, why isn't the apparent (self) identity politics of people like Priti Patel, Munira Mirza and Katharine Birbalsingh accepted as valid? Is it just because they also self identify as politically conservative?

No, I think what I meant that people will self identify around a particular axis, and this axis is how they in turn wish to be identified.

I can understand the attractiveness of identifying with say being Asian, but you are more than that. You may be a woman or disabled My criticism of this theory is that it is reductive. That individuals are more than the sum of one particular axis, that by identifying as say Asian, it precludes other lived experiences like being a woman or disabled.

I get that identity politics is about self identification ww but in the quote, you did say it was about how people should be judged, presumably by others, which sounds more like your definition of stereotyping.

Can I just say that I’m not a proponent of identity politics.

The difference between stereotyping and identity politics is that they are polar opposites.

You know what stereotyping means. It is a subjective concept. It identifies others with particular characteristics often incorrectly.

Well, identity politics is about self identity. It is about how the individual sees herself within society.

It is the way in which individuals identify with others with similar ideology or cultural background, and the way this lived experience has instructed their lives.

I’m not explaining this very well am I?

Ww I apologise in advance if this is a stupid question, but I am genuinely wondering.
According to identity politics (I won’t use the slang term “woke”) people should be judged by their shared identity and in this case ethnic and cultural origins

If people are ‘judged by their shared identity‘, how does that differ from stereotyping?

I think although I may be incorrect, that identity politics has evolved out of cultural studies.

Prof. Stuart Hall was one of the founding figures of this British school of thought

The article begins by suggesting that racial equality has accomplished great strides legally in the U.K. over the past decades, even where society has faced setbacks.

It recognises that there is still much to be done.

However the argument then makes a huge leap that suggests that a movement (unspecified) has failed to recognised the gains made over the past decades, whilst suggesting that the argument of a “colourblind* society is itself a racist argument. It fails to understand the fundamental tenants of identity theory, which is a theory of group based identity and much wider in conception that race.

According to identity politics (I won’t use the slang term “woke”) people should be judged by their shared identity and in this case ethnic and cultural origins. Identity politics maintains that unless we recognise ethnic and cultural background, we can never understand the issues surrounding
them.

So rather than seeing identity politics as an ideology specific to racial issues as the article appears to argue, it is in fact an ideology that describes the way groups identify themselves in society, like white supremacists, LGBT, nationalists, etc.

That will do for the time ? I’ve only addressed a bit of the argument I know, but you will lose the will to live baggs if I chunter on too much