Against The New Politics Of Identity eBook

In Against the New Politics of Identity, philosopher Ronald A. Lindsay offers a sustained criticism of the far-reaching cultural transformation occurring across much of the West by which individuals are defined primarily by their group identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Driven largely by the political Left, this transformation has led to the wholesale grouping of individuals into oppressed and oppressor classes in both theory and practice. Where the Left once organized around liberal principles to ensure that all groups had an equal seat at the proverbial table, the prevailing sentiment on the Left today regularly demands not only that those categorized as oppressed receive priority seating, but also that those categorized as oppressor are excluded from the table altogether. Government bodies, corporations, universities, and the mainstream media regularly submit to such illiberal demands in the name of "allyship," "antiracism," or "equity." As a result, public policy, employment practices, schools, and even medical organizations now often explicitly favor certain identity groups over others, with preference uniformly given to those of "marginalized" groups. First proposed and promoted by scholar-activists in academia, this radical cultural shift by which all policies and practices must be seen through the lens of group identity rests on three dogmatic tenets: through their "lived experience" those who are alleged to be oppressed or marginalized have special insight and everyone should defer to their wisdom; racism is embedded in laws, regulations, policies, and institutions even though discrimination is expressly forbidden under the law; and equity, understood as the elimination of racial, ethnic, and other group identity disparities in all areas of life, must take precedence over all other criteria, such as individual merit, achievement, or need. Through rigorous arguments supported by a wealth of research, Lindsay demonstrates that these tenets are based on fallacies—specifically, that claims for the alleged insights of "lived experience" derive from a specious theory of knowledge, that dogmatic beliefs about systemic racism rest on flawed statistical analyses, and that the pursuit of equity, far from being ethically justified, is ineffective, self-defeating, and violative of individual rights. He further warns that the push for identity politics on the Left predictably elicits a parallel reaction from the Right, including the Right’s own version of identity politics in the form of Christian nationalism. As Lindsay makes clear, the symbiotic relationship that has formed between these two political poles risks producing even deeper threats to Enlightenment values and Western democracy. If we are to preserve a liberal democracy in which the rights of individuals are respected, he concludes, the dogmas of identity politics must be challenged and refuted. Against the New Politics of Identity offers a princip