EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

I agree with that definition (although I might say "barrier" rather than "hardship"), but it's clear from the existence of articles like the one that I referred to above about David Cameron that there are people out there who don't understand the concept. They publish across the internet and are sometimes given platforms on broadsheet newspapers. The fact that they have a warped understanding of the concept doesn't stop them from pushing for change based on their view.

I don't disagree about the existence of those people, of course. I remember reading a tweet by someone who had misunderstood a fairly nuanced idea (that white people in America could not suffer from institutional racism) so radically that they believed that it was not possible for black people to be racist - there'll always be people who misunderstand things, and often they'll have a platform. But plenty of people misunderstand the theory of relativity, and that doesn't stop it being a force for good overall. It's also not a criticism of the theory of relativity itself.

I guess I mean two things: the first is that you cannot necessarily accurately infer from a person's identity what their experience has been or what their beliefs or actions will be, as useful a lens as "identity" is across a society it can fall down hard when it comes to the individual. Worse, individuals' experience is embraced when it supports one interpretation of a group's experience but dismissed when it contradicts it.

Of course, these are all generalisations. I'm mates with enough weirdos to know that members of even quite niche groups can have significantly divergent experiences. But again, this is not hard and fast, it's an offer. Think about my example before - I do my best to amplify, rather than interrupt women at work. If the woman in question doesn't need amplification, I wind my neck in. That's not the theory falling down, that's just being responsive to it. There'll never be any kind of theory that explains 100% of individuals within a group, we're all unique - it's just that we can draw broad brushstrokes given some key information.

The second is summed up in a quote from that Kimberley Foster article I linked to

"Identity politics become flimsy when they devolve into shallow back-and-forths that conflate lived experience with sound political analysis. A worldview that moves us closer to equality doesn’t stem from living in a certain kind of body. It emerges from pursuing a certain kind of politics."

So that's an argument in favour of eradicating identity politics altogether. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it's not a DISCUSSION of identity politics. And again it's a bit of a straw man. Identity politics doesn't replace group politics, it augments them.

I was listening to James O Brien on LBC this morning. He was arguing with a working class bloke about Brexit. And the working class bloke was wrong, and JOB was having a bit of fun with it, and interrupting him, and bashing him about a bit. From a traditional 1970s (pre identity politics) perspective, there's nothing wrong with that. Robust debate is how we get to some kind of truth, honesty is kinder than a comforting lie, etc.

But from a more modern analysis, what I was listening to was a public schoolboy with a book deal and a listenership in the millions, taking the piss out of someone who left school at sixteen, for not being educated enough. It's a much uglier thing.

I think the first approach is very useful. But I also think it's unreasonable for us to discount that second analysis in its entirety. Identity politics tell us a lot about power - less pretentiously, it tells us a lot about what our manners should be. It allows us to contextualise the debate, and that's very useful.

There must be a halfway house between those two things. Speak truth, but compassionately. Speak honestly, but with sensitivity. I really don't think it needs to be so black and white as one or the other and nothing else.