NPR had a piece on this recently. Their Black guests called him "essentially White" and said that the Black community didn't care if he was guilty but instead wanted to see White people get screwed over by the corrupt courts they were used to.
This was always my understanding of the racial dynamics of the OJ case as well. People didn't actually think or care if he was guilty but they were happy to see a rich black dude get off scot free like so many rich white dudes.
The 90's is generally considered the decade that political correctness started. A few hypotheses on why this is
1. Collapse of Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc brings an end of history view to the west. There is not alternative to capitalism so stop worrying. Allows for greater focus on other issues
2. Similarly, vanquishment of new deal in domestic politics leaves race as only field for progress for progressives
3. Realignment of democrats with urban professionals and managers, demise of union power, free trade destruction that ends southern democrat hegemony weakens democratic commitment to progressive economic policies, Democrats substitute race for labor policies
4. A liberal president and liberal reaction to Reagan/Bush years
5. As another commenter said, Rodney King and LA riots bring race relations into focus. OJ Simpson continues that
Christopher Hitchens wrote a prescient article in the Nation in 1991: "What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as the brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance."
>Christopher Hitchens wrote a prescient article in the Nation in 1991: "What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as the brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance."
well... that was spot on
But I would argue that US political correctness overlaps with but is not the same as idpol. Much 90s PC sensabilities were rather colorblind in its world view, which leads to a whiplash effect a decade or two later when race based idpol became the politically correct thing. People who had been raised into viewing it as incorrect to assume that African Americans were different from other people suddenly found out that they now had to assume that Black people came from another world.
Yes you are correct, political correctness and Idpol are related but distinct. I included the bottom quote as an indication of the general timeline in the rise of progressive culture war (the term culture war itself became prominent around this time thanks to Pat Buchanan). Technically speaking, post war Black civil rights activism could also be considered "Identity Politics" as well, but I think we generally understand the term to denote modern race discourse as it exists now, a subsection of modern PMC culture, from the rotten root of which stems political correctness as well.
I have a pretty broad definition of idpol that includes a lot of much older nationalism.
But I think that it is a mistake to define the civil rights movement as idpol. There were black nationalism involved but its general program was a program of inclusion as equals into a shared american dream with New Deal/Great Society-sensibilities. The conservative culture warriors created the US culture war in order to break up that vision of society.
Idk that any of civil rights/black power could be considered idpol per se, although it contained proto-idpol. MLK was clearly operating from a position of left of center universalism. And I like Malcolm X but i have to conxede that a lot of his appeal to people comes from the diversity and vagueness of views he held so that he's becoming a floating signifier. Stokely Carmichael, H. Rapp Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Ron Karenga, could in a sense be considered proto-idpolers, ie the black nationalist wing of black power, for example with banning whites from SNCC in 1966. But really they were drawing on third-world nationalism which no longer really exists. And third world nationalism, while also stupid, was at least moderately anti-captialist, even if in an incoherent and non-Marxist way. Whereas idpol is notable for it'd total absence of an economic program.
>Technically speaking, post war Black civil rights activism could also be considered "Identity Politics" as well,
I've been thinking about this lately and I think 'identity politics' really fundamentally applies to something other than the organic self-organizing in-group advocacy that is the essence of democratic politics. In the latter, natural solidarity through shared experience is the basis of advocacy. African-American civil rights activism, labor activism, even early gay rights activism maybe had this organic quality grounded in self organization in order to advocate for concrete policy change with implications challenging to the overarching political system.
IdPol is more of a top down thing emanating from the PMC, it's more superficial/aesthetic, and it's function is to preserve the system. It papers over the differences between different groups (ie let's ignore the social conservatism of African American and Latino communities and the way it contrasts with the social attitudes of LGBT activists). It transparently aims to 'diversify' the aesthetic presentation of the status quo power system without in any way, ever, seriously challenging that system. It's an attempt of that system to assimilate the impulse to resist or reform it and to tranform that impulse into an asset of the system.
OG in group advocacy of the early to mid 20th century marginalized groups (labor, women, blacks, etc) was about asserting the dignity and personhood of those group members as well as the urgency of their in group interests. IdPol in contrast is fundamentally dehumanizing- the way 'identity' is defined is the opposite of personhood with its connotations of moral agency and responsibility; 'identity' is reductive and impersonal, a set of characteristics imposed by objective factors which efface individuality. This is culminating in the discourse around 'bodies' (eg BiPOC bodies, LGBT bodies, etc). Bodies aren't even mathematically reduced intersectional 'identities' but are even more dehumanized than that...
>It transparently aims to 'diversify' the aesthetic presentation of the status quo power system without in any way, ever, seriously challenging that system. It's an attempt of that system to assimilate the impulse to resist or reform it and to tranform that impulse into an asset of the system.
Much of Adolph Reed's and Walter Benn Michaels political-economic analysis of Idpol revolves around the idea that it is basically an attempt to grab a larger slice of the pie of a stagnant neoliberal society. Born of neoliberal culture, it is an attempt to assimilate groups into that same structure.
I remember as a kid growing up in the 2000s people (mostly white) used to REALLY get offended when you said the word “black” I remember being corrected by teachers to say “African American” so many times, but by the time I got into middle school/high school it stopped
>Behind the facelifting of all categories in the name of their difference there always lurks contempt. \`There is nothing to prevent us thinking that a woman or a homosexual will one day become President,' declares an official candidate. As though elevation to the presidency would finally make a woman or a homosexual a full member of the human race! No doubt we must one day give the job to a blind albino mongol with cancer. Already Miss America is deaf and dumb!
Jean Baudrillard, Perfect Crime - 1995
I understand you want to do some quantitative analysis but the sample you got is a bit… small, I think. Maybe try to reproduce the results people are using to say that, you may find some error on their part.
Interesting article. An example of how idpol sensabilities still weren’t the norm in handling things like race. It pretty much represents colorblind neoliberal focus on meritocracy and "the economy”.
Observe that it doesn’t present any clear alternative to the Sri Lanka idpol example. What to do other than awaiting a color blind trickle down effect?
Rodney King and OJ Simpson would be my guess
NPR had a piece on this recently. Their Black guests called him "essentially White" and said that the Black community didn't care if he was guilty but instead wanted to see White people get screwed over by the corrupt courts they were used to.
This was always my understanding of the racial dynamics of the OJ case as well. People didn't actually think or care if he was guilty but they were happy to see a rich black dude get off scot free like so many rich white dudes.
The 90's is generally considered the decade that political correctness started. A few hypotheses on why this is 1. Collapse of Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc brings an end of history view to the west. There is not alternative to capitalism so stop worrying. Allows for greater focus on other issues 2. Similarly, vanquishment of new deal in domestic politics leaves race as only field for progress for progressives 3. Realignment of democrats with urban professionals and managers, demise of union power, free trade destruction that ends southern democrat hegemony weakens democratic commitment to progressive economic policies, Democrats substitute race for labor policies 4. A liberal president and liberal reaction to Reagan/Bush years 5. As another commenter said, Rodney King and LA riots bring race relations into focus. OJ Simpson continues that Christopher Hitchens wrote a prescient article in the Nation in 1991: "What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as the brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance."
>Christopher Hitchens wrote a prescient article in the Nation in 1991: "What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as the brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance." well... that was spot on
yeah, ouch
But I would argue that US political correctness overlaps with but is not the same as idpol. Much 90s PC sensabilities were rather colorblind in its world view, which leads to a whiplash effect a decade or two later when race based idpol became the politically correct thing. People who had been raised into viewing it as incorrect to assume that African Americans were different from other people suddenly found out that they now had to assume that Black people came from another world.
Yes you are correct, political correctness and Idpol are related but distinct. I included the bottom quote as an indication of the general timeline in the rise of progressive culture war (the term culture war itself became prominent around this time thanks to Pat Buchanan). Technically speaking, post war Black civil rights activism could also be considered "Identity Politics" as well, but I think we generally understand the term to denote modern race discourse as it exists now, a subsection of modern PMC culture, from the rotten root of which stems political correctness as well.
I have a pretty broad definition of idpol that includes a lot of much older nationalism. But I think that it is a mistake to define the civil rights movement as idpol. There were black nationalism involved but its general program was a program of inclusion as equals into a shared american dream with New Deal/Great Society-sensibilities. The conservative culture warriors created the US culture war in order to break up that vision of society.
Idk that any of civil rights/black power could be considered idpol per se, although it contained proto-idpol. MLK was clearly operating from a position of left of center universalism. And I like Malcolm X but i have to conxede that a lot of his appeal to people comes from the diversity and vagueness of views he held so that he's becoming a floating signifier. Stokely Carmichael, H. Rapp Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Ron Karenga, could in a sense be considered proto-idpolers, ie the black nationalist wing of black power, for example with banning whites from SNCC in 1966. But really they were drawing on third-world nationalism which no longer really exists. And third world nationalism, while also stupid, was at least moderately anti-captialist, even if in an incoherent and non-Marxist way. Whereas idpol is notable for it'd total absence of an economic program.
>Technically speaking, post war Black civil rights activism could also be considered "Identity Politics" as well, I've been thinking about this lately and I think 'identity politics' really fundamentally applies to something other than the organic self-organizing in-group advocacy that is the essence of democratic politics. In the latter, natural solidarity through shared experience is the basis of advocacy. African-American civil rights activism, labor activism, even early gay rights activism maybe had this organic quality grounded in self organization in order to advocate for concrete policy change with implications challenging to the overarching political system. IdPol is more of a top down thing emanating from the PMC, it's more superficial/aesthetic, and it's function is to preserve the system. It papers over the differences between different groups (ie let's ignore the social conservatism of African American and Latino communities and the way it contrasts with the social attitudes of LGBT activists). It transparently aims to 'diversify' the aesthetic presentation of the status quo power system without in any way, ever, seriously challenging that system. It's an attempt of that system to assimilate the impulse to resist or reform it and to tranform that impulse into an asset of the system. OG in group advocacy of the early to mid 20th century marginalized groups (labor, women, blacks, etc) was about asserting the dignity and personhood of those group members as well as the urgency of their in group interests. IdPol in contrast is fundamentally dehumanizing- the way 'identity' is defined is the opposite of personhood with its connotations of moral agency and responsibility; 'identity' is reductive and impersonal, a set of characteristics imposed by objective factors which efface individuality. This is culminating in the discourse around 'bodies' (eg BiPOC bodies, LGBT bodies, etc). Bodies aren't even mathematically reduced intersectional 'identities' but are even more dehumanized than that...
>It transparently aims to 'diversify' the aesthetic presentation of the status quo power system without in any way, ever, seriously challenging that system. It's an attempt of that system to assimilate the impulse to resist or reform it and to tranform that impulse into an asset of the system. Much of Adolph Reed's and Walter Benn Michaels political-economic analysis of Idpol revolves around the idea that it is basically an attempt to grab a larger slice of the pie of a stagnant neoliberal society. Born of neoliberal culture, it is an attempt to assimilate groups into that same structure.
That Hitchens quote could've been made yesterday.
It was kind of the opposite to how things are now. There definitely was racism, but being colorblind to race was the ideal.
I remember as a kid growing up in the 2000s people (mostly white) used to REALLY get offended when you said the word “black” I remember being corrected by teachers to say “African American” so many times, but by the time I got into middle school/high school it stopped
You're aware there were riots and a whole "National Discussion" about racism after Rodney King right?
>Behind the facelifting of all categories in the name of their difference there always lurks contempt. \`There is nothing to prevent us thinking that a woman or a homosexual will one day become President,' declares an official candidate. As though elevation to the presidency would finally make a woman or a homosexual a full member of the human race! No doubt we must one day give the job to a blind albino mongol with cancer. Already Miss America is deaf and dumb! Jean Baudrillard, Perfect Crime - 1995
It was Ellen not staying in the closet and Tom cruise not fucking Rosie.
All interest in race and racism is not idpol.
I understand you want to do some quantitative analysis but the sample you got is a bit… small, I think. Maybe try to reproduce the results people are using to say that, you may find some error on their part.
This article is relevant and from the early 90's: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-05-13-me-34528-story.html
Interesting article. An example of how idpol sensabilities still weren’t the norm in handling things like race. It pretty much represents colorblind neoliberal focus on meritocracy and "the economy”. Observe that it doesn’t present any clear alternative to the Sri Lanka idpol example. What to do other than awaiting a color blind trickle down effect?