Identity politics, in various forms, have become perhaps the political ideology of our time and place. I suspect this is true in many places. But I limit my scope in this post to recent politics in the United States. People sometimes toss around the related term ‘identitarianism.’
The trouble is that we don’t really know what ‘identity politics’ means. Or, perhaps worse, we all know what it means. It’s just that no one agrees on what it is they all know.
I’m going to define ‘identity politics’ and ‘identitarianism’ in this post. I don’t claim that my definitions are the right ones, or that everyone else’s are wrong. I’m just laying out how I’ll be using those terms in this blog. Hopefully you’ll find this both explanatory and helpful when looking at real problems and issues.