Identity Politics Is A Dead End
Liberal identity politics has proven to be self-defeating. We cannot achieve liberation by dividing ourselves; only a collective class struggle can set us free.
“If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism?” Hillary Clinton’s infamous remark from the 2016 primary race exemplifies the most vulgar expressions of liberal identity politics. Putting aside the shamelessness a politician must have to say something so blatantly wrong, it perfectly shows the inherent need for liberal politicians to debase every political issue down to interpersonal conflict. Clinton was desperately trying to maintain a political coalition of billionaire capitalist bankers and people of color who are disproportionately harmed by those capitalists. Her answer is to please her ultra-wealthy donors and walk the tight rope; cynically imply that her opponent isn’t fighting racism, and also imply that racism does not have a systematic component.
But it’s not only that liberals, at least those zealously loyal to liberalism, refuse to see politics beyond the interpersonal; it’s that they stand between serious change to protect the failing capitalist system. It is precisely their refusal to acknowledge capitalism’s failures, the refusal to critique the superstructure of our society, and the refusal to find solutions outside the box we are placed in, which makes liberalism so dangerous. When we refuse to fight systemic problems, those problems only worsen.
But let’s be clear about what the problem with identity politics is. There is the more prominent conservative critique of identity politics– that racism just does not exist today– which we should vehemently condemn as ignorant. However, the socialist critique of identity politics is that racism clearly has a material, historical, and economic basis. Racism in America is more than just interpersonal bias and hate. Racism, on the broad scale, manifests so insidiously despite such strong laws against discrimination, meaning that small changes and policy tweaks cannot fix this inherently racist system; it must be uprooted. It’s this critique where liberals will disingenuously conflate the left-wing argument with the conservative argument, which is exactly what Hillary Clinton was doing in the quote.
We know that it is not random that African Americans are disadvantaged today; it cannot be explained by ‘a few bad apples’ in our society who are racist. There is a massive wealth gap where African Americans only own about 4% of the total household wealth, which is linked to current and past housing discrimination, workplace discrimination, academic discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, and the broken promise of reparations. These factors are far larger than interpersonal bias.
As for one of the most devastating factors, it was only 17 years ago, in 2008, that mass incarceration reached its peak after the brutally punitive crime policies of the 80s and 90s, which were fully endorsed by Hillary Clinton and signed into law by Bill Clinton. They still affect black communities today as police escalation targeted cities and poorer neighborhoods, which were disproportionately black, racial profiling made ‘driving while black’ a de facto crime, and extreme sentencing made sure petty offenses ruined a person’s life. This cascades into the next generation as families are pushed further into poverty, as communities struggle to develop. Just 24 years ago, in 2001, over 16% of black adults were involved in the prison system compared to 2.7% of the total. Today, there is still systematically racist policing, courts, and juries where, nationwide, black people account for 53% of all exonerations and 69% of drug-related exonerations, meaning they are disproportionately falsely arrested and imprisoned.
Clinton was responding directly to Bernie Sanders’ proposed policy of breaking up the banking monopolies that have enormous, unchecked power over our lives. It is these banks that gambled the nation’s future away on mortgage-backed securities in 2008, just for Barack Obama’s government to bail them out while millions of Americans were suffering under unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosure. A policy of breaking up or nationalizing these banks would have dramatically shifted the balance of power in our country, diminishing the power of the elite bankers who suck the blood of American workers.
We know that banks are a central part of this racist system. Banks are the institution that functions on private property ownership, something that, as we know, African Americans were denied equal rights to until 1968. Today, only 45% of black households own their home, compared to 75% of white households, while black households under 35 own at less than half the rate of white households at 17% and 45% respectively. Since black people more often rent, it is much harder or impossible to build wealth. When the value of homes increases, as it has done rapidly in the last five years, so does rent, meaning African Americans cannot take advantage of increasing housing wealth while being disproportionately harmed by higher rent. A report covering the period from 2012 to 2022 found that the increase in home values was not proportional; majority-black neighborhoods saw their homes grow by an average of $122,500, which is about half the rate of white neighborhoods, which grew by an average of $223,000. Even within the rental market, black people on average pay about 25% more for security deposits and 30% more for application fees compared to white people, despite paying 8% less in rent. At the same time, a sociological study in 2022 concluded that black renters disproportionately suffer from rent exploitation, where landlords charge more in rent than what’s proportional to the property’s value. Banks are at the center of this, profiting immensely from their own housing assets increasing in value, collecting more mortgage interest, higher fees on property sales, higher refinancing costs, and higher collateral values.
The worst part about this is that the quality of a child’s education in America is directly tied to where they live. Since public schools are funded based on property taxes, richer areas receive a far better education, which, as expected, leads to better higher education opportunities and, subsequently, better career opportunities. The gap in property value leads to a gap in education, which leads to a gap in employment, which leads back to the gap in property. The black academic Harold Cruse in the 1960s described the position of African Americans in society as one of domestic colonialization, not in the literal sense but in terms of forced cultural degradation and racialized exploitation, a description that remains true today.
Even if we put aside for a moment the historical racism that African Americans suffer, we can see that racism is, and always has been, a tool of the capitalists to divide the working class. We see precisely this happening to Latinos right now as they are being targeted as scapegoats. Politicians of both parties who represent corporations tell Americans that immigrants, specifically Latino immigrants, are ‘taking jobs’ and are inherently criminals to justify immigration crackdowns. Corporate media ferociously fear-monger lies that immigrants are draining public resources and are bringing drugs into the country. Unsurprisingly, in those earlier cited statistics, Latinos fall much closer to the black community in terms of the wealth gap and housing discrimination.
So far as ‘ending racism’ is even a coherent policy position, breaking up banking monopolies and suppressing capital would have absolutely struck at the heart of the system that produces racism in the first place. Bernie’s policy set, while not radical in the socialist sense, at least aimed to cure us of the parasite that is capital, not just its symptoms. Ironically, Clinton’s policy proposals on racial justice and criminal justice were essentially indistinguishable from the standard Democratic Party platform, while also having no serious answers for people economically. It is certainly this impotent platform that alienated her from the American people, leading her to lose to Donald Trump, who offered quite literally nothing but platitudes and false promises. The idea that racism can be solved on an individual basis and not as an intersectional struggle is a liberal fantasy; fighting capitalism and fighting racism is the same struggle, you cannot have one without the other.
It is critical to understand the difference between the liberal half-baked solutions and the socialist solutions that not only serve to combat racism, but also capitalism, which harms people of all races and people of color disproportionately. There is no more perfect example of this than how we address the issue of gentrification.
Gentrification, in short, is the slow process where the personality of a neighborhood changes over time when wealthier people move in, thereby displacing poorer, often lifelong residents and business owners. This phenomenon happens everywhere throughout the capitalist world, but in America specifically, the wealthier people who move in are usually (but not always) white and are displacing black and brown people. In New York City, this is especially a problem where communities that once had a unique cultural character, whether it be Chinese, Dominican, Guyanese, Haitian, Jamaican, Bangladeshi, Indian, or African American, are being replaced with more white upper-middle-class businesses. These new businesses contribute most to the process; they are corporate-styled, investor-friendly establishments such as upscale restaurants, clubs, trendy cafés, art galleries, curated thrift stores, and boutiques. These are sometimes oriented towards tourists and are generally too expensive or undesirable for the original residents. The more stores like this that open, the more property values increase as banks and investors see the area as ‘on the rise.’
Let’s identify why this happens. Upper-middle-class people are priced out of the richer areas of a city and relocate to places with lower rent. Then, they outbid or take over vacancies from people who are already from that community. This is often due to real estate speculation in the wealthier areas, where landlords set exorbitantly high rents and leave their properties vacant to decrease the housing stock. This can also happen in ‘undervalued’ neighborhoods with vacancies, where banks, developers, and city governments neglect a neighborhood, leading to rents falling below market value.
The social reason is that young people without kids often seek to live in neighborhoods that are more ‘authentic’ and ‘culturally vibrant’, compared to the corporate-dominated downtown areas, for example. In the case of neglected neighborhoods, young people tolerate worse housing conditions more than older individuals. These people, who are not from the neighborhood, then establish businesses that do not fit in with the area’s culture, slowly transforming it.
On the receiving end, the original residents experience rising rents parallel with rising property values as demand increases. Slowly, the original residents decide that moving away is more affordable, or they are just priced out entirely. The issue we must solve is– how do we prevent the loss of cultural character and displacement in these neighborhoods?
Representing the centrist liberal perspective on this issue is this video from stand-up comedian Duval Culpepper, who calls Zohran Mamdani the “gentrifier’s candidate” for New York City mayor. Culpepper critiques Zohran’s platform on the basis that his housing policy is not genuine because he does not discuss gentrification. Culpepper speculates that it could be “because his entire fucking electorate and voting base are gentrifiers.” He continues his tirade, saying, “They’re rich white liberals from Ohio who love lip-service-liberalism.”
To be clear, it is spelled out in Zohran’s policy brief that, “Prior to becoming an assembly member, Zohran worked directly with these New Yorkers to keep them in their homes, serving as a Foreclosure Prevention Housing Counselor. He knows how the city’s property tax system favors wealthier homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods, has seen how the tax lien sale system leads to families losing their homes, recognizes how deed theft is displacing entire communities, and understands how the city lets speculators and slumlords box working class New Yorkers out of homes. And he has a plan to fix it as Mayor.” Also, it later mentions, “This planning will allow NYC to address the legacy of racially discriminatory zoning, increase density near transit hubs, end the requirement to build parking lots, and proactively chart our future.” The word gentrification also shows up two other times in the same document, but it’s certainly not as though Zohran is not opposed to gentrification. In fact, he has a far more coherent strategy for combating it than Culpepper, who says, “I don’t have the solutions, I just ask the questions.”
Zohran’s housing policies begin with freezing the rent in rent-stabilized apartments. This would stop any landlords with these apartments from increasing rents on their tenants. Next is the plan to triple the construction of rent-stabilized housing to over 200,000 new units in 10 years. Though this relies partially on the private sector, more units mean lower rent across the board in the city as demand is relieved. Then, the plan is to crack down on bad landlords by using the Mayor’s Office to aggressively enforce building code and maintenance violations. This undoubtedly would make the lives of tenants better and healthier, especially as “One in ten renter households reported a lack of adequate heat last winter and one in four reported mice or rats in their homes.” In addition to this, the platform mentions that his administration will fix the tax system, which favors the wealthy and gentrifiers while protecting residents who lose their homes due to the tax lien sale system. Reforming the tax code is a significant step to favor the average residents of New York over parasitic landlords while addressing the relatively uncommon but serious issue of deed theft. Lastly, Zohran is running on affordability; starting municipal grocery stores to provide a cheaper alternative to corporate supermarkets, making the bus fares free, and fighting corporate greed. Whether these can actually be accomplished depends on many legal factors, just like any administration, but it is absolutely within the purview of the Mayor’s Office.
Ironically, these policies accomplish the task of stopping gentrification. Culpepper’s understanding of gentrification boils down to race, which is why he cannot fathom this issue being solved materially. The cause of gentrification is inherently economic– not racial. The core reason gentrification happens in the first place is that a person is priced out of their apartment and cannot afford to live there. The difference in understanding this problem is: on the one hand, seeing it as an identity issue, white people displacing people of color, and on the other, seeing it as an economic issue, knowing that this problem is centered on people not being able to afford something so basic as housing because it is commodified. Efforts like freezing rent can slow the spread of gentrification overnight, and protecting tenants over landlords and speculators can absolutely slow this process. The problem is inequality, not identity.
If you were to think of it as purely an identity issue, you’d have to assume that people of color cannot be gentrifiers, which is obviously not the case. So what non-economic policy would specifically stop gentrification, though? Should we do affirmative action to ensure that only people of color can move in? But what happens when those same people end up being rich liberals who bring with them their corporate businesses? Did you solve the problem of displacement? What about if rents are just increasing in general throughout the city? This is the dead end. Identity politics tries to fix racial divisions, which are inherently rooted in inequality, while maintaining the capitalist structures that cause and reinforce inequality.
Culpepper goes on to say that Zohran supporters vote for things “which sound nice in practice, which won’t ever happen or they don’t ever have to suffer the consequences of,” using the examples of “defunding the police,” which Zohran unfortunately does not support, and confusingly, “buses. These rich fuckin’ white people don’t take god damn buses, okay. They Uber everywhere or they take their little basket bike to the farmers market when they want to pretend to be a poor person.” The policy is to make bus fares free for everyone – rich and poor – so why would it matter if supposedly rich voters voted for a service they don’t use? His logic is completely incoherent. Why does it matter if the voters are genuine or not? Isn’t the point of making the buses free and the routes faster supposed to increase ridership? How bizarre of a statement to say that people ride bikes to ‘pretend to be poor.’ People don’t have cars for many reasons, none of which have to do with pretending, and the overwhelming odds are that they are just poor.
But this is an extremely disingenuous claim peddled by the center and right-wing that Zohran’s base is secretly rich people. That’s not the case at all; in fact, the demographics he pulled from were all across the income spectrum, but the one category that he won decisively was renters.
For someone who has a lot of words for ‘rich white liberals,’ Culpepper seems to have a lot more in common with them than the victims of gentrification whom he claims to identify with. On his page is a video of him wearing Patagonia, discussing how he used to model for J. Crew, two stereotypically preppy and upper-middle-class brands. In another video, Culpepper is frustrated at an incident where a food worker allegedly assumed he was an UberEats driver and says, “I pull up in a Lexus, with an $800 watch, what does a black man gotta do to get some respect!” His reaction suggests he was more offended by being mistaken for being poor than by the racial implication of being associated with a delivery driver. In fact, that association of black people with delivery drivers was something that he came to entirely on his own. It’s no surprise then that he casually uses very racist stereotypes outside of his ‘comedy’ videos. In one monologue, he talks about how both Democrats and Republicans can’t solve homelessness, saying that Democrats build “crack mansions,” a dated racist stereotype referring to black people living in public housing, and “[let’s] let them send flaming shopping carts filled with AIDS feces rolling down Sunset Boulevard.” Culpepper also doesn’t shy away from supporting brutally repressive immigration policies, which stem from racist assumptions about people who look like immigrants. After making the somewhat understandable point that another white president won’t change the lives of black people, he said, “I also don’t hate Donald Trump, I just think the execution of his policies are entirely bad,” then leaps from that suspicious statement to, “For me, I think immigration is out of control. As a native New Yorker, my city is un-fucking-reconizeable.” And this is supposed to be someone who cares about the culture of the melting pot city being gentrified away?
This is only one of the two conclusions from the dead end of identity politics. The first is to double down, focusing exclusively on rectifying differences between identity groups while ignoring the economic basis of those differences. The second is to focus on the economic basis of class, where everyone in the working class can be freed together. As we can see, the former will only divide the people, making change impossible, while playing into the cynical mindset of centrists like Culpepper. The latter is a strategy of solidarity where we are united by the same struggle.
To conclude the rest of the clip, Culpepper makes such an embarrassingly ignorant point that one would have to think the whole video is ironic, if not for the consistency of his entire page. He says, “We don’t need fuckin’ rent stabilization for the few people that it does affect.” At least 2.4 million people, well over a quarter of the city’s population, live in rent-stabilized housing. Even if it were a fraction of that number, do people not deserve to be protected from the savage housing market dominated by private equity firms and billionaires who couldn’t care less how many people live on the street?
He continues, “We don’t need to get mad at these boogey-men billionaires who are holding you down, no, it’s these everyday boring fuckin’ white people from Ohio who are gentrifying your neighborhood and pricing you out. Those are the people you need to worry about.” This is perfectly analogous to the Hillary Clinton quote: dying on the hill of identity while not facing the economic problem. It’s a frankly bizarre mentality; why are the white billionaire landlords who literally set the rent prices innocent, but the upper-middle-class people are the ones we need to worry about? When that ‘white person from Ohio’ moves into their gentrified apartment, they still have to pay rent, of course. They have the same problem as everyone else in the city! If personal responsibility lies with the person for moving into a gentrified home, where is the personal responsibility of the landlord, the investor, the developer, or the bank speculators? Why do they get a pass? Shouldn’t we build our system to work for everyone and not just rely on the moral choices of ‘rich white liberals from Ohio?’ You can’t fix gentrification without changing the system that produces it in the first place!
At least Culpepper is consistent in their activism. They have posts on their page of them publicly shaming gentrifiers, which isn’t even bad in and of itself– it’s shameful that people move in and dilute the neighborhood’s culture– it’s just a completely aimless strategy of self-congratulatory activism as opposed to something that would challenge the system that causes gentrification in the first place. Although much of this is policy-based, which is where Zohran comes in, activists in other cities have organized tenant unions to make collective demands or established community land trusts to reclaim ownership of their communities. These are economic solutions, because the base of politics is economic, not cultural.
The Rainbow Coalition of the 1960s already proved the vital lesson of solidarity. Only when we unite the poor and working class across racial lines against our common capitalist enemy, while never compromising on bigotry, can we confront oppression at its roots. To move forward beyond the dead end of identity politics, we must fight to cure the disease of capitalism, not just manage its symptoms.