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bitly slash dig Jacobin BIT dot LY bit dot y, dot y, dig jack-a-b-I-t dot y, dig jack-a-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a bit a bit Welcome to the Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode

Island. It is obvious that certain prevailing norms around identity that pervade corners of left activist politics, liberal

establishment posturing, academia, non-profits, and corporate America are damaging.

All politics, of course, are in important ways about identity, including the making of the

English working class and more recently the making of a magga fanatic. But the term has strayed far from

with the Kombahi River Collective, the group that coined it, meant in 1977.

As I discussed three years ago with Kiega Yamada Taylor, for Kombahi, the concept was a way to identify

how capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and homophobia created a set of interlocking oppressions.

The point of identifying how those systems operated together was not to create an itemized

politics of particularity, but rather to create a framework for solidarity.

Today, the term identity politics has so often come to stand in for a politics that focuses on language

and the balance of power within elite spaces much more so than the concrete

issues facing oppressed people and how we on the left might organize to build power and win.

Indeed, it is a politics that often obsc currently how power and domination actually operate.

Yet, of course, far too often critiques of identity politics

as currently practiced inhabit a fun house mirror of their ID poll opponents.

...