Imperfect Inquiry: Have Identity Politics Been Hijacked?
Imperfect Paradise
LAist Studios
4.5 • 535 Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Imperfect Paradise Host Antonia Cereijido speaks with philosopher and author of Elite Capture: How The Powerful Took over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) Olúfemi O. Táíwò. They examine the question: are identity politics over? It’s a question that was raised and we began to explore with Imperfect Paradise’s Nury & The Secret Tapes series. Antonia examines that question more deeply with Táíwò and presses him on why he believes identity politics have failed to deliver on their promise to create greater social equity and what he thinks is the more effective political alternative. Antonia’s conversation with Táíwò kicks off the first Imperfect Inquiry, a recurring Imperfect Paradise segment in which Antonia interviews thinkers, experts, and stakeholders on themes, issues, and questions that we examine on the show.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | LAIS is supported by Elephant Energy. |
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| 0:33.6 | Hey, it's Antonia Sevejido, and this is Imperfect Paradise, a show about hidden worlds and messy realities. |
| 0:43.5 | Today, we are bringing you a new kind of episode, what we're calling an imperfect inquiry, |
| 0:49.6 | in which I talked with thinker, expert, or relevant relevant voice who can help make sense of some complicated |
| 0:54.6 | questions and issues. A lot of the same complicated questions and issues that have come up over |
| 1:00.3 | and over on Imperfect Paradise. To kick it all off, I spoke with Alu Femi Taiwo, Associate Professor |
| 1:06.8 | of Philosophy at Georgetown University and author of Elite Capture, How the Powerful |
| 1:11.8 | took over identity politics and everything else. There was something that I encountered in organizing |
| 1:18.6 | spaces, which is people being concerned about which kinds of people were centered in organizing |
| 1:24.7 | spaces, which sorts of people were deferred to, whether they had the right |
| 1:29.4 | gender or racial background. Professor Taiwo argues in his book that identity politics, |
| 1:35.4 | not the idea of them, but in practice, have not delivered on creating deeper equity. |
| 1:40.8 | The general story that emerges of identity politics coming to be under the control of a privileged |
| 1:48.0 | view, even within the politics of marginalized populations. On this episode, we get into Professor |
| 1:56.7 | Taiwo's ideas as a way of getting into some of the larger, sometimes almost existential questions |
... |
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