VivianLea Doubt

Thompson Rivers University

SOCI 399: Assignment 3

April 20, 2009

 1

Discuss the broad concerns that some people have about the consequences of

identity politics.

The first broad concern about identity politics is the belief that a liberal

democracy requires a common basis – or Granatstein’s “grand narrative” – to

function as a culture and a society. This has been described as the idea of

universalism; for James Boyle, the universal is the concept that under our

superficial differences lie the “timeless truths” (or “timeless questions”), the

common human problems of existence (2000). Political correctness, then, is seen

as challenging both the universal and the university; the particular is seen as the

parochial, the failure to leave behind the prosaic traditions of the village for the

shining spires and exalted ideas of academia and the city.

For Todd Gitlin, political correctness is the consequence of a

“transformation in the core ideals of the left” (Gitlin, 1993). The core ideals are

encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence (US) and the Declaration of the

Rights of Man (UN): an ideal that is addressed not to the particular individual but

to the common identity. Gitlin’s conclusion is that until this commonality is again

addressed, the left will be marginal as a political force. The result of this is the

failure to alleviate poverty, environmental crisis, erosion of the educational

system; a ceding of the battleground to forces on the right.

 2

Jean Elshtain wrote about the decline in civil society; what she

characterized as lessening “citizenship involvement in communities” (2009).

Putnam also documents this well; it is becoming increasingly apparent that the

framework of North American society has been held together by voluntary

organizations and associations of all kinds and as these organizations weaken or

cease to exist that the framework is threatened (2000). One result of this decrease

in voluntary association is the limitation of arenas for public discussion and

debate; the “judicialization of politics” might be a natural outgrowth of this.

Concern is expressed in Canada, through Charter challenges, and in the US,

through appeals to the Supreme court, that the citizen is pushed out of the process

of the debate on these issues which are instead decided by judges.

Granatstein writes:

Canada is part of a global economy and an integrated North

American trading system, both of which bring stress to citizens and
governments. It is a nation of regions, languages, religions, and
disparate classes and cultures. There is much to disunify
Canadians, and, all too often, very little to join them together.
History is one such unifying factor: the way of life, the traditions,
and the institutions that men and women created in the nation. For
incomprehensible reasons, we have not passed on this knowledge
to our children and to those who have recently arrived in Canada.
(1998, p. 5).

Essentially Granatstein brings us back to the universalist argument: for him it is

“incomprehensible” that we do not teach the unifying view, while for others, that
 3

view amounts to an appropriation of voice. In his assertion, for example, that

history was “made by men”, one sees the dismissal of hundreds of years of the

history of half the population (1998, p. 64). It is, of course, in large part this

appropriation that brought about the rise of identity politics: the civil rights

movement, the second wave of feminism, the gay and lesbian movement, and

minority concerns over countless issues of exclusion and racism; all brought the

idea of difference to the table and the demand to be heard through their own

particulars. This gave rise to charges of essentialism (originally a metaphysical

term): that identity would come to be predicated upon a single axis, and that said

identity would then limit the individual to the tyranny of the group definition.

Coming back to Boyle:

This is the two-fold paradox of identity politics. Paradox #1.

Liberalism's claim to moral universalism seems, in practice, to
require the state to define particular suspect classes and grant them
special protection from legal discrimination. Paradox #2. On the
other side, members of the oppressed group are caught between the
need to define the group in order to trigger the protection of civil
rights and to deconstruct the group in order to deny that it
completely defines them. (Boyle, 2000)

Simplistically put, Boyle is arguing that both the universal and the particular are

essential to liberalism, and that identity politics too are balanced between these

claims; that we recognise that there must be some attention paid to groups who

are marginalized, oppressed, or victimized, whilst rejecting the stereotyped

 4

identity. It is precisely because we know that women, members of visible

minorities, and aboriginals in Canada earn substantially less than white males, for

example, that we acknowledge the claims of the group: if to be a member of a

particular group is to determine one’s path through life, justice is not represented.

Perhaps, to paraphrase Boyle, it will be possible to move beyond the endless

arguments about what is taught to how we want to live in our society.

 5

References

Boyle, J. (2000). Universalism, Justice and Identity Politics: From political

corectness to constitutional law. Retrieved March 25, 2009, from
http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/identity.htm
Elshtain, J. B. (2009). Homiletics Online. Retrieved March 26, 2009, from
Interview :
http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/interviews/elshtain.asp
Gitlin, T. (1993, September). The left, lost in the politics of identity. Retrieved
March 25, 2009, from Harpers Magazine:
http://harpers.org/archive/1993/09/0001380
Granatstein, J. (1998). Who Killed Canadian History? Toronto: Harper-Collins.
Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American
community. New York: Simon and Schuster.