Learning from Experience "ss1.16"

THE EPISTEMIC SIGNIFICANCE OF IDENTITY POLITICS

Within politically progressive circles today, critics and activists alike often take for granted that identity politics as such are essentialist, theoretically retrograde, or even politically dangerous. I want to suggest that absolute dismissals of all kinds of identity politics are premature—even though such dismissals are frequently motivated by political convictions similar to those that motivate my own arguments. (To reiterate: I define identity politics as a social practice in which a person who identifies or is identified with a recognizable group such as “Chicana/os” or “lesbians” makes arguments or takes action with the purpose of affecting social, economic, or educational policy relative to that group. Within this social practice, the identity of the political practitioner both motivates and is a central facet of the claim, argument, or action.) Without defending those forms of identity politics that are predicated on the disenfranchisement of others, and with full awareness that all identities are somewhat reductive and potentially cooptable, I nevertheless contend that some forms of identity politics that are undertaken by members of marginalized groups in the service of creating economic, social, and political equity between different groups are epistemically and morally justifiable.

[28] I see my position as being consistent with the one taken by Schutte. She explains that the fact that “the words woman and Hispanic may be politicized or commercialized well beyond [her] taste, and even contrary to it, does not lead [her] to stop describing [herself] with these terms.” What we understand is that these (and other) terms do important work for her insofar as they allow her to situate herself in relation to others. Schutte reconciles herself to the limitations of each identity category by adopting the principle of recognizing the internal heterogeneity of the groups with which she identifies. This principle allows her to identify as a member of a group without being coerced into compliance with its normative type (67). A similar logic attends Schutte's defense of retaining ethnic/cultural identifications. While she recognizes the potential dangers posed by group identifications, she also recognizes the value—which is supported by a broader principle of social justice— of “having a substrate of differentiating elements in cultures… that challenge the narrow-mindedness of patterns of behavior inherited from the past” (65).

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Embedded in my argument is the idea that identity politics cannot be an end in themselves, but should be seen as a necessary step on the way toward creating economic, social, and political equity between different groups.

[29] For a brilliant defense of identity politics, see Alcoff, “Who's Afraid of Identity Politics?”

My reasons for defending the practice of identity politics by members of marginalized groups are primarily epistemological. To the extent that we, as cultural critics, are interested in gaining a more accurate understanding of our social world, we must give greater weight to socially marginalized identities and non-dominant perspectives. My postpositivist realist defense of the principle of epistemic privilege draws on the idea, common to much feminist and marxist theory, that the major obstacle to the achievement of objective knowledge is blindness regarding the epistemic consequences of social location.

[30] For a fuller discussion of what I mean by epistemic privilege, see chapter one.

Insofar as the perspectives of people in positions of privilege and authority are refracted through distorting lenses that naturalize the existing social order, the epistemic norm of “objectivity” requires that such partial and distorted perspectives be critically examined from the standpoints of the subordinated. The idea here is not that subordinated people know better about everything, but rather that their well-being (and sometimes even survival) requires that they attend to the dynamics of the particular forces by which they are subordinated. This is in contrast to people in positions of privilege or authority, whose interest in maintaining the status quo often fosters (moral and political) blindness with regard to those institutional structures on which their privileges are based. What this means is that, to the extent that we want to have a more objective understanding of the dynamics of socially significant phenomena like racism, sexism, or heterosexism, all scholars, regardless of their own particular identities, would do well to attend to the identities and experiences of people who are located on the lower levels of a socially and economically stratified society. Unless we have access to alternative perspectives—perspectives that are formed through interpretation of personal experience—we risk being arrested in the process of our intellectual and moral growth. Since identities are indexical—since they refer outward to social structures

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and embody social relations—they are a potentially rich source of information about the world we share.

In chapter one, I argued that the recovery of the experiences of oppressed people uncovers knowledge, and ways of living, that, when shared with people who have not been oppressed or have not lived in the same way, allows oppressor and oppressed alike to have a more complex and adequate understanding of their shared world than either of them could have by themselves. I argued that as long as certain identities are devalued, those identities will be epistemically valuable and politically salient. I further demonstrated that the recovery of the experiences of oppressed peoples, and the examination of devalued identities, are necessary steps on the road toward a more objective knowledge of social relations. What I wish to add here is that the first step in the recovery of the experiences of oppressed people will involve a reexamination by oppressed peoples of their own lives. This is not standpoint epistemology in the sense of having non-oppressed people “starting from the lives” of oppressed people.

[31] For more information on feminist standpoint epistemology, see Calhoun, esp. chap. 6; Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology”; Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?

It is not enough to use the lives and experiences of marginalized people as the “matter” about which one theorizes. In order for a scholar to fully appreciate the epistemic significance of marginalized lives other than her own, she must pay careful attention to what the people who occupy those positions of marginalization think and feel about the meanings their lives convey. It is precisely for the failure to pay careful attention to the insights of Cherríe Moraga that I criticize Donna Haraway and Judith Butler in chapter one. Moreover, it is because I believe that identities have epistemic significance that I have tried, in this chapter, to give serious consideration to the real concerns of neoconservative minorities. Marginalized people are necessarily more aware of the processes by which their own identities become marginalized. For this reason, the project of self-examination must be carried out by oppressed peoples and then shared with people who have not been oppressed in the same way. Inasmuch as this examination is carried out by and from within a community of similarly oppressed people, they will necessarily practice identity-based politics.

It is my contention that neoconservative minorities—despite their unwillingness to acknowledge as much—are themselves participating in the process of self-examination entailed by identity politics. They are

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persons identified with recognizable groups (Mexican and African American) who engage in social practices (such as writing books and granting interviews) in which they make arguments (against bilingual education or affirmative action) or take action (such as sponsoring legislation) with the purpose of affecting social, economic, or educational policy relative to their own groups. Moreover, their identities (political and racial) both motivate and are central to their claims, arguments, and actions. As such, neoconservative minorities collectively participate in the creation of a discourse and an identity identifiable as “neoconservative minority.” They are not iconoclastic individualists, but rather share a tendency to take similar positions in public debates concerning multicultural education, assimilation, and racial or ethnic identity. Furthermore, although they differ in the particulars, neoconservative minorities share several basic assumptions about the egalitarian nature of United States society and the necessity for minorities to assimilate to a white middle-class American norm.

Practitioners of neoconservative minority identity politics can be identified by some of their characteristic assumptions. They have an ambivalent relationship to the minority communities with which they are identified by others. They simultaneously exploit their minority status for political and economic purposes (they allow themselves to be published and marketed as native informants) even as they attempt to disavow their “exemplary” minority status. As a general rule, neoconservative minorities overlook the structural and inegalitarian nature of society. They ignore the structural inequities that contribute to the correlation between the likelihood of incarceration and nonwhite racial status, and between poverty and female gender. Where neoconservative minorities do address such glaring social inequalities, they tend to locate the cause of such inequalities within the cultural character of the subordinated individual or group. Consistent with their focus on culture, neoconservative minorities have a liberal understanding of individual agency. Instead of seeing people as temporally and biologically limited beings with a variable measure of control over their lives, neoconservative minorities tend to see all people as equally autonomous agents acting from fully rational conscious choice. Although they invariably mention socioeconomic status as a factor influencing people's lives, they do not incorporate a class analysis into their interpretative frameworks, or deal adequately with the effect economic forces have on individual life chances. In several neoconservative minority narratives, class emerges as an issue only for the purpose of undermining the salience of race as a

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determining feature of social identity. Additionally, they fail to acknowledge that in a capitalist economy, some people—no matter how hard they work—will never attain middle- or upper-class status for the simple reason that capitalism requires an exploitable labor force. As a result of their tendency to overlook the structural nature of society, neoconservative minorities formulate idealist conceptions of identity. By undermining or ignoring the political, economic, and social salience of race and gender, they focus on culture (language, habits of interaction, family structure, living arrangements) as the only determinant of social identity. They assume that if a person changes her culture, she can change her social identity (and, by extension, her life chances). Finally, neoconservative minorities’ focus on culture leads them to champion assimilation (forced, unidirectional cultural change) to a white middle-class American norm. They argue against multicultural education, affirmative action, and bilingual education in the belief that such programs hinder, rather then promote, the assimilation of minorities into American mainstream society— a society about which they are largely uncritical.

Understanding neoconservative minorities as practitioners of identity politics has helped me to appreciate their arguments for assimilation— which I recognize as having been developed through self-reflection about the meanings of their own racialized identities—as suggestions for the best way to end or minimize race-based discrimination and inequality in our society. I do not, for the reasons given in this chapter, agree with the majority of their suggestions; nor do I admire most of the political and rhetorical strategies they employ in their efforts to negotiate their own racialized identities. I do, however, defend their practice of identity politics in the service of creating economic, social, and political equity between different racial groups. Moreover, because I see neoconservative minorities as fellow travelers in this worthy social, political, and epistemological project, I have been spared the necessity of either accepting or rejecting their suggestions outright. Instead, I have been able to consider the merits of their perspective, evaluate their arguments, and, by identifying the sources of their errors, work toward figuring out less reductive and more effective ways of approaching the problems of race-based (and other forms of) discrimination and inequality. The project of evaluation and engagement with the arguments of neoconservative minorities has led me to suggest, as an alternative to assimilation, the value of being asimilao.

My reading of neoconservative minorities has implications for the proper function of education in the United States. If we are concerned to

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provide children and young adults with common cultural assumptions, we need to find a way to acknowledge, respect, and examine the existing cultural diversity of the United States. We have a responsibility as educators to teach students the skills they need to gather, process, and evaluate the various kinds of information with which they are presented. In the next chapter, I employ a postpositivist realist approach in my analysis of multicultural education in order to promote thinking about the best way we might do this.