I came across an article by Trevin Wax, talking about when your political identity turns on you, and it blew my mind.  Though I have given quite a bit of thought to the divisiveness of identity politics, he said some really interesting things about the results of the overly coddled college students.

The first concept that caught my eye, “Intersectionality”, a new variation of pluralism, where knowledge and authority is tied to identity.  It said,

The Gospel of Intersectionality

The new paradigm – one student describes it as “the gospel” at Oberlin – is “intersectionality.” Heller describes the theory this way:

“Identity-based oppression [operates] in crosshatching ways. Encountering sexism as a white, Ivy-educated, middle-class woman in a law office, for example, calls for different solutions than encountering sexism as a black woman working a minimum-wage job. The theory is often used to support experiential authority, because, well, who knows what it means to live at an intersection better than the person there?”

There’s certainly some truth to this theory. As Christians, we recognize that sinful patterns pervade the structures of society and give rise to different forms of injustice. We also see value in being good listeners, as we recognize our limitations of knowledge and our need for empathy.

But the troubling implication of this theory is that authority stems from your identity and experience rather than the force of your logic and reasoning. As one professor explains:

“Students believe that their gender, their ethnicity, their race, whatever, gives them a sort of privileged knowledge—a community-based knowledge—that other groups don’t have.”

So what happens when perspectives clash? What do you do, Heller asks, when a black professor makes a statement that is anti-Semitic? If you are not black or Jewish, how do you decide who you will stand with?

 

Mind blown.  Well, not really, but I have never heard it put this way.  What I mean to say, is that I THINK I have grasped this concept all along, but couldn’t find the right words to put to it… particularly the idea that, in these university  authority stems from your identity and experience, rather than the force of your logic and reasoning.

I find it rather ironic that these “higher institutions of learning” have become places where feelings overrule actual critical thinking.  And, everything is relative.

Wax goes on to talk about when emotion trumps logic, and says:

Furthermore, if knowledge is tied to identity above everything else, then certain points of view immediately trump others, regardless of their rational coherence.

Aaron Pressman, a Jewish student at Oberlin, describes what happened after he expressed an unpopular opinion.

“A student came up to me several days later and started screaming at me, saying I’m not allowed to have this opinion, because I’m a white cisgender male… I’ve had people respond to me, ‘You could never understand—your culture has never been oppressed.’ I’m, like, ‘Really? The Holocaust?’”

 

In this worldview, the group that can prove the greatest source of contemporary oppression becomes the group with greatest authority. This ideology doesn’t bode well for the future. Heller worries “the cracks in the American left are likely to grow—with more campaign arguments about who is the ‘true’ progressive, more shouting past one another, and more feelings that, for at least one generation, everything is lost.”

Regardless of their rational coherence, eh?  THIS.  Yes, this.

He goes on to give examples of identity politics shutting conversations down, then addresses the future of ever having rational dialogue again.

Check out his article in full, HERE, and tell me what you think!