Sorry, Gareth Cliff, but identity politics is critical

'I am not interested in identity politics at all. Nobody really is... Oh please, I am over it. It’s just uninteresting and this has played out so badly for people in other parts of the world where they have tried it.” These were the words of an exasperated Gareth Cliff, who was meant to moderate a discussion about the local elections between representatives of the Democratic Alliance and One South Africa – but decided to make himself a panellist instead.

In an effort to diminish the importance of race and identity in our country, Cliff demonstrated the power of his race and identity when he shut down Mudzuli Rakhivhane, a young black woman, by asserting his own version of reality over hers.

Cliff made himself the authority on what ordinary South Africans care about in the lead-up to the municipal elections. The irony of a white man denouncing identity politics, when prejudiced white men are the architects and purveyors of identity politics, would be comical if it was not so dangerous.

Unlike Cliff, I am a proponent of identity politics used to narrow inequality in our country. Audiopedia defines identity politics as political positions based on the interests and perspectives of social groups with which people identify. Identity politics enables the marginalised to articulate their felt oppression through their own experiences. Life sharing allows us to recognise the commonality of our oppression and enables us to build a politics that will change our lives.

The origins of identity politics are colonialism and apartheid, which introduced the stratification of our society along colour, race, gender and sexuality identity lines, among others. The identity politics of apartheid placed the straight white man at the top of the hierarchy and, with that identity, came the full protection of the law, access to the economy and many other rights.

The dawn of our constitutional democracy and the establishment of new battles, particularly in the form of social media, presented to the historically maligned powerful ways to organise globally and to call for urgent change.

This makes it hard for the dominant group to look away from the consequences of a system they created and benefited from. Indeed, denouncing identity politics under the guise of antiracism only enforces the normativity of whiteness, writes Professor Marzia Milazzo.

For example, it is the politics of identity that secured gay marriage in South Africa, thereby expanding the meaning of freedom not just for the LGBTQI+ community but for us all. In a world where members of the LGBTQI+ are more free than I am as a black woman, I am also more free.

But even within the broader LGBTQI+ community we cannot wish away race and other identity markers. Black members of LGBTQI+ have different policy needs from their white counterparts. This does not have to be divisive unless the dominant group deems the freedom of others as a threat to or a calling out of their privilege.

American activist and politician Stacey Abrams writes that “identity politics can strengthen our democracy”. Our changing political landscape and technological advances such as social media “have encouraged activists and political challengers to make demands with a high level of specificity – to take the identities that dominant groups have used to oppress them and convert them into tools of democratic justice”.

Abram takes on the argument that, by calling out ethnic, cultural, gender or sexual differences, marginalised groups harm themselves and their causes: “The marginalised did not create identity politics: their identities have been forced on them by dominant groups, and politics is the most effective method of revolt.”

I would implore the likes of Gareth Cliff to think more deeply, not reactively, about the use of identity politics because, as Abrams shares, “new, vibrant, noisy voices represent the strongest tool to manage the growing pains of multicultural coexistence. By embracing identity and its prickly, uncomfortable contours, we will become more likely to grow as one.” DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores. For your nearest stockist, please click here.