IDENTITY POLITICS

Marx claimed that the working class had more members than those they worked for, and so if they closed ranks against the bourgeoisie, they could create a "dictatorship of the proletariat" which would vault them into power.

Gender advocates, and race advocates, have used a similar logic.

I find the logic strained, and resentment-based, as it must perpetuate itself by constantly finding evil "on the other side," and constantly trying to make a sharp division between permanently embattled groups. Closing ranks in the face of the evils of "the other side." I think all large generalizations collapse in the face of intensive scrutiny.

As a white male, and Christian, it is hard to understand how it would be to be black. If I were black, would I side with all other blacks? Would I like Mike Tyson, and would I support Idi Amin, and Jean-Francois Duvalier and his son? Would I think rap music beautiful, just because gangstas of color were its primary proponents?

If I were a woman, would I side with all other women, that is, against men? Would I support the likes of Valerie Solanas, and believe in her S.C.U.M. Manifesto?

I find the logic horrifying, and to be like dancing a two-step with Nazism, even if it is meant as a counter-step, it's still locked into the same logic.

I prefer the logic of the Good Samaritan. The idea is to find what's good in those sides we supposedly hate, and to talk with them. It breaks us out of the militaristic trance, and puts us into a more open framework. This is also an idea that you can find in the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai says that hatred is founded on ignorance. And the idea is to look at all aspects of another person in an attempt to reach an understanding of them.

(Buddhists have a very ugly statist structure in Myanmar, where Buddhism is the established church. In Sri Lanka, they have adopted Buddhism as a winner take all system, which they use to destroy all opposition. In Japan during WWII, Buddhism formed an ugly alliance with the Emperor.)

If I were president of the United States, I'd hate to be thought of as having gotten there through the color of my skin. I can't understand why you'd want to create any inkling that skin color represented character, or that getting there constitutes a "first," and thus perpetuates the notion that skin color and history are like moving flags up and down a football field. Shelby Steele argues that CONTENT OF CHARACTER should be the only thing we decide upon, borrowing this phrase from MLK.

Michael Steele, who is to some extent BO's Republican counterpart, has argued along the lines of Shelby Steele (is there any relation?) that CONTENT OF CHARACTER should be the criterion by which we elect. And yet, at the same time, Michael Steele has sought to expand Affirmative Action.

Michael Steele has been subjected to Oreos thrown at him at political events. Some doubt this contention.

If it happened, someone thinks Steele's character consists of pretending to be black, but being white on the inside. Plus, these people are wealthy enough to throw cookies around. Meanwhile, last week revelations erupted that Steele used public funds to attend an orgiastic S & M theatre in San Francisco.

I don't know what it is to be white. Albert Schweitzer was white. So was Adolf Hitler. Mozart was a white man. So was Charlie Manson. Roseanne Barr is white. So was Eleanor Roosevelt. Countess Bathory was white. So was Emily Dickinson. I don't think you can generalize much on the basis of a color, whether the color is purple, or white.

MLK's "content of character" is difficult to discern. We don't know what kind of a character our current president is. Time will tell. You never know what a person is like unless and until you live with them. But it's not possible to live with more than two dozen or so people in your life.

So we tend to judge people on where they've been to school, how they talk, whether or not they go to church, if they've been in prison, and perhaps also by the color of their skin, and their gender.

These last two are probably the most hazardous, and the most dangerous, and yet they've become major standard ideas in the academic left of how to think about people.

What could replace them?

I think what could and should replace them is how well an individual lives within the Ten Commandments as defined by Martin Luther in the Small Catechism.

What would you suggest?