I've been saying all of this for years.

The thing that bugs me about modern Identity Politics is how it leads to an intellectual cul-de-sac. It does this by isolating groups from one another. People select an identity rather than forming their own identity.
Pro-ID people also ignore the basic fact that the ruling elite have always maintained their power by dividing the lower classes over cultural issues, racial identity being the most used cultural issue.

I've come to realize that there's a lot of confusion out there due to people using words with very specific definitions.
For example, when a Republican talks about "freedom" they don't mean "freedom from want".
They mean "freedom from government oppression", but only government oppression.
Private oppression? Republicans will either deny it exists, or justify it.
When a Republican is "pro-life" it only refers to birth.

One of the greatest points of conflict and division in the U.S. today is built upon assumptions that have no basis in reality. Race, as it is generally understood, isn't a thing according to science. Race, as it is practiced, is an idea that we've simply accepted.

Something Old, Something New will be back next week. I want to use my Open Thread this week to discuss an uncomfortable development in the ways we talk about race.

It seems that it's time to bring out this old speech, which has been in danger of being reduced to a cliche that people repeat but pay no real attention to:

Lately I've been seeing a lot of articles pushing back against the idea of the Democratic Party changing their focus for reasons of race.
Some of the articles come from a place obviously motivated by fear, such as this one.

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law has published another study about the transgender community. Race And Ethnicity Of Adults Who Identify As Transgender In The United States, prepared by Andrew R. Flores, Taylor N. Y. Brown, and Jody L.

The Dallas shooting was both tragic and counter-productive, but also inevitable.
It's ridiculous to think that cops can continue to kill hundreds of people every year, year after year, without there eventually being a violent reaction.

When Bernie first decided to run for President as a democratic socialist, challenging the extreme income inequality that advanced capitalism has brought to our society, I was excited. His message was echoing the Occupy Wall Street movement’s slogan that 1% of the wealthy owned more than the other 99%. Bernie was going to bring the concept of class struggle between working people and the corporate elite back into the political conversation!