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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Identity Politics. When the Black radical feminist group Combahee River Collective coined that term in their 1977 collective statement, they wrote, "We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters, and our community, which allows us to continue our struggle and work," 1977.

As we jump ahead to the present, our understanding of identity politics has become murkier, while identity politics itself sometimes seems to have taken over the world. In the age of MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, insurrection at the US Capitol, as we were talking about in our last segment, those intersections, and the rise of white wing extremism across America and Europe, what do we make today of identity politics? How do we even define it, and how do we define ourselves?

With me now is Gary Younge, journalist, professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in the UK, and author of Who Are We? How Identity Politics Took Over the World. Now, this book was originally published in 2011, and it's now out in a new paperback edition with a new introduction. We're going to draw some lines from 1977 to 2011, to the present. Gary Younge, thanks so much for joining us stateside. Welcome to WNYC.

Gary Younge: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: As I pointed out, your book originally came out 10 years ago, before Trayvon Martin was killed, before MeToo, before Trump's ascent to the presidency. If one of the questions you set out to explore then was who are we, how would the answer to that most significantly have changed in a decade?

Gary Younge: We are increasingly divided and increasingly confused by even the question being posed. As you point out, it was before Black Lives Matter, before Brexit, before all of that, but it set out, or what it tried to do was to have the parameters by which we might understand some of those things, and to carve a line between, I would call the dishonesty of the right that berates identity politics, even as they use it to motivate white people, or rural people, or nationalists, or whomever. The confusion on the left, which many people on the left who berate identity politics without really spending much time thinking what it is.

What I tried to point out in the book is that everybody comes to politics with something. Everybody comes to politics with an identity. The more powerful your identity is, the less likely you are to really realize you even have it. Nobody asks me, "When did you come out as a straight guy?" Or when I was a foreign correspondent in America, nobody asked me, "How do you balance that with child care?"

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] What responsibility do you think that confers upon straight, white, cisgender men in particular, and on down the pecking order from there to other identities that have power? By the way, that line that you just cited from your book was the one that we used in the promo for this show over the last 24 hours because it's such a striking line, "The more power an identity carries, the less likely its carrier is to be aware of it as an identity at all," and the perfect examples of that you just gave. What responsibility does that confer on, let's start with just white people and predominantly white America, to look at themselves through an identity lens?

Gary Younge: I honestly think it's the same challenge that we all have, which is to think when you come to both politics in general and situations in your daily life, "Who am I in this?" Who you are in that moment will shift. Just to give an example that's not in the book. I left Britain, I was in The Guardian in 2002, and I returned in 2015. In that time, I'd gone from "a young man to an older person with a reputation". It felt incumbent on me. There were some things that have changed around me.

The kind of off-color jokes that I might have made as a young person around other young people were no longer really appropriate. I felt the need to hold back from talking in meetings and wait for other people who talk less to have their go. I felt the need to encourage people. In a way, what I'm saying, I'm not dodging your question, but that it's incumbent on all of us to think, "What am I bringing to this. What do I want other people to get out of this?"

All too often,because the more powerful an identity you have, the less likely you are to even think that you have it. People think, "Well, I'm just Gary. I'm just coming to this with my views," but you're really not. There's no need to feel bad about that. There's no need to feel guilty about that, but there can sometimes be a need to shut up to let other people talk, or just to take a beat to acknowledge that, "Yes, my position is not necessarily an objective position. It's an accumulation of experiences that I have, and maybe I can learn something here."

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, let's ask the title question of Gary Younge's book. Who are you? I asked that seriously. Who are you? How do you relate to your own identity, however you define that? To the point that he's been making and that lies at the core of this book, at least as part of the core of this book, if you come from a more powerful identity group that maybe gives you the privilege of just thinking of yourself as an individual and not part of any group, maybe if you're white, maybe if you're male, maybe if you're straight, maybe if you're cisgender, how do you come to grips with that part of your identity which you didn't see maybe earlier in your lives as identity?

(646) 435-7280. Is that a complicated enough color question that may or may not get any answers? (646) 435-7280. I think people will get it. (646) 435-7280. Who are you, and how does whatever more privileged group you are in in society inform your sense of identity? (646) 435-7280. Gary, how do you think that will change and can peacefully change for the United States? I realize you're British, and you're looking at global questions here, and you're looking at this country from afar.

One of the dynamics we talk about a lot in this country if we're paying long-term attention is that by 2042 or so, whites will no longer be a majority in the United States. There will be no racial majority in the United States. We already live that reality in New York City, where I live, and it ain't so bad. There are a lot of problems, let's say, and they still have to do with inequality for people of color by and large. For white people, it's not some kind of dystopia to not be the majority, just to be one of many minorities in a major place.

As that becomes the reality in America in the next few decades, does it become more legitimate in any way for white people to identify with their identity group, because now if you're a white identity person, you're almost certainly a white supremacist and a racist?

Gary Younge: I don't have a problem with white people identifying with white people. The real question is, what do you want to do with that? The central argument to my book is that identity is a great place to start for everybody and a terrible place to finish for everybody. For white people to be interested in their whiteness for them to engage in a culture that is predominant, I really did not have a problem with that so long as you're not denying anybody else their right to do the same. So long as you are not doing that in a way that seeks to be exclusive and excluding. Once again, I would say that about any group really.

I do think if we take the insurrection as an example, obviously, this was contextually relevant rather than causally relevant. The night before Georgia in the heart of the Confederacy had voted and returned the first Black Democrat, and the first Black person entity, and the first Jewish person, and the first time for a long time they've returned two Democrats, I don't think that those two things were entirely unrelated contextually. When people say, "Our country is being taken from us," I think that they come from the worst kind of identity politics, which is for me and nobody else rather than for me and therefore the world.

In that sense, identity is kind of like fire. It can warm you, but it can also burn you and it can burn others.

Brian Lehrer: How do you feel, before we take some calls, about what gets called cancel culture in this respect? There's an article in New York Magazine recently by Jonathan Chait, who I think is usually on the left in his politics. I hope I'm characterizing him accurately in that respect. The headline was "Firing Actors for Being Conservative is Another Hollywood Blacklist". It gives a few current examples. Where are you on that whole thing? Does that intersect with what you write about and/or concerned about?

Gary Younge: It does. It's one of those terms, a bit like political correctness and increasingly identity politics, that has come to me whatever you want it to mean, so long as you don't like it. I think that everybody has the right to free speech. I think that nobody has the right to publish a book. Nobody has the right to necessarily be in a film. That's not a human right.

Now, if one took, for example, we can see that there's a sliding scale here. If someone who was an actor was to espouse support for Islamic terrorism, and to support the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, that no one would bat an eyelid if they were fired from the set. We can imagine some viewpoints that are beyond the pale. The question is not whether you draw a line in something like this, it's where you draw the line and why do you draw the line.

Most Americans at the time that Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world title after he refused the draft, I think most Americans did not support him because they thought that was beyond the pale. I think if something like that were to happen now, it might be different. We can see that freedom of speech is contingent. I'd have to say, by and large, the people that I have seen who are most likely to complain about "cancel culture" are people with columns and platforms, who haven't been canceled at all because if they had been canceled, we would never have heard them.

Brian Lehrer: That's true, honestly. Phil in Mahopac, you're on WNYC with Gary Younge, author of the book Who Are We? Hi, Phil.

Phil: Hey, Brian. I'm going to take you off my car. Hold on one second.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Phil: Sorry.

Brian Lehrer: Getting off the speakerphone, I guess. Go ahead.

Phil: How are you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Good. Sounds much better. Thanks for that.

Phil: No problem. Growing up in the city, I was born to a Sicilian father and a Puerto Rican mother. Moving out of the city into the suburbs, because of my last name, we were often affiliated with Italian, with European. When individuals find out that I am of a mixed origin, I find that we tend to get singled out a little bit more than others just because of that mixed makeup. In some regards, I do tend to identify more with my mother's heritage, with the Hispanic heritage than I do with the Italian heritage, although I do identify with the Italian heritage as well. It's just interesting how we are initially perceived in groups, and then once people find out what you're about, the--

Brian Lehrer: You're talking about your own identity. In your case, mixed in the way you described, how once identity often gets shaped, by the way, other people see your identity and therefore treat you, yes?

Phil: Yes. Because of my last name and such an Italian last name, the assumption is, "Oh, he's an Italian guy. This is an Italian family." Then when they find out that it's more complex than that, there are those that tend to shy away. It's not so receptive at that point.

Brian Lehrer: Identities are complex and identities are dynamic. Even your Puerto Rican side, Puerto Ricans can be white, they can be Black, et cetera. Phil, thank you very much. Gary, you want to say something about that?

Gary Younge: Yes, I think Phil's highlighted a couple of things there. First is, as you mentioned, identities are complex with never just one thing. My parents are from Barbados. I'm Black. I was born in Britain. I'm straight. I'm male. I'm also one thing, which is Gary. The degree to which any of those things come into play at any given moment will depend on where you are, which is the other point that Phil illustrates, which is that identities are very situational. Being Black and British when I was in America, people would not assume I was British, particularly if I went outside of New York. As a student, I studied French and Russian.

I spent six months in France and six months in what was still the Soviet Union. In France, I had the most terrible racist experiences among other things. I was beaten up by the police. People would ask you what color you were when you call to ask to look at their flat. In the Soviet Union, at the time, people assumed I was American, and therefore that I had money, and so cars would stop and become taxis for me. It's the only time in my life when anybody ever looked at me and thought money. You see that I'm the same person and wearing pretty much the same clothes as a student. It was in the same year.

Just like Phil, who depending on where he is will depend on what comes to the fore to people if they don't know his second name, if they do. Yes, our identity is to a large degree, our social identities are shaped by what people assume those identities to be.

Brian Lehrer: Eloise in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eloise.

Eloise: Hi, Brian. Thanks. I'm a white cis queer woman. I'm also a therapist, which is another part of my identity. We have historically expected, especially from the [unintelligible 00:19:55] line of thinking, this expectation that therapists are "objective". Gary was just talking about how identity is inherently subjective. It's a mix of so many of our experiences. I just wanted to bring forth too that idea is so important in therapeutic alliances. That when we locate ourselves in the multiplicity of our identities, that also allows for an understanding of our subjectivity and where there might be blind spots, where we might have alliances with the folks that we're holding space for. That's been just a hugely important part of my own growth as a therapist and as a person.

Brian Lehrer: How do you apply this in your practice?

Eloise: In a lot of ways, certainly when I work with couples and families as well as individuals, I locate myself in the first session, meaning I share parts of my identity with clients. That's a practice that I was taught and asked to practice when I was at the program at Ackerman. Even just that, even just the first session that you're meeting with somebody, making space for your identity and for them to invite the other person to bring maybe invisible parts of their identities, maybe visible parts of their identities, and bringing it into the space to be talked about.

Brian Lehrer: Eloise, thank you very much for that contribution. We're going to have time for one more. By the way, yes, people did respond in droves to this question. All our lines are full. Honestly, because we went very long with our segment on nursing homes at the beginning of the show, some of the other segments today are getting a little squeezed. Jane in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jane.

Jane: Hi. Hold on. You're on speakerphone. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I hope that my mom isn't listening. I just wanted to make this observation. I'm a white, straight woman, well-educated as far as identity is concerned. Outwardly very lucky and empowered. I've noticed among baby boomer women, my mom's age and her cohorts, that there's been more resistance to a lot of the Black Lives Matter, Trans Lives Matter, Sex Workers' Lives Matter. This more modern conversations around identity, there's been more resistance. The word TERF, trans-exclusionary radical feminists is applied to the JK Rowlings of the world.

I think that it's because, for a lot of white women who came of age during the civil rights movements, they have trouble not seeing themselves as among the most disempowered or disenfranchised of possible identities. I don't mean that to sound as bitter as I'm sure it does. It's an observation that I've made, is my mom's identity has a lot to do with the fact that she had to fight for respect when she was a younger woman.

Brian Lehrer: Jane, thank you for that. Gary, give us a thought on that before we run out of time. You do bring up a term in your book, TERF, trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

Gary Younge: Interestingly, when the book came out in 2011, another Trans Lives was being a thing, but it wasn't a dominant thing that was being discussed in the way that it is now, actually, particularly in Britain, where the feminist movement, in particular, is living by. I would say that your caller really illustrates an excellent point, which is the generational nature of these things that we grow up surrounded. Our identity comes from somewhere. That's something that many people who believe that they are the subject of their own genius find difficult.

One of the things that comes is our generation and what we were schooled in. Schooling yourself out of something is really very, very difficult. If you spent a significant amount of time fighting to create space that men couldn't get in and dominate, and that was a big feature of your generation, then the notion, the suggestion that as trans women that they might be coming in through the back door, leaves an awful lot of people of that generation feeling very anxious. I'm not saying that that's the case, I'm describing the nature of the anxiety.

This is as good a place as any to end this. I wish there were more generosity in these discussions about anti-Semitism in Israel and trans rights. The more tender these discussions get, the more generosity is needed. Not generosity toward someone who is being anti-Semitic, not generosity to someone who is being transphobic, but generosity towards the notion that the place that someone might be coming from may be laden with a series of things that they want to navigate, and so to keep the door open rather than to slam it shut

Brian Lehrer: Gary Younge, journalist, professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in the UK, and author of Who Are We? How Identity Politics Took Over the World, first published in 2011 and now with a new introduction. I think it's the rare thinker about the world who gets to revisit how a huge and changing issue look to him in his own book a decade ago, and revisit it with some major new thoughts. Gary, I'm glad you got that chance, and I'm glad you shared it with us.

Gary Younge: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

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