My thoughts?
I agree that identity politics as used by the elites - such as the idea that all we need is more Black people on the boards of corporations that harm people and the environment without actually changing the corporate practice - is not about actually helping people achieve equality.
However, if you mean identity politics as in the idea that White people are the default and everyone else’s issues are some annoying add-on, then I disagree.
I am Black and a woman. Both of these things impact my life and cannot be separated. My grandmother came to the UK to work as a domestic from the Caribbean. Her labour was exploited and abused by the White family she worked for. At the end of her life we learned she was raped by the White man she worked for, while his wife - a White woman - also physically abused and degraded her. She had no freedom, no ability to seek work elsewhere, no way to refuse work when she was demanded to work 20 hour days. This history shapes my understanding of feminism - and while many on this board refuse to acknowledge intersectionality this is exactly why race matters in our analysis of feminism. Saying “oh it’s just a class and economic issue why bring up identity” ignores all the ways race also is part of power. Saying that “women’s issues” are universal without considering race ignores the power the White woman had over my grandmother specifically because my Grandmother was a poor, Black, Caribbean woman - poor because she was from a country colonized by the British - who was unable to defend herself specifically because of immigration laws structured against Black people. So no, I don’t think understanding that race also affects women who are not White is vulgar “identity politics.”
My earliest memory is a White boy biking by and screaming racial slurs at me. I am 35 years old. This is not ancient history. I grew up outside of Manchester. My brother got beat up every day on the playground by White boys. When I was 7 years old, 11 year old White boys in my sister’s class surrounded me and asked if I knew what a blowjob is. So how can I understand my life as a woman separate from these experiences of racialized and sexualized violence? But the point isn’t the personal experience, it’s what it reveals about systemic issues - that Black women specifically are at the bottom of society’s racial and economic hierarchy. We cannot talk about capitalism without also talking about the racial labour that keeps capitalism going, and we cannot talk feminism without talking about how Black and other racialized women perform labour - often domestic labour, often in White families - that is the least paid and most open to abuse. This while we face child welfare systems, racism in healthcare, and within the education system as well.
So no, it’s not “identity politics” to discuss how historical forces of racism and colonialism work within capitalism to render Black bodies as property leasing to the exploitation of Black labour.
By the way, I never said PP SHOULD speak about migrancy. I said that people on this board suggesting that her issue with kneeling is that the Black players aren’t acknowledging the forced labour that makes the stadium - largely African and Indian labourers - would make her a massive hypocrite as well since she certainly protests whatever she wants without being demanded to also speak about migrant labour in England. My point was that why are Black people only allowed to speak if they address every single global issue, which certainly isn’t a standard PP or anyone here holds themselves to. Do you think the issue is more likely your - and PPs - discomfort with discussions of racism?