The Politics of Identity Downloaded from by Guest on 26 September 2021

Kwame Anthony Appiah

The politics of identity Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021

I am never quite sure what people mean nothing to do with the government.’ when they talk about ‘identity politics.’ You might wonder how someone who Usually, though, they bring it up to com- said that could think that civil marriage plain about someone else. One’s own should not be open to gays. Isn’t that political preoccupations are just, well, straight identity politics? politics. Identity politics is what other In short, I think that what Sir John people do. Harrington so sagely said of treason Here’s one example: When someone is largely true of identity politics: it in France suggested gay marriage was never seems to prosper only because it a good idea, many French people com- has largely won the political stage. plained that this was just another in- But I think there is a way of explain- stance of American-style identity poli- ing why identity matters. ‘Identity’ tics. (In France, as you know, ‘Ameri- may not be the best word for bringing can-style’ is en effet a synonym for ‘bad.’) together the roles gender, class, race, ‘Why should les gays insist on special nationality, and so on play in our lives, treatment?’ So the French legislature but it is the one we use. One problem created the Pacte Civil de Solidarité with ‘identity’: it can suggest that ev- (pacs), whose point is exactly that mar- eryone of a certain identity is in some riage is open to any two citizens. ‘Much strong sense idem, i.e., the same, when, better,’ those people said. ‘Sexuality has in fact, most groups are internally quite heterogeneous, partly because each of us Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Fellow of the Amer- has many identities. The right response ican Academy since 1995, is Laurance S. Rocke- to this problem is just to be aware of the feller University Professor of Philosophy and the risk. University Center for Human Values at Prince- But another dif½culty with social iden- ton University. His publications include “Asser- tity is that the very diversity of that list tion and Conditionals” (1985), “In My Fath- can leave you wondering whether all er’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture” these identities have anything interest- (1992), “The Ethics of Identity” (2005), and, ing in common. What did it mean when most recently, “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a I added ‘and so on’ just now to a list that 1 World of Strangers” (2006). ran from gender to nationality? Well,

Dædalus Fall 2006 15 Kwame you can only answer that sort of ques- of herself as an X in the relevant way, she Anthony tion by proposing a theory of identity. identi½es as an X, which means she some- Appiah on times feels like or acts as an X. For exam- identity My own account of social identities ple: Joe Kansas is in Rome. He sees a is nominalist because I explain how the lost-looking couple and hears one of identities work by talking about the la- them say, with an American accent, bels–the names–for them. Take some ‘Gee, honey, I wish I knew the route to arbitrary identity-label X. My proposal the Capitol.’ Since Joe’s just come from is: X will have criteria of ascription; there, he goes up to them and tells them some people will identify as X’s; some the way. Why? Because he’s an Ameri- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 people will treat others as X’s; and X can and so are they. In other words, to will have norms of identi½cation. feel like an X is to respond affectively in Ascription: The criteria of ascription a way that depends on your identity as for X are the properties on the basis of an X. You may feel proud of Mary, a fel- which we sort people into those we do low Englishwoman, say, who has just and those we don’t call X’s. These crite- scaled Everest. Politicians mobilize this ria need not be the same for everyone. sort of feeling all the time, when they Indeed, people will rarely agree on exact- can–more scope then for a politiciza- ly which properties X’s must have. Here tion of identities. is scope for one kind of identity politics: Treatment: Finally, to treat someone Are F-to-M transgender people men? as an X is to do something to her because Are Muslims really French? This form she is an X. When Joe tells those lost tour- of identity politics involves negotiation ists the way to the Capitol, he’s helping (not necessarily by way of the state) of them, in part, ‘because they’re Ameri- the boundaries of various groups. At cans.’ Kindness of this sort is a common the same time, this isn’t just a matter form of treatment directed toward fel- of what people say about you, or wheth- low in-group members. Unkindness is er they’re polite: it may affect what re- an equally frequent form of treatment sources you have access to. If being a de- directed toward out-group members. vout Muslim is inconsistent with being Here is room for politics, once more, as French, you might not be able to go to a people try to use the government to en- state school with your hijab on. force their likes and dislikes. And the Identi½cation: By itself, mere classi½ca- politics can be very serious: think of tion does not produce what I mean by ‘a the struggle against apartheid in South social identity.’ What makes a classi½ca- Africa. tion a relevant social identity is not just Norms of identi½cation: Identities are that some people are called X’s but also useful, in part, because once we ascribe that being an X ½gures in their thoughts, an identity to someone we can often feelings, and acts. When a person thinks make predictions about her behavior on that basis. This is not just because the criteria of ascription entail that mem- an ancient Chinese encyclopedia. It begins: bers of the group have, or tend to have, “(a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) certain properties. It’s also because so- embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, cial identities are associated with norms (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, . . . ” and ends of behavior for X’s. People don’t only do with “(n) those that resemble flies from a dis- and avoid doing things because they’re tance.” What would it mean to add ‘and so on’ X X here? ’s; there are things that, as ’s, they

16 Dædalus Fall 2006 ought and ought not to do. The ‘ought’ ‘There it is,’ Carlyle’s point was. ‘We’d The politics here is what a philosopher would call a better deal with it.’ of identity general practical ought–the ordinary But if we’re going to deal with identi- ought, not some special moral one. Here ty, it’s reasonable to ask how large a part are some examples of the type of norms these identities should play in our politi- I have in mind. Negatively: men ought cal lives, whether we take politics in the not to wear dresses; gay men ought not narrow sense of our dealings with the to fall in love with women; blacks ought state, or, more broadly, as our dealings, not to embarrass the race; Muslims in social life, with one another. ought not to eat pork. Positively: men Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 ought to open doors for women; gay To answer that question it helps to people ought to come out; blacks ought begin not with politics, not even with to support af½rmative action; Muslims social life directly, but with the ‘ethical ought to make the Hajj. life’ of individuals. By ‘ethics,’ I mean To say these norms exist isn’t to en- something like what whoever put the dorse them. The existence of a norm label Nichomachean Ethics on that ancient that X’s ought to A amounts only to its book meant by it. (Apparently, it proba- being widely thought–and widely un- bly wasn’t Aristotle.) Ethics is a reflection derstood to be thought–that X’s ought on what it means for human lives to go to A. well, for us to have eudaimonia. (This is Aristotle’s word, perhaps best translated Let me underscore at once how wide as ‘flourishing.’) Ethics, in this sense, a range of kinds of people ½t the gener- has important connections with morali- al rubric I have laid out. This story an- ty, which Ronald Dworkin taught me to swers the questions: what things ‘like’ distinguish from ethics as follows: Eth- race, ethnicity, gender, class are; what it ics, he said, “includes convictions about means to say ‘gender, nationality, and so which kinds of lives are good or bad for on.’ We can now add, for example, pro- a person to lead, and morality includes fessional identities (lawyer, doctor, jour- principles about how a person should nalist, philosopher); vocations (artist, treat other people.”2 composer, novelist); af½liations, formal Each of us has a life to live. We face and informal (Man. U. fan, jazz a½cio- many moral demands, but they leave us nado, Conservative, Catholic, Mason); many options. We mustn’t be cruel or and other more airy labels (dandy, con- dishonest, for example, but we can still servative, cosmopolitan). There are also live in many ways without these vices. relationships that are an obvious exten- Of course, all of us also have constraints sion of the general rubric: you can be of historical circumstances and physical X’s father and identify as such, or treat and mental endowments: I was born in- someone as X’s dad. Fatherhood has to the wrong family to be a Yoruba Oba norms–things dads ought to do. and with the wrong body for mother- If this is what identities are, it appears hood; I am too short to be a successful silly to be either ‘fer’ or ‘agin’ them. Ei- ther posture calls to mind the full-heart- 2 Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), ed avowal of the American transcenden- 485, fn. 1. Note that Dworkin’s de½nition allows talist Margaret Fuller, “I accept the uni- that the ethical might subsume the moral. It verse!”–and Thomas Carlyle’s famously might be best to lead a life in which you treat robust rejoinder, “Gad! She’d better!” others as they should be treated.

Dædalus Fall 2006 17 Kwame professional basketball player and insuf- union . . . based on the individual wants Anthony Appiah ½ciently musical to be a concert pianist. and capacities of its members, that each on But even when we have taken these is enabled to participate in the rich col- identity things into account, each human life be- lective resources of the others.”3 Liber- gins with many possibilities. Everybody als realize that we need other people: re- has–or, at least, should have–a great spect for individuality is not an endorse- variety of decisions to make in shaping a ment of individualism. life. And a philosophical liberal, like me, believes these choices belong, in the end, You might object that I count too many to the person whose life it is. things as social identities. But the fact Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 This means at least two things. First, that my account includes things we the standard by which we decide wheth- don’t normally think of as social iden- er I’m flourishing is, in part, set by aims tities is actually an advantage. Because I de½ne for myself. Second, provided I these other identities are important, as give others their moral due, the job of the usual social identities are, in our managing my life is mine. Thoughtful ethical lives. Humboldt, after the pas- friends, benevolent sages, and anxious sage I just quoted, gives as his ½rst exam- relatives rightly offer advice as to how ple marriage (“the union of the sexes”), to proceed. But it ought to be advice, not and then drifts perilously close to dis- coercion. And, just as private coercion is cussing homosexual relationships, too.4 wrong, it is also wrong when undertak- ‘Spouse,’ in short, is one of those rela- en by governments interested in the per- tional words, like ‘father,’ that ½t the fection of their citizens. In other words, model. once I have done my duty, the shaping of And it’s important to put the social my life is up to me. identities we normally talk about in the What John Stuart Mill taught us to context of all these others, because the call individuality is one term for this feature they all share, from the point of task. But our individuality isn’t pro- view of ethics, is that people make use duced in a vacuum; rather, the available of them in seeking eudaimonia. social forms and, of course, our interac- Why do we have such a diverse range tions with others help shape it. Chapter of social identities and relations? One 3 of On Liberty (“On individuality as one answer, an etiological one, speaks to our of the elements of well-being”) is the evolution as a social species designed for classic English formulation of this no- tion of individuality; but, as Mill freely 3 Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State acknowledged there, his own thinking Action, ed. J. W. Burrow (Cambridge: Cam- about these matters had been profound- bridge University Press, 1969), 9. Humboldt’s ly shaped by an essay of Wilhelm von essay, though written in 1891–1892, was not Humboldt, written in the 1790s, and ½rst published in a fairly complete form until 1852. See the editor’s introduction, vii. known to us now as The Limits of State Action. (It’s a good thing that’s how we 4 That’s perhaps one reason he didn’t publish know it: the German title was actually the essay himself, leaving it to his brother Al- Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der exander to publish posthumously. Another Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen.) In was that suggesting limits on the state probably wasn’t so popular with Friedrich Willhelm, Chapter 2, “Of the individual man, and King of Prussia, nephew of Frederick the Great the highest ends of his existence,” Hum- –who, come to think of it, might have liked boldt wrote that it is “through a social the gay part.

18 Dædalus Fall 2006 the game of coalition building in search a corresponding diversity in their modes The politics of food, mates, and protection. This is of life, they neither obtain their fair share of identity why we have the sort of in-group soli- of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, darities and out-group antagonisms that moral, and aesthetic statures of which social psychologists have been exploring their nature is capable.5 for the last half century. But from the point of view of a crea- hilosophers have written a good deal ture with that psychology, there is P recently about one way in which social another, equally persuasive answer: we identities have ½gured in politics, name- use identities to construct our human ly in what Hegelian language labels the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 lives. For we make our lives as men and ‘politics of recognition.’ The responses as women, as Yanks and as Brits, as Cath- of other people obviously play a crucial olics and as Jews; we make them as phi- role in shaping one’s sense of who one losophers and as novelists; we make is. As Charles Taylor points out, this pro- them as fathers and as daughters. Iden- cess begins in intimate life: “On the in- tities are a central resource in this pro- timate level, we can see how much an cess. Morality–by which I mean what original identity needs and is vulnerable we owe to one another–is also part of to the recognition given or withheld by the scaffolding on which we make that signi½cant others.” Relationships, he construction. So are various projects says, are “crucial because they are cru- that we voluntarily undertake: Voltaire’s cibles of inwardly generated identity.”6 garden at Ferney shaped the last years of But that’s just the beginning. Our his life. (He really meant what he said at identities don’t depend on interactions the end of Candide.) in intimate life alone. Law, school, Identities are so diverse and extensive church, work, and many other institu- because, in the modern world, people tions also shape us. However, this fact need an enormous array of tools in mak- doesn’t tell us what role the state should ing a life. The range of options suf½cient play in the regulation of such acts of rec- for each of us isn’t enough for us all. In- ognition. deed, people are making up new identi- Unfortunately, we live in societies that ties all the time: ‘gay’ is basically four have not treated certain individuals with decades old; ‘punk’ is younger. As Mill respect because they were, for example, said in one of my favorite passages from women, homosexuals, blacks, Jews. Be- Chapter 3 of On Liberty: cause our identities are ‘dialogically’ If it were only that people have diversi- shaped, as Taylor describes it, people ties of taste, that is reason enough for not who have these characteristics ½nd them attempting to shape them all after one central–often negatively central–to model. But different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual de- 5 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in The Collected velopment; and can no more exist health- Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 18, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ily in the same moral, than all the variety 1963–1991), 270. of plants can exist in the same physical at- mosphere and climate. The same things 6 Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining which are helps to one person towards the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann the cultivation of his higher nature, are (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, hindrances to another . . . . unless there is 1994), 36. Cf. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Rec- ognition (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1995).

Dædalus Fall 2006 19 Kwame their identities. The politics of recogni- pressions of contempt may be part of Anthony Appiah tion starts when we grasp that this is who he or she is, and whose rights of on wrong. One form of healing pursued by free expression are presumably ground- identity those who have these identities involves ed, at least in part, in the connection seeing these collective identities not as between individuality and self-expres- sources of limitation and insult but as sion. On the other, the oppressed indi- valuable parts of who they are. And since vidual, whose life can go best only if his a modern ethics of authenticity (which or her identity is consistent with self- goes back, roughly, to Romanticism) re- respect. How, if at all, is the state to in- quires us to express who we centrally tervene? are, they move, next, to demanding so- There are undoubtedly all sorts of Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 ciety recognize them as women, homo- things that might be done here: laws sexuals, blacks, and Catholics, and do against hate speech or verbal harassment the cultural work necessary to resist the in the workplace, state education for tol- stereotypes, to challenge the insults, to erance, public celebrations of the heroes lift the restrictions. of the oppressed. But it’s important to Since these old restrictions suggested see that, while members of groups that substantially negative norms of identi- have experienced historical exclusion, ½cation, constructing a life with dignity contempt, or obloquy may indeed need entails developing positive norms of new social practices in order to flourish, identi½cation instead. For example, an what they are seeking is not always recog- American homosexual after Stonewall nition. When blacks and women in the and gay liberation takes the script of the United States campaigned for the vote, closet, and works, in community with they did so very often as blacks and as others, to assemble a series of positive women. But they weren’t asking for rec- gay norms of identi½cation. This new ognition of their identity; they were ask- conception recodes being a faggot as ing, precisely, for the vote. Participation being gay, which requires, among oth- of this sort may presuppose a minimal er things, declining to stay in the closet. sense of recognition, but it entails a good But if one is to be out of the closet in a deal more. Similarly, when the lesbian society that deprives homosexuals of and gay movement in the United States equal dignity and respect, then one pursues recognition, it does so by asking must constantly deal with assaults on for rights–to serve in the military, to one’s dignity. Thus, the right to live as marry–that would be worth having an ‘open’ homosexual is not enough. It even if they came without recognition. is not even enough to be treated with So not all political claims made in the equal dignity despite being homosexual, name of a group identity are primarily for that would mean accepting that be- claims for recognition. ing homosexual counts to some degree In social life, too, it’s equally impor- against one’s dignity. Instead, one must tant not to pursue a politics of recogni- ask to be respected as gay. tion too far. If recognition entails tak- This is a demand that others could ac- ing notice of one’s identity in social life, cede to as individuals: I have no objec- then the development of strong norms tion to calling social negotiations of this of identi½cation can become not liber- sort a kind of micropolitics. But what ating but oppressive. There is a kind of can it mean for the state? On one side identity politics that doesn’t just permit lies the individual oppressor whose ex- but demands that I treat my skin color or

20 Dædalus Fall 2006 my sexuality as central to my social life. George Bush hasn’t done–and probably The politics Even though my ‘race’ or my sexuality won’t do–much in changing the law on of identity may be elements of my individuality, many of the so-called social issues that someone who insists that I organize my evangelical Christians might be thought life around these things is not an ally of to care about: stopping abortions, refus- individuality. Because identities are con- ing to recognize lesbian and gay rela- stituted in part by norms of identi½ca- tionships in any way, and getting lots of tion and by treatment, there is no clear mentions for God in public life. So what line between recognition and a new kind George Bush says about abortion and of oppression. homosexuality draws them to him, even though they should pick someone else if Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 One reasonable criticism of identity they cared about policy rather than iden- politics consists, then, in pointing out tity. that there’s more than recognition–of- This kind of politics is actually a deep ten much more–at stake when people feature of modern democratic life. We ask to be recognized. This resembles the identify with people and parties for a standard old-style Marxist criticism that variety of psychological reasons, includ- identities other than class-based ones ing identi½cations of this prepolitical get in the way of seeing where our real sort, and then we’re rather inclined to interests lie. (There’s some truth to this, support all the policies of that person though as a good liberal, I don’t think or party. This is, in part, because sensi- our real interests are just our economic ble people have better things to do than ones.) But the point here is not just that work out, all by themselves, what the recognition isn’t all that matters. In- proper balance should be between, say, deed, because our identities shape our vat and income taxes, but it’s also be- aims and our aims help ½x our interests, cause people suf½ciently like you may we can have real so-to-speak identity in- actually pick policies, when they do terests as well. think about them, that you would pick, Many people in the United States if you had the time. So here, as in many voted for George Bush in part because places in life, it is sensible to practice a they wanted someone who was, like cognitive division of labor. That used to them, an evangelical Christian, in the work by creating political identities– White House. They voted as evangeli- left, right, small-l liberal, Labour, Tory, cals, but this, at best, is very obliquely big-l Liberal, Democrat, Republican, a point about recognition. Getting a Christian Democrat, and Marxist. In wave from the White House may count many of the advanced democracies, par- as state recognition, I suppose, but most ty af½liations are less strong than they evangelicals sensibly don’t hang their used to be, and other identities are bear- self-respect on that rather wobbly peg. ing more political weight. But that’s in Now I think that for many of them that part because many of the older party af- vote was a mistake, since George Bush’s ½liations were class-based, and social actual policies are bad for many of the class as de½ned by one’s work has de- things that matter most to them–health clined in signi½cance in people’s iden- care, pension provision, tax policy, not ti½cations. In that very profound way a losing their sons and daughters in for- new kind of identity politics, based in eign adventures. And though he is, I be- the declining social salience of class, has lieve, a sincere evangelical Christian, been on the rise since the 1960s.

Dædalus Fall 2006 21 Kwame count seven different ways in which Anthony I Appiah I’ve said that you might speak of ‘iden- on tity politics.’ (1) There are political con- identity flicts about who’s in and who’s out. (2) Politicians can mobilize identities. (3) States can treat people of distinct identities differently. (4) People can pursue a politics of recognition. (5) There can be a social micropolitics enforcing norms of identi½cation. (6) There are inherently political identities like party Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 identi½cations. And (7) social groups can mobilize to respond collectively to all of the above. Maybe it’s not so surprising then that, as I said at the start, I’m never quite sure what people mean when they talk about identity politics.

22 Dædalus Fall 2006