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NancyLebovitz comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong
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Salman Rushdie, explaining identity politics
I think "identity politics" is a term of art which covers things other than that which aren't bad, like minority struggles.
You've got a point, and it's one that gets into hard issues. It can be quite hard for some people to decide whether they're being unfairly mistreated and to act on it, and the people for whom the decision is easy aren't necessarily sensible. Emotions are not a reliable tool for telling whether acting on a feeling of being unfairly mistreated makes sense.
How do you tell to what extent is a particular instance of people feeling outraged them just getting worked up for the fun of it over something they should endure, and to what extent are they building up enough allies and emotional energy to deal with a problem which (by utilitarian standards?) needs to be dealt with?
I don't know how to tell legitimate movements from illegitimate ones, but the term of art "identity politics" refers to both. ID politics is a specific kind of political advocacy, and there are both good ID politics arguments and bad ones. You'd probably just have to investigate the claims they're making on a case by case basis.
But, I wasn't trying to interrogate whether defining yourself by outrage can be good in some instances, I was trying to point out that the term "ID politics" refers to things outside of defining yourself in relation to outrage. Maybe I just misinterpreted what you were saying, but I thought your comment unintentionally hinted that you were unaware the phrase is a specific term of art. There are many types of identity politics that aren't about outrage or opposition.
You're quite right, I didn't know about it as a term of art.
I suppose I've mostly heard about the outrage variety of identity politics-- it tends to be more conspicuous.