You’re Cancelled!
Everything around us is political. This has always been the way the world worked. There are always reasons behind the different courses of action decided upon by people in power. According to Maguire (2016), identity politics is when a group of people form an alliance to defend their group’s interests. Consequently, Lopez (2017), claims that the focus of identity politics usually falls on social issues such as the LGBTQ+, same sex marriage, women, racial differences, rape culture, and many more.
As technology advances the way we communicate, especially with the widespread usage of social media, people are expected to be well aware of what is going on around the globe. Gradually, people have been educated about cultures of different ethnicities, as well as things that may be offensive to them. Furthermore, people are expected to show respect and sympathize with their struggles. In the beginning, it became a healthy way of educating one another, however, as people began expecting acceptance and understanding, it slowly became toxic. People nowadays are expected to be educated, and when they say or do something that is quite the opposite of what people expect, they then proceed to get “cancelled.”
This “cancel culture” is particularly seen in social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. People who show disrespect towards other people’s values, beliefs, and cultures are called out by others, and in the process, gets “cancelled.” Being cancelled means that one is being condemned and shamed by others who believe that his/her opinions are invalid or wrong. Moreover, this “cancel culture” does not really bother to educate people anymore, nor does it give people to redeem themselves, simply because “they should have known better.”
I believe that this cancel culture is one of the best examples that may portray Heidt’s argument about organizations. Groups organize themselves either by finding commonality or common enemies. However, I believe that identity politics is far more complicated than this. Groups organize themselves by finding commonalities, and then, attack their common enemies. Today, everyone has their own identities, and they have the courage to speak out about it. The world has now been divided into two opposing sides: the one that wants to preserve beliefs and values of the past and one that wants to change how society has been shaped.
However, just like the old saying goes, too much of anything is bad, thus, too much courage to speak out about our own beliefs and standpoints could also do more harm than good. People now have become too outspoken of their beliefs that they forget other people could have their own too. The world has come to value too much universalism that the possibility of individualism has now been overlooked.
So has identity politics gone too far? Maybe yes, maybe no. While it is good that identity politics has enabled to connect people with similar interests and has helped them in collectively expressing their beliefs, it has also created a divide among people. It has now gone too far off from its original objective which is to create representation and make people understand their purpose. However, this may be rooted in grudges held towards people who refuse to listen.
Identity politics is neither black nor white. It exists because it is the medium in which people could meet halfway. If people could see through one another’s perspectives and understand one another’s sentiments, maybe then the world could be a better place.
References
Lopez, G. (2016, December 2). The battle over identity politics, explained. Vox; Vox. https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/2/13718770/identity-politics
Maguire, L. (2016). Identity Politics. Philosophy Talk. https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/identity-politics