The wonderful thing about identity politics is that if you wait around, it will make a complete and utter mockery of whatever the left believes in.
Identity politics is another way of saying nationalism. It comes complete with all the tribal demands and loyalties. The stuff that the left claims to hate and oppose.
Once upon a time, the left ridiculed the idea of special treatment for native born Americans. Anyone who boasted that they were second or third generatiion was mocked. (Never mind anyone who dated their family tree back to the Mayflower.) Now the left can try to learn to love it. And do the intersectional privilege math to calculate who wins in a social justice matchup between Africans and African-Americans.
Cornell University’s Black Students United demanded the university start recruiting more black American students because the campus has too many African and Caribbean students Wednesday.
Black Students United, a group for students identifying with the African diaspora, handed the university president a list of twelve demands, with one of them dealing with the disproportionate representation of African students compared to black students on the campus.
“We demand that Cornell Admissions to come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented Black students on this campus. We define underrepresented Black students as Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country,” the group stated in their demands.
Black Students United takes issue with the fact that there are more African and Caribbean students on campus when compared to black students. The group defines black students as those who come from black families that have lived in America for two or more generations.
The demands from Black Students United come after a black student alleged that fraternity Psi Upsilon members brutally assaulted him and called him a “n*gger.” The demands also call for the frat to be shut down and give up its house to students of color to gather.
And that quickly turns into, "There are too many African students on campus".
1. Identity politics is an endless hole. Each group can always be split down more ways. Which is what's happening to the LGBT movement (a whole bunch of those letters don't get along with each other.) Once you embrace identity politics, you embrace endless internal feuding. And then you get African-Americans complaining about too many Africans.
2. Black Students United actually have a point. We've created an infrastructure of privilege and entitlements for African-Americans based on slavery, segregation, etc... The system isn't fair, but it's even more absurd than a student from Kenya can walk in and take advantage of them without having any connection to the oppression and history. And then his son becomes president on the strenght of an appropriated history.
3. Second generation quotas are the sort of thing that will make any good liberal's head explode.
4. Tensions between African-Americans and African immigrants have been an undereported issue for years. The two groups have a certain amount of hostility. There have even been some minor riots. And one of the louder taxi discrimination cases in New York involved African taxi drivers refusing to pick up black passengers. (This makes more sense if you consider that they are different ethnic groups and that the mythological solidarity of "brown people" that the left celebrates is twice as real as Santa.)
5. If the left keeps pushing identity politics, we end up with a slightly nicer version of Rwanda where tribal differences eventually escalate from discrimination to violence. Either we have a society based on merit. Or on identity. If you want a society based on identity, see how well it worked out in Rwanda.