Identity politics crashes; the elite-supported woke comes to the rescue

     Jesse Jackson did not run for president a third time in 1992, as he indicated he would to his delegates at the 1988 Democratic National Convention; and the Rainbow Coalition was unable to develop itself into a mass organization in the late 1980s and early 1990s (See “The Rainbow Coalition challenges the establishment,” April 27, 2021).  So the Jesse Jackson phenomenon came to end.

      In the 1990s, identity politics emerged as the principal approach of the Left.  Identity politics is an accommodationist project that abandons the goal of transformative social change of the African-American movement of the period 1966-1972 and of the Jackson presidential campaigns of 1983 to 1988.  It seeks greater inclusion in the institutions of the nation of blacks, women, Latinos, indigenous peoples, and LGBT people.  Identity politics assumes the inclusion of such groups will create a greater diversity of viewpoints, and thus it will strengthen the institution in the attainment of its goals, …