What is Identity Politics?
Identity politics is a political framework in which people with a shared identity—based on race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, religion, or other demographic characteristics—organize collectively to address systemic oppression, advocate for their interests, and claim political agency. Rather than organizing solely around ideology, party affiliation, or universal principles, identity politics centers the lived experiences of marginalized groups and asserts that those experiences grant both authority to speak on certain issues and the right to self-determination.
Identity politics describes political or social activity by or on behalf of a racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other group, usually undertaken with the goal of rectifying injustices suffered by group members because of differences or conflicts between their particular identity and the dominant identity of a larger society. Identity political formations typically aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context, with members asserting or reclaiming ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination.
Origins & Lineage
The term “identity politics” was first coined by Black feminist Barbara Smith and the Combahee River Collective in 1974. The Combahee River Collective was a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization active in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1974 to 1980. The collective of Black feminists had been meeting together since 1974, involved in the process of defining and clarifying their politics, while doing political work within their own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements.
In April 1977, the Collective issued “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” drafted by African-American activists Barbara Smith, Demita Frazier and Beverly Smith. This document became a key text in the history of contemporary Black feminism and the development of the concepts of identity politics as used among political organizers and social theorists. Gerald Izenberg credits the 1977 Combahee statement with the first usage of the phrase “identity politics”.
The Collective argued that both the white feminist movement and the Civil Rights Movement were not addressing their particular needs as Black women and more specifically as Black lesbians. The statement explained their intention to “develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men.” The Combahee River Collective named itself after Harriet Tubman’s 1863 raid that freed over 700 enslaved people.
The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of large-scale political movements—second wave feminism, Black Civil Rights in the U.S., gay and lesbian liberation, and the American Indian movements—based in claims about the injustices done to particular social groups. While these movements predated the term, identity politics in the United States developed in the 1980s and '90s as a reaction to the perceived failure of liberal civil rights legislation to eliminate identity-based inequities and injustices, such as racial and sexual discrimination.
How It’s Practiced
Identity politics manifests through consciousness-raising groups, coalition-building, legislative advocacy, direct action, and cultural representation work. Practitioners organize around shared experiences of marginalization, create spaces for those with similar identities to gather and strategize, and challenge dominant narratives that erase or misrepresent their communities.
In practice, this looks like: forming caucuses within larger movements (e.g., women’s caucuses, LGBTQ+ groups within labor unions), demanding representation in institutions that have excluded certain groups, centering the voices of those most directly affected by specific policies, and refusing to subordinate one form of oppression to another. The Combahee River Collective was actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, seeing as their particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.
Many contemporary advocates of identity politics take an intersectional perspective, which they argue accounts for a range of interacting systems of oppression that may affect a person’s life and originate from their various identities.
Identity Politics Today
Identity politics remains central to contemporary social movements and political discourse. Identity politics remains a significant force in contemporary politics, with ongoing debates around issues like racial justice, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. The rise of social media has amplified the visibility and impact of identity politics, enabling marginalized voices to be heard and mobilized on a global scale.
Movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, trans rights organizing, disability justice work, and Indigenous sovereignty campaigns all employ identity-politics frameworks. Political candidates highlight their identities as women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, or working-class people to signal solidarity with constituencies sharing those identities.
The phrase “identity politics” has elicited a fierce backlash in recent years, as people across the political spectrum have interpreted it in many different ways in order to advance their own agendas. Criticism of identity politics often comes from either the center-right or the far-left on the political spectrum, with many socialists, anarchists and Marxists criticizing identity politics for its divisive nature, claiming that it forms identities that can undermine their goals of proletariat unity and class struggle.
Common Misconceptions
Identity politics is not about asserting superiority or creating permanent tribal divisions. Barbara Smith clarified in 2021 what the Combahee River Collective intended the phrase to mean: “Black women have a right to create a political agenda based on our intersecting identities.”
It is not inherently opposed to universal values or coalition-building—the Combahee River Collective itself engaged in coalition work. The framework does not claim that only members of an identity group can speak about issues affecting that group, but rather that those with lived experience should have authority in defining their own struggles.
Identity politics is not a recent invention of “wokeness” or social media; it has roots in 1970s Black feminist organizing and draws on longer histories of group-based liberation struggles. It is also not unique to the political left—white nationalist movements and religious conservative organizing also employ identity-politics frameworks.
The term is often used pejoratively to dismiss any recognition of demographic-based oppression as “divisive,” but this usage obscures the term’s origins in movements seeking liberation from interlocking systems of domination.
How to Begin
To understand identity politics, read “The Combahee River Collective Statement” (1977), available through numerous archives and anthologies. For contemporary analysis, consult “How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective” edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2017), which includes interviews with the statement’s authors alongside the original text.
Examine the work of Audre Lorde, particularly “Sister Outsider” (1984), and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s writings on intersectionality. For philosophical treatment, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on identity politics. Critics from various perspectives include Mark Lilla’s “The Once and Future Liberal” and left critiques in journals like Historical Materialism.
Engage with organizations practicing identity-politics frameworks in your community—racial justice groups, LGBTQ+ centers, disability rights organizations—to understand how theory translates into organizing practice.