Mistaken Identity: Mass Movements and Racial Ideology - Asad Haider

Originally published in 2018 as Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump

Updated paperback edition published in 2022 by Verso, Brooklyn, NY and London, UK

160 pages

ISBN: 9781839763953

       During the late 2010s, the concept of identity politics catapulted into mainstream discourse. Fueled by Donald Trump’s ascendency into the Oval Office and the backlash against “wokeness,” conservatives decried the use of identity politics by liberals as a way to eschew debate. From the Right, basing politics on personal identity is a form of collectivism and can produce prejudice against an individual based on the identity of their respective social group. 

       On the other hand, identity politics has also been critiqued from the Left. Many socialists and anarchists castigate it as a bourgeois ideology that only serves to divide the working class along lines of ethnicity, gender, religion, etc. From this perspective, identity politics thrived during the neoliberal consensus that began with the fall of the Soviet Union, as progressives struggled to rearticulate their demands in the wake of the seeming end of communism. 

       The term “identity politics” rocketed to the forefront of public discourse in late 2016, and for the next couple of years, countless books were written about the subject. Contributing to this discourse during the height of mainstream conversation about identity politics, Asad Haider’s 2018 book, Mistaken Identity: Mass Movements and Racial Ideology provides a provocative and salient Leftist critique of how identity politics has been co-opted by elite neoliberal politics. Tracing its historical roots in radical black and socialist politics, Haider hopes to recover a renewed form of identity politics based on “insurgent universality.” 

Overview:

       In the space of just over 100 pages, Haider critiques the contemporary utilization of identity politics by seemingly progressive blocs of the Left. Haider asserts that instead of challenging dominant structures of power, the current popular form of identitarian identity politics is often employed to maintain liberal hegemony. Drawing on the examples of the Combahee River Collective, the Black Panthers, the ideological conflict between Amiri Baraka and Philip Roth, and various critiques of Afro-Pessimism, Haider seeks to reclaim identity politics from its seemingly endless splintering into lists of individual grievances. Instead of a form of identity politics that divides the working class by race, religion, gender, etc. or one that ignores all differences in the name of a (typically Eurocentric) universal form of class reductionism, Haider attempts to articulate and recover what he believes is the original purpose of identity politics: to build solidarity across lines of identity to build an collective emancipatory movement based in “insurgent universality.” 

       Against the grain of a branch of the progressive movement that insists that individuals “stay in their lane,” Haider argues that this stymies the ability to organize effectively across identitarian differences and build political coalitions that can effect change. Instead of centering politics around the “individual’s demand for recognition” (39), which serves to reify and solidify static categories such as race, religion, gender, class, etc., and only calls for greater inclusion into the capitalist structure, Haider utilizes the example of the Combahee River Collective as a form of identity politics that is centered on universal emancipation and revolutionary praxis. While contemporary identity politics elevates categories such as race and gender to obscure class consciousness, the original purpose of identity politics was to uncover how systems of oppression that affected distinct identity groups are deeply interconnected, calling for solidarity across lines of difference to overcome these unjust systemic injustices. 

Deeper Dive: 

       In Chapter One, Haider examines the origins of the concept of identity politics, which is in the Boston-based 1970s black feminist and socialist group, the Combahee River Collective. In their definitive text, A Black Feminist Statement, the Collective argued that oppression based on race, sex, gender, and class are all interrelated and intertwined. We experience many identities at once, and one form of oppression cannot be siloed away and addressed apart from all others. For the Collective, identity politics was a way to identify the unique challenges that specific communities experience while also using these experiences to build bridges across other oppressed communities. Instead of ignoring differences, the intent of identity politics as the CRC imagined it was to build a diverse coalition of oppressed communities that could contribute to their feminist struggle against the joint forces of capitalism and patriarchy. Instead of existing as fixed and immutable categories, identity is often built out of social and political tensions and relationships. As such, we must remain attentive to how our identities are constructed from “historical specificities and material relations” (11). 

       In Chapter Two, Haider turns toward the personal as he recounts his own experiences of organizing on college campuses. At Penn State, Haider notes that race was not a primary source of antagonism during their protests against the Iraq War due to the small size of protests. At UC Santa Cruz, Haider recounts how a grassroots anticapitalist movement was splintered and unraveled due to sectarian infighting. Adopting the rhetoric of Afro-Pessimism, a faction of students turned the issue of tuition hikes into a particular antagonism targeted toward black students, ignoring how it affected lower-income individuals and families across racial lines. The point is that progressive and emancipatory movements are prone to be disrupted by liberals who divide the unity of the movement through sectarian grievances. Haider writes, 

In Santa Cruz, the ideology of identity took us further and further away from a genuinely emancipatory project. Its consequences were not only the demobilization of the movement but also a degrading political parcelization. In the absence of a credible identitarian claim, anti-neoliberal struggles, like the movement against tuition hikes, were artificially separated from "race" issues. "POC" activists would focus on police brutality, ethnic studies, and postcolonial theory; the increasing cost of living, the privatization of education, and job insecurity became "white" issues. I began to realize what a drastic mistake it was when anxious white commentators represented identity politics as an extremist form of opposition to the status quo. This experience showed me that identity politics is, on the contrary, an integral part of the dominant ideology; it makes opposition impossible. We are susceptible to it when we fail to recognize that the racial integration of the ruling class and the political elites has irrevocably changed the field of political action. (40)

       In Chapter Three, Haider takes aim at Peggy McIntosh’s widely influential 1989 essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” arguing that it relies on a definition of “whiteness” as an idealist abstraction rooted in biology, rather than a concrete historical and social construction. Haider teases apart the constitution of race through the social structure and its constitutive relations that an individual inhabits, rather than a biological reality. To do this, he turns to the work of Theodore Allen and Noel Ignatiev, particularly Allen’s 1975 book, The Invention of the White Race. 

       In it, Allen posits that the category of the “white race” was invented by the American ruling class as a means of social control to justify the enslavement and subjugation of other populations. Thus, racism is not fundamentally attached to the concept of the white race, as the oppression and subjugation of the Irish in the Middle Ages illustrates. Thus, Allen’s account explains slavery not through the prism of race, but through class relations in which race became a retroactive justification for the exploitation of labor. According to Haider, when Irish immigrants in the 19th century realized that they could become members of the “white race” by supporting the subjugation of African Americans. As Haider writes, 

In exchange for white-skin privilege, the Euro-American workers accepted white identity and became active agents in the brutal oppression of African American laborers. But they also fundamentally degraded their own conditions of existence. As a consequence of this bargain with their exploiters, they allowed the conditions of the Southern white laborer to become the most impoverished in the nation, and they generated conditions that blocked the development of a viable mass workers’ movement. (58)

Thus the Irish-American immigrant experience illustrates how “whiteness” was utilized to create divisions within the working class, promising better opportunities for certain groups as long as they kicked the ladder out from beneath them and isolated those who would otherwise be natural allies in the larger class struggle. 

       In Chapter Four, Haider utilizes the infamous case of Rachel Dolezal as a springboard for discussing how Blackness (just like other identities) can shift in both meanings and affect across lines of socio-economic interests. In an attempt to find a positive example of navigating through the murky waters of particularist identity, Haider turns to the biography of revolutionary poet Amiri Baraka. Baraka was a Beat poet who initially ingratiated himself with the predominantly white bohemian subculture before rejecting it altogether and shifting to a romanticized form of Black nationalism, where he primarily advocated for Black leaders in positions of power. 

       Later in life, Baraka then became disenchanted with identity-based politics and its focus on the upward social mobility of the Black bourgeoisie at the expense of the lower-income communities that they would leave behind. As such, Baraka then shifted toward a form of universal anti-racist Marxism, which placed the struggle on anti-capitalist terms, rather than singularly focusing on race.

       In Chapter Five, Haider turns his eye across the Atlantic to compare and contrast the struggles around identity politics that have gripped both US and UK discourses. Utilizing Stuart Hall’s famous work Policing the Crisis, Haider argues that “since race was also a structural feature of the capitalist response to class struggle from below, an instrument of division and disorganization, this meant that race could also end up becoming an obstacle to the development of class organization” (92). He illustrates how the diverse coalition within the Labour Party was broken up in the Thatcher era and neutered of its emancipatory potential by being co-opted by neoliberal respectability politics. Haider connects this to the similar dissolution of the Left in the US during the Reagan administration and the cynical utilization of revolutionary rhetoric to accomplish neoliberal ends during the Clinton administration. 

       In Chapter Six, Haider places his main thesis front and center: if there is any hope for a viable Left in the US, it must be one divorced from the neoliberal facade that rhetorically cares about “diversity” while benefiting only the interests of the few. Instead, the Left must be rooted in an “insurgent universality.” When we focus solely on a rights-based discourse centered around particularist grievances and injustices, Haider argues that the subject becomes locked in a state of perpetual victimhood and depends on top-down solutions to redress their injuries. Rather, Haider argues for a universal, anti-capitalist, grassroots approach “which says that we are not passive victims but active agents of a politics that demands freedom for everyone” (106). 

Commendations:

       Several dimensions of Haider’s work are well worth commending. First, Haider provides the reader with a clear and concise critique of both the current neoliberal wing of the Democratic party that rhetorically and performatively celebrates diversity while holding disdain for the working class and the narrow political confines of Afro-Pessimism as espoused by Frank Wilderson. He astutely observes how various radical concepts, such as “intersectionality” and “identity politics,” while rooted in socialist circles, have been co-opted by neoliberalism and robbed of their revolutionary edge and emancipatory potential. In this way, Haider’s focus on class hearkens back to the concrete materialist analysis of a Leftism that has been eschewed by particularism and infighting. 

       Haider skillfully integrates critical theory and historical narrative into his argument, diving deep enough to engage with current scholarship while still keeping it accessible to the average reader. By weaving his personal experiences into each chapter -- whether his biography or accounts of organizing across campuses -- Haider intimately illustrates how to turn theory into praxis. While some of its anecdotes may seem slightly dated, this work still serves as a useful snapshot into discourses that gripped the (mostly online) political sphere of the late 2010s.

Critique of Particularist Politics 

       In my view, there are two kinds of identity politics: one dedicated to the working class across multi-varied identities (aka cognizant of class), and the other that is utilized solely as a means of upward social and political mobility for marginalized populations (wealthy women CEOs, black entrepreneurship, etc). While the first should be wholly embraced, the second should be vehemently rejected. Marginalized groups deserve recognition and dignity, but if we stop at mere inclusion into the dominant social order, we lose the radical emancipatory potential to break through the confines of capitalist logic. 

       By structuring our mode of organizing around particularist identities, we cede ground to those in the middle and upper classes who benefit the most from dividing the working class along identitarian lines of difference. This places the onus of responsibility on the individual to establish a stable identity (despite it more often than not being fluid and ever-changing) and then advocate for their own particularist causes, rather than organizing across lines of difference to take collective action. This makes mounting a structural challenge against systemic oppression all the more difficult, as our efforts become more fragmented and disjointed without a unified vision of what we’re struggling against. 

       By highlighting how neoliberalism has co-opted the radical language and rhetoric of genuinely emancipatory concepts to benefit the interests of the few, Haider’s analysis joins other works that challenge the predominantly liberal understanding of identity politics, such as Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s Elite Capture. In the absence of political working-class organizations to unite, coalesce, and channel a broad base of various groups from a wide range of identities under a banner of working-class solidarity, identity politics is poised as merely a defensive posture against the relentless tide of outright right-wing policies and rhetoric. Instead of an offensive force capable of fighting against the neoliberal status quo, the anti-capitalist, revolutionary potential of identity politics has been captured, nullified, and cynically utilized by liberals and centrists for non-revolutionary ends. 

       The identitarian demands from marginalized groups are rooted in deep-seated systemic injustices and oppression. However, by libidinally investing in one’s own marginalization as a primary source of identity, contemporary identity politics works to strengthen the unjust system that generated these groups’ grievances, even if they occasionally win small concessions here and there. By relying on concessions to come down from above in the form of legal codification of rights, those who are most invested in identity politics must therefore continually center their marginalized status and grievances. As such, many of those who participate in the crudest forms of identity politics often belong to middle to upper-class racial and sexual minority groups, as they have the most to materially and socially gain and least to lose from this political stance.  In short, while identity politics can occasionally offer someone a seat at the table of power, it lacks the underlying transformative ability to radically alter the dominant power structure itself. 

       Additionally, Haider utilizes these ideas to offer a scathing critique of Frank Wilderson’s concept of Afro-Pessimism. Haider rightly points out that the logical conclusion of Wilderson’s philosophy is complete separatism and nihilism, both of which lead to political dead ends. Haider calls out Wilderson for his comments on how Black Lives Matter cannot find solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, as he relies on “‘neoconservative Orientalist tropes” to argue that both Arabs and Jews have historically perpetuated “anti blackness,” and therefore cannot be allied with the black community (38). Haider correctly points out how Wilderson wholly ignored and dismissed how anticolonial thinkers and activists continually expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause throughout the past century. As a skeptic of Afro-Pessimism and its anti-political implications, I found much to agree with in Haider’s critique of Wilderson and the larger intellectual movement. 

Universality and Coalition Building

       If we have any hope of emancipation, we must not simply denounce or abandon our individual identities, but rather subsume them under an ever wider net that allows for collective solidarity across lines of difference. Haider’s approach helps the reader to see beyond the cynicism that underlies much of neoliberal appeals to identity politics and instead appeals to a politics of universality. While mention of the universal traditionally hearkens back to Eurocentrism, there has been an increasing movement toward universality which takes the insights of anti-colonial and antiracist paradigms and practices. Advocating for a “new insurgent universality,” Haider contends, 

Universality does not exist in the abstract, as a prescriptive principle which is mechanically applied to indifferent circumstances. It is created and recreated in the act of insurgency, which does not demand emancipation solely for those who share my identity but for everyone; it says that no one will be enslaved. It equally refuses to freeze the oppressed in a status of victimhood that requires protection from above; it insists that emancipation is self-emancipation. (113)

       In a classical Marxist move, Haider insists on the universal struggle against the forces of capitalism as a strategy that can build coalitions across racial identities to combat the dominant modes of power. Far from simple class reductionism, Haider’s critique argues that a universal organizing identity must be constructed from collective struggle built from the bottom-up, not installed or granted through top-down declarations or granting of rights. 

       Furthermore, Haider draws upon an impressive array of scholars and activists in his brief volume. Haider places thinkers such as Stuart Hall, C.L.R. James, Judith Butler, and Wendy Brown alongside radical voices such as the Combahee River Collective and (controversially) Amiri Baraka as he draws out the nuances of how identity can be reified and co-opted into the dominant forces of neoliberal capitalism. Haider manages to cover so much historical and theoretical ground within this slim volume, and by combining these insights with his biography, he manages to make it more or less accessible to the average reader. Haider urges the reader to look beyond their own particular identity and instead link their experiences to others for the benefit of a collective project of emancipation. 

Critique:

         While there is much to praise in Haider’s attempt at deconstructing identity politics, several other aspects fall short. This is perhaps most apparent after reading Haider’s updated Afterword in the 2022 edition of the book. While the main body of the text breathes fresh life into the debates around identity politics that consumed political discourse several years ago, the afterword shows a much more jaded and dejected Haider. 

       Typically, a preface or afterword to an updated edition of a book allows the author to either bask in the praise they received, respond to critics with whom they disagree, or apologize for any missteps or omissions. Haider’s afterword to this updated edition is almost wholly composed of the latter. He offers a few disjointed ideas about class consciousness and its increasing difficulty since the time of Marx before wallowing in the criticism he received from the book. Hiader essentially issues an apology for writing this book, providing context for where he was in his academic development when he wrote it. He fully acknowledges its shortcomings, and the reader can sense that the mixed reception this book received took a toll on him, as he concludes, “Rare, it seems, are the happy times when what we think matters as much as who we are. I do not think I will write about ‘identity politics’ again. But tomorrow I will be someone else; far be it from me to tell me who I am” (130).

       Haider’s dour post-pandemic perspective poses a particular challenge for a reviewer who wants to critique this work. As such, when writing a critique of the work, one cannot help but feel a modicum of sympathy for Haider, especially as he fully admits his shortcomings. Keeping this in mind, as a reviewer I will still point out where this work fell short, even though Haider has repeatedly done so himself. 

       First of all, despite the book’s short length of just over 100 pages, it can still be a difficult read for those unfamiliar with the social and political context/history. Vacillating between personal anecdotes and dense post-structuralist theory, Haider seems unsure of whether he is writing for an academic or popular audience, which causes the work to swing wildly in terms of vocabulary and accessibility. While some of Haider’s writing is clear and concise, it can often veer into overly academic jargon, especially when discussing theory. 

       This is unfortunate because while Haider has some genuinely interesting and valuable insights, they can often get lost in the density of his prose and alienate all but the most initiated of readers. This density is not due to Haider going too deep into theory (indeed, there are many times where I wished he would explain concepts in more depth); rather, it is a result of him trying to accomplish too much in too brief of a space. 

       Accordingly, many ideas are introduced throughout this work that are then never fully fleshed out. This is most glaringly apparent in Haider’s proposal of an “insurgent universality.” This follows the unfortunate trend that so much Leftist theory and literature is infamous for. While Haider is strong on critique, there is very little in terms of actionable ways forward. There are vague gestures toward a universal movement that requires “strategy and tactics,” but what exactly these are remains frustratingly elusive. To receive yet another ambiguous set of proposals without any grounding in praxis (such as the successes of organized labor movements in the US and beyond) was admittedly frustrating. As someone who has experience in community organizing in an interfaith context,  I was left wanting a more detailed explanation of practical steps in coalition-building across other intersectional lines of difference. 

        Additionally, most of his evidence relies on anecdotes, and it's unclear just how prevalent his conception of “identity politics” is among liberals and centrists. While his critiques are still salient, it often seems as if the object of his critique is borne more out of a narrow slice of online discourse rather than what the average American believes. So while he’s not necessarily building straw men in this work, Haider can often overstate the actual influence of liberal identity politics (again, most likely a result of the dire state of social media discourse in the wake of Trump’s election).  

It is also unclear what exactly Haider is attempting to build via his “insurgent universality.” While much of his critique is a fairly standard reassertion of classical Marxist universality, he also advocates for coalition-building across diverse identities as a primary organizing principle. But does this lead to a national party-building project or a more diffuse collection of organizing on the local level? 

Furthermore, he never fully defines what constitutes an “identity,” what parts of one’s identity can simply be set aside for the sake of a universal project, or how particularity is often reproduced and reified through the material circumstances we find ourselves in within neoliberal capitalism. He frames his argument around the notion that there was once a form of identity politics that held radical potential but has been neutered by dominant forces of elite culture in recent decades. By doing this, Haider transforms what should be a concrete materialist critique into an abstract idealist one. 

Haider does not engage with how identity politics has been hotly debated within socialist and communist circles for decades, instead splitting the concept into “good” and “bad” forms. Relying on post-structuralist theorists such as Judith Butler and Wendy Brown, Haider turns toward individual psychological explanations as to why contemporary identity politics relies on the repeated performance of psychic trauma in order to convince elites to grant incremental concessions. While there might be a grain of truth to this characterization, Haider overly relies on abstract and sweeping generalizations rather than digging deeply into the concrete historical record. 

Furthermore, while Haider’s critique is strong, it is not the most original. The bulk of the book mostly summarizes post-structural theory and snippets of history, and much of what Haider proposes has already been argued by many scholars and activists before him. Haider attempts to reconcile late 20th-century post-structuralist thought with a classical Marxist framework of class conflict and universality, but it is incomplete and messy. Such work has been done by scholars and activists across the political spectrum, and it makes the work seem a bit dated at times. 

Instead of almost wholly relying on post-structuralist theory, Haider’s account would have been tremendously strengthened by engaging with postcolonial thinkers. Instead of employing the works of radical black philosophers and activists such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Walter Rodney, or Richard Wright, Haider bafflingly relies on the biography and work of Amiri Baraka as a case study for passing. While I can appreciate Haider’s attempt to synthesize some of his ideas through the life of Bakara, it seems rather bizarre to attempt to utilize such a divisive figure (not to mention the misogynistic and homophobic statements he made throughout his life). This is not to say that every person a scholar uses in their work has to be free from sin; otherwise, nothing could ever be referenced. Rather, it seems like a huge missed opportunity not to draw from the deep well of anticolonial thought in analyzing the links between capitalism and the social construction of race.

This refusal to engage with these thinkers and revolutionaries who bucked against the strict confines of classical Marxist universality reveals the large gap that exists within Haider’s scholarship. By relying on post-structuralist theory and highly selective historical examples that gloss over the inner divisions within the groups and individuals he references (such as the tensions between members of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, the CPUSA in the early decades of the 20th century, etc.), Haider’s account lacks the robust and well-rounded critique that is necessary to deconstruct the historical development of identity politics, as well as how it went awry. 

Conclusion:

Overall, Mistaken Identity is an imminently useful, if sorely incomplete, examination of identity politics and how it has been co-opted for antirevolutionary ends. While it is far from comprehensive or rigorous account, it can still serve as an important first step for those who are skeptical of liberal identity politics, as it forces the reader to confront the orthodoxies of classical liberalism for the first time. Haider rightly critiques our contemporary obsession with particularist politics and emphasizes instead the role of coalition-building around universality. Taking inspiration from radical movements of the past, Haider’s slim volume cuts through the noise of liberal identity politics and serves as a clarion call for collective action rooted in class struggle. While his concept of “insurgent universality” is in dire need of greater elaboration, it could very well serve as a useful signifier to think beyond our current ideological and political deadlocks. Haider has provided us with an interesting and tentatively useful theory. It is up to us to put it into practice to see if it truly holds any water.