Trump doesn’t have any logic. There’s very little logic to what he says at all, and trying to perceive any kind of theories underpinning his actions is absolute futility of the highest order. He’ll say whatever he needs to say in order to further his own self interests and protect his fragile ego. The man is likely mentally unwell and your constitution should’ve had a capacity loophole for things like this.

My issue with the Trump articles isn’t that they aren’t true and that I don’t agree with them, the same with the feminism articles. It’s that they give the illusion of change but provide very little substance, they beg the question ‘so what?’. In short, they make people feel better — but nothing really changes. I think the same thing is true about a societal predisposition towards identity politics and I’ll try and demonstrate why as succinctly as possible.

Black people aren’t a homogenous group, 8% of black people voted for Trump in 2016, Kanye West seems to have fallen into some ideological quagmire. These things cannot be simply wished away and those people cannot be excluded from a group definition. There are always outliers and individuals who don’t conform. Yes, whilst some people are struggling to BBQ and jog, sleep in the library and deliver UPS packages in peace — that isn’t true of Denzel Washington and it isn’t true of every black person. The group identity has a de-facto rejection process from within the group — those people are usually labelled as either traitorous or stupid to allow the group coherence to form.

White people are not a homogenous group either. Nor are Trump supporters. Trump’s modus operandi is to force people into thinking ‘us’ and ‘them’. That plays well to his core base — and it activates a psychological bias that exists in all human beings. We’re tree dwelling tribal primates at our core and our brain structures reflect that. We not only love being in an in-group, we love having an out-group to blame for things. It makes us feel safe and like we have a place in the world. That feeling exists in people of all races and happens across the world — Trump has just galvanised it across a disparate group of disaffected people (mostly by saying anything they want to hear — even if it’s contradictory)

Much of our discussion has been you trying to undo my new found penguinity and reduce me down to an identity so that what I say can be invalidated.

When you do this, you no longer have to discuss with me the finer points of this issue and any nuance in our discussion is lost. It can simply be asserted that I don’t have a horse in this race. When you strip this down to it’s core, the irony is that this is exactly the same process that you’re trying to fight. Identity politics is a microcosm of the larger issue of racism backed up by subjective feelings and validated by cherry picked narratives.

I think that’s a huge problem because you seem like a fundamentally decent person (with occasional questionable penis orientated friends) — I think if we sat down face to face we’d get on and find common ground. Whilst that’s unlikely to happen given the current pandemic, we have at least attempted to have civil discourse on Medium. I haven’t been rude, and aside from occasional moments of frustration — neither have you. You seem like an intelligent role model for children and other people who look to you to orient their world and help them construct a reality. So what reality do you want to construct?

Am I denying that there’s racism in the USA? Hell no. You guys have a massive racism problem that’s getting worse. Do I think Trump has exacerbated that problem? Of course — the man is an opportunist bigot, but if your aim is to make the USA safer for future generations, then identity politics is not the game to play.

The issue with the people that want to hang you from trees is that they’re absolutely terrified that you want them to die (which it seems you do) and you’re going to take over ‘their’ country. That’s it. The racist world view in a nutshell. Us and Them. Them and Us. When you fuel the rhetoric and confirm it in this way — you play into the world view they have and their world view spreads. As a result they become more dangerous and knee-jerk, therefore by extension the USA becomes a more dangerous place for black people. You have institutional racism at the highest level of your judiciary, media and your police force — that’s going to take a lot of stamping out.

There are many reasons for the uptick in racism you’re seeing, it’s nuanced. Some of them are to do with (individual) poor white people seeing (individual) richer black people whilst being told black people (plural) are being oppressed. That’s a complex thing to unpick, not easy if you’re not well educated and prone to emotional capitalism based jealousy. Some of those people have tied together race and nationality under the same ideological banner and religious figurehead. There’s literally zero chance that Jesus was a white guy from Oxford as depicted across the Renaissance. Some people have had a lifetime of confirmation bias around racist thoughts developed in childhood. It has a root in your country’s psychological make up that has been watered down successfully (to some extent) in other places around the world.

So there are two solutions. First we can retreat into identity politics, where each group asserts the right to exist and claim power over the other. Individual experiences get thrown by the wayside in favour of maintaining the ideological position of the group. Anyone outside of the group doesn’t have a valid opinion once you can prove their identity doesn’t conform. Anyone who is inside the group but disagrees with the direction (Kanye) is accused of being a traitor to the cause. This is why you’re more concerned with my identity than what I’m saying. You’re playing the player, not the ball.

Here’s a really interesting article I read yesterday, on a completely different issue that demonstrates the psychological predisposition quite nicely. Very compelling writer too. As with race, sex is also complicated.

The alternative is that you throw aside the current vogue for group identity and you begin to win back individuals one crazy bigot at a time. I think ultimately society will do this in its own time. Obama spent his entire time in office doing just that — he could’ve fired the whole place up along racial lines, exactly like Trump. He didn’t. The man was genuinely intelligent and, more importantly, hugely compassionate and it shows in every video. He had his flaws and he didn’t achieve as much as he wanted to but he didn’t play identity politics and it shows in his record. He made the world a better place and it’s sad that Trump has spent most of his time trying to undo his achievements. On a subconscious level Trump knows that Obama is the better man and his little peanut racist brain can’t work out why. So he lashes out. (Do I still sound like a Trump supporter?)

And yes, I could sit down with Republican people without fear of getting shot, I could have tea with them. Many of them may be decent hardworking people who vote along nationalistic or economic lines — they’ve just yoked themselves to an idiot. When you dismiss them all as one group, you miss the nuance and you miss the chance to connect and create positive change.

I could also have tea with you. If you find out what race I am… do you promise that your children and their children won’t try to kill me when I pop over for tea in 30 years time? That’s the direction identity politics is pushing society — and it’s one that I’m keen to avoid. I enjoy tea, witty banter and decent intelligent discourse and debate.

The solution to ‘Us vs Them’ comes from a place of tolerance, compassion and mitigating any and all hatred. That’s difficult. I’m not suggesting otherwise . The answer to racism doesn’t lay in group identity it lays in intelligent thought and an unwavering conviction to being the best person you can be. Obama knew that, Denzel is a fine example of that in action. Here’s another interview where he consistently smashes being awesome and rejects being pigeonholed into playing any cards but his own.

That’s it from me. I wasn’t as succinct as I could’ve been — but these are important issues and worthy of discussion.