The way we use the word 'identity' today is not something someone fifty years ago would have recognized. Rather, when we say identity, it's a shorthand for how a non-white person feels in relation to a white hegemony. That's what we mean by identity, and identity politics proposes that all people who are not, roughly, white Americans, will see themselves primarily as that non-white person in an eternal kind of conflict with the powers that be, who are white. That is what we mean by identity in 2020.
Sweet mother of Jesus! And here I was, thinking that identity is about self-examination, and choosing the tribe that one wants to belong to.
