In the heat of America’s mid-20th century social movements, a reimagining of personal identity and politics was slowly entering the zeitgeist. The buildup of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements had uncovered the political phenomenon that would soon become obvious — and despised — by many.
“Personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution,” wrote Carol Hanisch in her seminal essay “The Personal Is Political.”
The idea that the personal is political has often been blamed for the polarized concept in political psychology known as identity politics, but it is actually vital in understanding the political opinions of others. Since the 2016 presidential election upset, many outlets have put pen to paper to recount how identity politics has weakened the left’s voter bloc and created in-groups and out-groups through victim hierarchies and so-called oppression Olympics.
While personal politics and identity politics are not synonymous, they are interlaced in the sense that experiences from living an identity — be it race, gender or sexual orientation — give way to certain political beliefs. University of California, Las Angeles law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the coiner of the term “intersectionality” and a leading scholar in critical race theory, has described personal politics embodying identity politics as a “process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual.”
Knowing that everyone has a hot take on identity politics but that identity-based experiences shape policy and its reform, we must begin to talk about politics on the personal level to understand everyone from a regular voter to an elite political representative.
In previous semesters, I’ve often focused on specific bills moving through Congress or the legislatures relating to abortion access and reproductive rights or sex discrimination under Title IX and Title VII. I’ve curated pieces on congressional politics in the long-fought battle over health care and the grassroots organizations ensuring the rights of all Americans to be treated fairly — whether in sickness or in health. Overall, I’ve gravitated toward policy topics in which I maintain an increasing personal salience, hence the importance of mantras like “the personal is political.”
But instead of taking each week to target the latest in an onslaught of harmful policy, I’m going to take this semester to editorialize a series on how the personal is political using current policy measures and events. Specifically, I will be starting a series on personal politics under the umbrella themes of health care, immigration reform, voting rights, criminal justice and economic wealth and opportunity.
While these are mainstream topics in electoral politics, I’ll expand our often-narrow definition of politics to go beyond American governance and explore other territories of power dynamics. This journalistic experiment will explore personal politics using the traditional research-based op-ed while occasionally pulling real-life testimonials from the IU campus and the Bloomington community.
This series won’t be an exercise in debating identity politics or personal politics and its many criticisms because, simply, all politics is identity politics and choices are made from lived experience. Simultaneously, we all tend to go against the grain at times, making decisions that can seem irrational based on our long-worn labels. Humans are nuanced creatures, oppressive structures are entrenched and all encompassing, and everyone has a story to tell.
Now, to a brand-new semester filled with a whole lot of identity, a whole lot of politics, a healthy dose of nuance and no hot takes.
