Did Elites Really Take Over Identity Politics?

Across the political spectrum, it has become difficult to engage in any discussion without running into the subject of identity politics. Its definition and its value — progressive force or enemy of egalitarianism — are hotly contested. What were previously niche academic debates have now become mainstream talking points. Somehow millions now seem to have a view on critical race theory, wokeness, and the 1619 Project.

Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) by Olúfémi Táíwò, a political philosopher at Georgetown University, is his second book-length intervention in these debates. The first, Reconsidering Reparations, published by Oxford University Press in January, provided a sweeping defense of reparations, reinterpreted as climate justice. Working within the tradition of liberal political philosophy, Táíwò advanced a critique of liberalism’s nationalistic assumptions.

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