Stanley Fish asks from the online ditto-sheet of the New York Times whether there is such a thing as a “rational” identity politics:

Identity politics is illiberal. That is, it is particularist whereas liberalism is universalist. The history of liberalism is a history of extending the franchise to those who were once excluded from it by their race, gender or national origin. Although these marks of identification were retained (by the census and other forms of governmental classification) and could still be celebrated in private associations like the church and the social club, they were not supposed to be the basis of decisions one might make “as a citizen,” decisions about who might best lead the country or what laws should be enacted or voted down. Deciding as a citizen means deciding not as a man or a woman or a Jew or an African American or a Caucasian or a heterosexual, but as a human being.

Exactly. Prof. Fish, however, suggests there’s a loophole:

But is it as bad as all that? Is it so irrational and retrograde to base one’s vote on the gender or race of religion or ethnicity of a candidate? Not necessarily. If the vote is given (or withheld) only because the candidate looks like you or has the same religion, it does seem a shallow and meretricious act, for it is an act unsupported by reasons. “Because she is a woman as I am” is of course a reason, but it is not a reason of the relevant kind, a reason that cites goals and programs, and argues for them. But suppose what was said was something like this: “As a woman I find government sponsored research skewed in the direction of diseases that afflict men and inattentive to the medical problems faced by women, and it is my belief that a woman president will devote resources to the solution of those problems.” That’s an identity politics argument which is thick, not thin; the she’s-like-me point is not invoked as sufficient unto itself, but as it relates to a matter of policy. The calculation may or may not pan out (successful candidates both disappoint and surprise), but it is a calculation of the right kind.

Is Fish familiar with how humans arrive at decisions? If he thinks there are distinct and separable faculties of rationality and whatever gut instinct promotes tribal affinity, I can only suggest that he’s either spent too much time watching Star Trek reruns or carousing with the oh-so-sensible technicians of the Times‘s editorial board. What appears to be rationally arriving at identity politics is more likely to be identity politics coating itself in a veneer of rationality to avoid suspicion. What’s needed is a constant, self-imposed guard against the cheap tendencies of tribalism—not an excuse that we can arrive to pre-determined conclusions via a different process and thus endorse them. What Fish describes is not a rational identity politics—it’s rationalized identity politics.

Moreover, the ‘rational’ example he cites is itself pretty suspect. To participate in truly universalized politics and to cast ones civic duties in amongst the lots of humanity, it is sometimes necessary to deliberately vote against one’s own interest—even though there is a certain measure of irrationality in that. As a white, male, Harvard-educated petit bourgeois, I could make a string of perfectly legitimate rational calculations of interest that would align me with regressive conservatism to preserve my position in the status quo. It’s hard to see how this identity politicking would be any less ugly.

What Fish has done is messily assign the problem with ‘identity politics’ to a problem of ‘irrationality’. It’s not the source of the problem, and, consequently, a ‘rational’ identity politics really does little to make such tribalism any more palatable.