Profs and Pints Online presents: “How the Elite Captured Identity Politics,” with Olufemi Táíwò , assistant professor of political philosophy and ethics at Georgetown University and scholar of activism and the black radical tradition.

The term “identity politics” was first popularized in a 1977 manifesto of the Combahee River Collective, an organization of black feminist activists claiming the right to set their own political agendas. In a recent interview with The Root and in an op-ed published in The Guardian, Barbara Smith, a founding member of the collective, said the black women who initially spoke of “identity politics” weren’t establishing themselves as a moral aristocracy—they were building a political viewpoint out of common experience to work toward “common problems.”

Since then, however, many people have sought to weaponize identity politics rather than seeing it as a means to forge alliances across differences. Rather than building solidarity, they have closed ranks—especially on social media—around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

Identity politics itself isn’t at fault. So how did we get here?

The answer, Professor Táíwò will argue, is a concept called “elite capture.” It refers to when political, social, and economic elites bend group resources or project in the service of their own interests, rather than in the service of the vulnerable people they often claim to represent.

His talk will explain how political projects get coopted in this way, will feature detours through classic works of black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier as well as a discussion of the philosophy of game design.

Join us to discuss how politics gets captured by elites and what it would take to avoid this. (This talk remains available in recorded form.)

Profs & Pints Online: How the Elite Captured Identity Politics