Bawer has a gift for concisely capturing the prevailing habits of thought and reductive assumptions that run through the various "Identity Studies," while illustrating them clearly in their practitioners' own words. That's important because the vast majority of students who become enamored of the perspectives and politically correct sensibilities that Identity Studies instills have almost no awareness of how ideologically-motivated these studies truly are. It's a cheap trick. Take a bright and decent young person who knows next-to-nothing about history or real world experience, puff them up with the intoxicating heroic pose of self-righteousness and indignation at all the "bad" racists/sexists/homophobes/etc. in society, convince them that ALL opposition to a particular (thoroughly liberal) set of political views is motivated by hate and oppression, and set them free to become thought police who scathingly rebuke every slightest slip in other people's language or actions (ironically, while they style themselves liberators and champions of free thought, speech, and diversity).
Look, I'm not an uber-conservative, though I bet many readers are already preparing mentally to dismiss me as a right-wing extremist for what I just said. And that's exactly my point--and Bawer's. Identity Studies is so ideologically and politically motivated, yet it masquerades so convincingly as "enlightened" or "critical" thinking that many people don't even realize there is a very legitimate basis for opposing a great deal of what it espouses--ESPECIALLY if one understands how radical and ill-informed the theoretical underpinnings of these studies really are. (The vast majority of which--ironically, if not astoundingly hypocritically--come from white male thinkers like Marx, Foucault, Gramsci, Derrida, etc.).
Yes, I get it. It seems so "obvious" that "white men" have always, uniquely, and overwhelmingly oppressed women and minorities. In fact, if you look through the history of the West, you will find that those in power (and thus, almost the entire subset of those folks who used that power oppressively) are almost exclusively white and male. But there's a problem. That (reductive) claim only seems "obvious" to people who are profoundly ignorant of historical reality and allergic to precise, logical thought. For one, the male gender is approximately half of the planet, so attributing specific behaviors or intentions to "maleness" is already dubious and called into doubt (or should be) by how even the practitioners of Identity Studies describe males from other (non-Western, non-white) cultures. Yet that doesn't stop the feminists from ascribing insidious intentions to maleness.
Attributing specific behaviors or intentions to whiteness or white culture is even more problematic. First and foremost, it ignores the fact that the West and whiteness are already richly multicultural, not homogenous. There is, in fact, no such thing as "whiteness" for most of Western history. There are Anglos, Saxons, Swedes, English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, French, Italians, Greeks, etc. Even Cornell West has candidly acknowledged that whiteness is very obviously multicultural (and was roundly chastised by many Identity Studies folks for daring to utter that fact). In terms of raw data, it is an inconvenient fact that several groups subsumed into the (generic) category "white" have fared just as poorly as, or worse than, African Americans in terms of access to education, average income, familial stability etc. There have also been white slaves in the West, including the reprehensible attitude that Irish indentured servant children were disposable and not worth maintaining once their terms were nearly up (I mean those observations only for context, not to diminish the obvious horrors of antebellum slavery). Yet since we treat "whiteness" as a homogenous concept, none of those subgroups or their legacies of (shared) oppression get recognized. That makes it seem as if oppression always flows from white to non-white, when in fact the evidence clearly shows that such behaviors are not innate to whiteness or masculinity, and certainly not confined to the West.
This false concept of whiteness creates problems for various "reparations" arguments that are championed in Identity Studies. Many people have calculated that a majority of "whites" in the U.S. today descend from peoples who immigrated AFTER the abolition of slavery. Thus, their ancestors were not involved in the horrors of slavery, and they faced many of the same hurdles that other minority immigrants face. We are told that their success is proof they enjoyed an inherited privilege by virtue of their whiteness, but in fact, anyone who looks closely at history is just as likely to conclude that their success may have been rooted in a particular set of productive values, including (not insignificantly) a drive to learn the language, to define oneself by working hard, and to integrate into American culture (all of which are considered anathema among Identity Studies practitioners, who instead cast those desires as symptoms of oppression--never mind they lead demonstrably to greater job security, self-esteem, communal identification, and broader acceptance in society... that's just proof that capitalism, too, is inherently oppressive!). I'm not actually rejecting the THEORY there may be such a thing as "white privilege"; I'm saying it begs the question: why don't Identity Studies disciplines invite students to question these theories and consider alternate (and less cynical) explanations, rather than indoctrinating them into the "correct" belief that whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, etc. are inherently oppressive and always (consciously or unconsciously) insidious? If you don't think that's what they do, you haven't been in an Identity Studies classroom lately. So go read Bawer's book and then trace his source materials for yourself, if you're actually willing to be open minded, that is.
Another absurd (and untenable) claim is that cultural oppression and "hegemony" is unique or at least unusually prominent among whites, males, or the West. I have no desire to make light of the real historical sufferings of minorities, nor to excuse the reprehensible things that some people (who happen to be male and white) have done. Rather, my point--and Bawer's chief concern--is to show that this severely distorted bias operates as a central premise in virtually all identity studies. It can be characterized accurately as a peculiar and blatant form of confirmation bias: Most Identity Studies practitioners set out to prove that white heterosexual males in the capitalist West are to blame for everything, while women and minorities are naturally pure and innocent and any faults they may exhibit can always be explained away as a symptom of the oppressive mechanisms inherent to "patriarchy," "capitalism," and "white hegemony." Not only is that effort self-serving, it is actually essential to the survival of their own jobs, prestige, and profit.
If, after all, I were a "Women's Studies" professor, why would I have any interest in discovering that progress has come a long way and women may now be treated equally or even preferentially to men? That would negate the perceived need and legitimacy of my own job. Nevermind that women are far outperforming men in higher education. Nevermind that there are well documented reasons that women choose (consciously and gladly) to take time away from careers that account for many of the oft-cited pay inequalities. Look, I'm not claiming the gender gap has been totally erased. My point is much simpler than that. Since Identity Studies practitioners are so astute at detecting patriarchal authority and capitalist oppression in virtually every (white male) form it takes, why haven't they considered the blatantly obvious (capitalist, and authoritarian if not necessarily patriarchal) benefits that they enjoy by having made a profitable industry out of criticizing patriarchy and oppression?! Bawer reports an interview iwth Shelby Steele, one of the first to found a Black Studies program in the country, in which Steele candidly admits that it began (and largely has remained) a conscious hustle for prestige and profit. (Not surprisingly, that has caused Steele to be excoriated by Identity Studies practitioners who lump him in with white male capitalist hegemony, despite his blackness.) Reasonable and independent thinkers must stop and question whether the claims of Identity Studies--which most of us know in popular culture via the familiar outrage of political correctness--are really as heroic or justified as they pretend.
The chief problem is how these kinds of "studies" serve as indoctrination, not as a means to spur serious questioning. The evidence for this is in the stunningly selective or patently ignorant claims many identity studies folks make about history, culture, and human nature--which Bawer samples extensively from published papers and professional conference proceedings. In fact, Bawer himself comes at this from an unusual perspective as an academic who happens to be both conservative and gay--a very rare combination at least among published and outspoken commentators. Accordingly, his best insights are with regard to the ways that the radical and relativistic bent of identity studies has repeatedly undermined the very interests that many of these fields claim to be serving, including gay rights (which he argues were ultimately advanced more by conservative gays than by any of the nonsense espoused by "queer theory" practitioners or feminists). This hypocrisy extends to all of the Identity Studies fields. He shows, for example, how third-wave feminism has worked itself to a position that not only tolerates but applauds obvious African/Middle Eastern/Muslim acts of oppression against women (beatings, cliterodectomies, even sex trafficking), while relentlessly accusing American men of egregious oppressiveness based on even the slightest semblance of unequal treatment. Lest the reader grow skeptical or assume Bawer has cherry-picked the worst examples, page after page, he quotes these ideas from their sources--including many leading figures in these fields--to provide reassurance he is not misrepresenting their views. This includes such surprising tidbits as (author of The Feminine Mystique) Betty Friedan's comment late in her life that she no longer felt comfortable in Women's Studies departments, largely because they had formalized and embraced the very same assumptions about women that she and her generation had set out to overthrow.
Unfortunately, Identity Studies are a sacred cow and to criticize them is not just heresy, but potential grounds for dismissal from academia or high profile public positions. (Tenured professors might be protected enough to speak out, but few will when such a disproportionate percentage of the professorate is not only liberal but bizarrely insular in their liberal views for lack of being seriously challenged about those views--students are too afraid to, and conservative faculty are in very short supply and tend to just keep quiet.) As a white male academic, I will say that Identity Studies--which once seemed so noble and appealing to me when I was a very young student--has ultimately taught me that politicians are politicians in any color. And the best politicians (those who have the firmest control over their constituencies) are those who claim to be liberators and who repeatedly capitalize on the fear and anger of the people they manipulate. Unfortunately, those of us who would truly like to see women and minorities set free to think freely as INDIVIDUAL HUMANS and exposed to ideas that would verifiably improve their prospects for a successful professional future are forced to keep our mouths shut because our efforts can be so easily dismissed and disparaged as "sexist" or "racist" with no consideration or serious debate. Collectivism and relativism have carried the day for now. Sadly, much of their "progress" consists of having persuaded most minorities that they need to locate their self-worth in their ability to bring "a woman's perspective" or "a black perspective" (but never quite "my own perspective") to any job, judgment, issue, artwork, etc. they may undertake.
Ironically, I believe in some facets of white privilege (though I reject that they apply consistently across all "white" groups), yet I would argue the greatest "privilege" I enjoy as a white male is precisely that no one can reduce ANY position I might like to espouse as "a white man's perspective"--precisely because my "group" is too diverse to police thought in that manner. If Identity Studies has made much progress, it is only insofar as they have begun to construct EVERY position a white man takes as inherently oppressive, so that eventually if they can't actually liberate the groups they self-police, they can at least destroy (or at least conceal) the refreshing intellectual diversity that white men still enjoy by virtue of not having to serve as a spokesperson for every other white man. But to my mind, that's not really progress. No other minority really enjoys that freedom to be utterly individual. Instead, if they dare to step too far outside of "the (women's/black/chicano/homosexual/etc.) perspective" they are immediately castigated as traitors to their sex/race/orientation and written off as having been "brainwashed" or "fallen prey to white hegemony." Hence the reason that a pro-life supporter is committing "war on women," even though more women than men are pro-life! (See the problem: Those women aren't free to think that way; instead, feminism recasts them--and thus, marginalizes or "silences" their voice--as mere puppets brainwashed by men, narrowing the scope of authentically "feminine" points of view that women are allowed to take. That's pretty blatant censorship as I see it.)
Well, I've rambled long enough. My point was not to convince you of anything, or even to cover all the details of the book. My point was really to get you thinking just enough to see that this book is worth reading and should not be dismissed as "right-wing sexist/racist/homophobic propaganda."
Very highly recommended! (But in the interests of free thought, please read it yourself to make up your own mind!)
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