Identity politics – How do we want our country to be identified?
There is a growing disconnect between the culture that majority populations identify with and the changing face of their countries today. As a consequence of this feeling of one’s identity being threatened, politics in many countries is becoming less to do with the business of government and more to do with ethnic self-interest.
A list of background reading material will be sent to those participating. 3 pm on Thursday October 10 at Phyllis’s apartment in the downtown area.
If you wish to attend please email: uwcstudygroups@gmail.com
Current Affairs Meeting Notes
On October 10th a group of about a dozen members met to discuss the important and timely topic of Identity Politics. As usual the organizer of the group Phyllis Barrantes re- ally did her homework and prepared 11 very interesting articles for us to read.
We read articles on the treatment in China of its Muslim Uighurs, about India’s turning
Muslims into illegal immigrants, about Aung San Suu Kyi in “A Human Rights Icon’s Fall from Grace in Myanmar”, and about militant Buddhism in “A Call to Arms to Sri Lankan Monks” - all concerning the Orient.
Other articles came closer to home, we read “Immigration and White Identity in the West”, “Against Identity Politics”, “The New Tribalism and the Crisis of Democracy”, and a topic we gave quite a bit of attention to: “Integration is not Assimilation”. This quote is from one article I found particularly interesting: “This is your Brain on Nationalism- The Biology of Us and Them”: “Our brains distinguish be- tween in-group members and outsiders in a fraction of a second, and they encourage us to be kind to the former but hostile to the latter”. We talked about White supremacy and racism in the United States and Europe. Many of us could talk about situations we had gone through as travelers or immi- grants. In the end, we understood that identity politics really touches us all in one way or another. Thank you Phyllis for the enjoyable as well as educational afternoon.
Kathleen Hall