Is Kanye West Cracking the Ice of Identity-Politics?

Within the last number of weeks, I saw a crack in the long-frozen ice of identity-politics, and it only grabbed my attention when hip-hop megastar Kanye West spoke out. For decades there have been black intellectuals speaking out against national trends which they observed are working to our national detriment, but when West joined the chorus, now that’s a game changer.
We’ve been observing our nation increasingly tearing at itself, dividing into groups which move in lockstep. It was beginning to appear that we were becoming hopelessly fragmented, with no solution in sight. We were losing sight of who we are, how we got here, what we have achieved, and could only focus on the negative, on the things to be unhappy about, and on the things which divided us.
As I said, the intellectuals have been raising the alarm, but their voices went unheard by most of the people.
West said if he had voted in the last election, he would have voted for Donald Trump. Is everybody voting for Trump the solution to America’s division? No, and that is not the point. The point is, West is a black man, and when a black man of his renown speaks against identity politics for all to hear,  then he is not conforming to the expectations that certain groups of people have of him. The very fact that his statement made such an eruption is proof in itself of the hold that identity politics possesses– because of the threats against his life; he had to hire personal security.
In his effort to break the group-think mentality, he has tweeted a Thomas Sowell statement, “The most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best.” Does one have to follow the group, or can he or she decide for himself or herself?
However, not only is West questioning the group-think nature of identity politics, he is questioning the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left, again quoting Sowell: “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) spoke  to the importance of West’s public expressions in the May 18 Wall Street Journal, “At the heart of Mr. West’s message is the idea that all of us—no matter our race, religion or background—have the right to be more than one thing. It’s a message that resonates with millions of Americans who refuse to conform to stereotypes – me included.”
In discussing his ability to think independently, Hatch pointed to his diverse background: he grew up in poverty, was a union member in the steel trade, became a good friend of Ted Kennedy, is a Republican U.S. senator, and is a committed Christian.
He states, “Our tendency to use labels to box each other in is indicative of a much larger societal problem: the unleashing of identity politics. Identity politics is tribalism by another name. It is the deliberate and often unnatural segregation of people into categories for political gain. Under this cynical program, the identity of the group subsumes the identity of the individual, allowing little room for independence, self-realization or free thought.
“Some play down the dangers of this practice, but identity politics is a blight on our democracy. It feeds fear, division, acrimony, and anger…For more than two centuries; we have been able to weave together the disparate threads of a diverse society more successfully than any nation on earth. How? Through the unifying power of the American idea that all of us—regardless of color, class or creed—are equal, and that we can work together to build a more perfect union. It’s the idea that our dignity comes not from the groups to which we belong but from our inherent worth as individuals—as children of the same God and partakers of the same human condition.
“Identity politics turns the American idea on its head. Rather than looking beyond arbitrary differences in color, class, and creed, identity politics separate us along these lines. It puts the demands of the collective before the sovereignty of the individual. In doing so, identity politics conditions us to define ourselves and each other by the groups to which we belong. Soon, we lose sight of the myriad values that unite us. We come to see each other only through the distorted prism of our differences…
“Identity politics is cancer on our political culture. If we allow it to metastasize, civility will cease, our national community will crumble, and the U.S. will become a divided country of ideological ghettos.
“To save the American experiment, we must reject the tribalism of our time. Both on the left and right, we must renounce identity politics in every form. We must resist the temptation to use labels, and we must allow each other room to be more than one thing….Ideas – not  identity – should be the driving force  of our politics.”
America has always had her problems, but our ability to overcome them is phenomenal. We lose our way, but due to the common sense of the average American, we find it again.