Discussion on Identity Politics and Capitalism

And what it amounts to, really, is identity politics. We get it, we understand it, but it's not real politics. It's more an HR policy than it is an actual political movement. It's more about, as someone said to me just the other day, it's about replacing posh white people with posh black people. And is that really in advance now? We're in 2026. We're past the kind of the big heat of those upheavals of roads must fall and statues and Grenfell Tower as well, which is also part of. Part of that moment. Is there a part of you that does look back and think, actually, some of those criticisms are fair? Yeah. No, for sure. I could tell very early on that there was going to be a tendency or an appetite for kind of elite capture, because that is what is palatable to the system. And we live in a capitalist economy and a capitalist mindset that privileges visibility. Right. High visibility and privileges imagery and black people being on the front page of Vogue. And there was a lot of kind of visual blackness, not just diversity, equity and inclusion, but, like, visibility was a big thing at the time. Black excellence. Black excellence. Black girl magic. Some of it was, I think, weirdly patronizing. Right, Absolutely. That's what made it so gross. Yeah. That, like, black people don't deserve dignity and respect and equal opportunity for being human, but because they have some kind of. They've been sprinkled with some sort of glitter that makes them magical and exceptional. You know, we have a right not to be exceptional. And. No. No group needs to be exceptional to deserve anything. I think one of the problems with these critiques, identity politics, is that they don't allow for enough room for things to be one thing and another. Right, Right. And I. And they demand a sort of unrealistic purity and crystalline execution. That just is never how politics works. Right. Sure. There were going to be sort of territorial gains that were not meaningful. Right. And I think ultimately those were harmful because the way those territorial gains are there in.