David French distinguishes between the two in a National Review Online column.
Social movements go awry the instant they move from justice to identity politics. Movements like #MeToo are immensely valuable when they can lead to awareness and — crucially — accountability for the individuals who commit legal and moral wrongs. Reliably imposing individual justice on predators can have just as profound a positive cultural effect as permitting predators to victimize women with impunity can have negative effects. In other words, justice is a culture change — especially when justice has been systematically denied.
Identity politics, however, exploits suffering for the sake of power. Ambitious politicians hitch their wagons to other people’s pain. It’s odd that Democrats would argue that a person’s life experience as a Jewish woman, a black woman, an LGBT woman, or a Millennial woman should drive them to the same conclusions about health-care policy, gun rights, abortion rights, foreign policy, economic policy, and tax rates. It’s odd how Democrats would argue that those shared views would render, say, a wealthy LGBT woman who’s never experienced sexual harassment as a more “authentic” standard-bearer for women than a conservative woman who’s an actual rape victim.
It’s simple, really. Membership in a particular demographic group does not always produce suffering. Even when there is suffering, it does not always produce wisdom or virtue. Moreover, even when the response to suffering is virtuous, it does not produce ideological uniformity. Thus, it’s vitally important that we evaluate politicians as individuals. We don’t need more of any given demographic in American politics, we need better people in American politics — regardless of their group identity.
