The Much-Needed Termination of Identity Politics

Beyoncé’s “Freedom” booms in the background as Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage. This moment, though carefully constructed to empower the presidential candidate, instead reflects a key issue at the heart of the Democratic Party’s loss in the 2024 election: Harris’ overreliance on identity politics. By making Harris symbolize the political embodiment of Beyoncé’s "Black Girl Magic,” the Democrats overlooked key challenges, most notably, the opposition from the far Right to DEI efforts, which they closely associated with Harris. This strategy also neglected to engage working-class individuals across racial lines, as well as white women voters, many of whom ultimately supported Trump by narrow margins.1

Recently, I had the honor of interviewing former North Dakota senator, Heidi Heitkamp, who underscored this point with clarity. She remarked, “It’s not about identity. It’s about what people care about. It’s about their family and their schools. It’s about good healthcare that’s affordable. Get out of the identity and start identifying and understanding the challenges of working people again in this country. It’s about people wondering who’s on their side.”

The senator also made reference to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments at Madison Square Garden while speaking at President Trump’s rally. At the rally in October 2024, Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”2 While Harris was quick to label the comment racist, Heitkamp offered a different response: “My first reaction was you’re disrespecting the hard work of people who come to this country who are in the nursing homes lifting people and taking care of their bodily functions. You’re disrespecting people who are on roofs shingling at one hundred degrees. You’re disrespecting the work that they’re bringing to this country.” According to Heitkamp, many Americans don’t primarily see themselves through the lens of race or gender. They see themselves as coworkers, as parents, as neighbors chasing the American dream. 

While I agree with Heitkamp in many ways, I would like to emphasize that this is not to say abandoning identity politics means abandoning the fight for racial justice, gender equity, LGBTQ+ rights, or any other form of social progress. In the words of the Combahee River Collective, a Black lesbian feminist socialist organization formed in Boston in 1974, “the personal is political.”3 The challenge lies not in rejecting identity, but in reimagining how it is integrated into political discourse. When identity politics becomes the sole focal point, it risks alienating potential allies and flattening the complexity and individuality of lived experience into overly simplistic narratives. 

The Democratic Party must find a way to honor diverse experiences without allowing identity to eclipse economic precarity, labor issues, and the basic concerns that unite Americans across demographic lines. However, it is paramount to still acknowledge and address how access to opportunity, safety, education, and representation differs based on identity, and to craft policies with those differences in mind. The future of progressive politics depends not on abandoning identity, but on transforming it: not as a political destination, but as a lens for more informed and just policymaking. As Heitkamp puts it, “It’s not about changing what we think is important, it’s changing how we talk about it.”