Identity politics. I keep hearing that term in a negative context as if mainstream culture in Western countries isn’t identity politics in itself. It’s white culture (rooted in patriarchal, post-colonial, Judeo-Christian, cis/heteronormative values—I’m sure I’m forgetting some systems here), no matter how much people try to deny white culture doesn’t exist.

Their power reaches far. White culture upholds and even enforces social rules, the approved history, and one-sided knowledge. White culture educates members of its society, instills in us its norms and values, forms of communication, binary systems of categorization, and so on. Their power reaches all, even the marginalized who have to sacrifice parts of themselves to be accepted by the status quo.