Did the concept of "identity" even exist before the 2010s?

[skykiii]

Obviously I mean in terms of things like "white identity," "black identity," etc. Not as in Driver's ID.

It always felt like just such hive mind bullshit. If you were to ask me, I would not be able to tell you what defines the "white male" identity. And any time it comes up it seems to be pushing that if you match superficial characteristics, then you're part of a hive mind where everyone behaves this way.

It occured to me just now that growing up in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s I never heard about "identity."

Did anyone else, or is my lack of experiencing it unique?

 

[Joe Swanson]

Following the civil rights era Anglo-Americans have been taught to forfeit their ethnic claim to America with the last 3 generations being taught to be colorblind. This is why the concept of a white ethnic identity seems so foreign to you.

 

[The Lawgiver]

It occured to me just now that growing up in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s I never heard about "identity."

Did anyone else, or is my lack of experiencing it unique?

I did, but it wasn't the same as the current beast. There's being proud of your heritage, and then there's the one that you brought up that sparked up around OWS time and accelerated the last decade hitting fever pitch in 2020 when you had the floyd shit going on. It's a much faker "identity" and the older one wasn't really always brought up constantly.

Following the civil rights era Anglo-Americans have been taught to forfeit their ethnic claim to America with the last 3 generations being taught to be colorblind. This is why the concept of a white ethnic identity seems so foreign to you.

Identity politics is a spook, "white identity" means fuck all when you have people of various euro backgrounds shitting on each other constantly, and that's not even getting into the Semitic ones that only count as white sometimes. It was less a "white ethnic identity" and more a "Background country of genetic origin ethnic identity"
Also "last 3 generations" taught to be colorblind? last I checked the most recent ones were taught to be racist with extra steps under the banner of "anti-racism".

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

The identity buzzword definitely took off in the 2010's. Before that it was a very rarely used word with the context and connotations it currently carries. Liberal identity politics goes back way further but the rhetoric used was different. It evolved into this highly efficient cult of Wokeism.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

"Identity" is just a useful term for a concept literally every human has. It emerged in the 60s when postmodernists tried to make a claim to rediscovering the fact that yes, humans are all tribalist by nature. "White identity" and "black identity" were baked into the law and culture of the United States since before there even was a United States.

And yes, it's fixed from birth. You can be a white person and get adopted by some African tribe and live your whole life among them, but there's always a part of you that can literally never be African. Just like you can be a black person and do the same with whites. You will be anything but a token exception and an honorary member of the race you live among. That is "identity." Although not in the leftist sense since leftists believe in retarded shit like changing your gender identity which is also nonsense.

 

[Joe Swanson]

Identity politics is a spook, "white identity" means fuck all when you have people of various euro backgrounds shitting on each other constantly, and that's not even getting into the Semitic ones that only count as white sometimes. It was less a "white ethnic identity" and more a "Background country of genetic origin ethnic identity"

Of course pan-European "white identity" is a wash, but when someone says white on this side of the pond they mean Anglo-American, which isn't even very Anglo considering more white people in America are descendants of Germans then Brits. It's an ethnicity Europeans can assimilate into, just like how any negro from Africa can assimilate into Afro-American culture.

Also "last 3 generations" taught to be colorblind? last I checked the most recent ones were taught to be racist with extra steps under the banner of "anti-racism".

Didn't that largely just become a thing with gen Alpha? I guess the younger Zoomers probably got it too

 

[The Lawgiver]

Didn't that largely just become a thing with gen Alpha? I guess the younger Zoomers probably got it too

Zoomers and gen alpha both got it, yeah. Big chunk of them ended up like mini-corpo nightmare middle managers in terms of how they behave despite the claims of hating capitalism. It's kind of interesting but also very horrifying in terms of implications.

 

[oldTireWater]

Mexicans and wanna-be Irish were super into "identity".

 

[Joe Swanson]

Zoomers and gen alpha both got it, yeah. Big chunk of them ended up like mini-corpo nightmare middle managers in terms of how they behave despite the claims of hating capitalism. It's kind of interesting but also very horrifying in terms of implications.

Well either way Millennials and Gen X got the "there's only one race, the human race" hammered into them in America often to the point where ethnicity isn't at all acknowledged. I grew up in England before things went to shit and given the muti-ethnic nature of the UK it was something we understood that English, Scots, Welsh and Irish weren't mutually interchangeable despite all being "white."
However when my family dragged me to America and I attended American High School, we were taught that Blacks and Whites were interchangeable and the ethnic difference was meaningless.

 

[Karen of Human Resources]

Depends in what sense you mean it, and the locale and time.

Identity mattered a lot in Northern Ireland up to the Good Friday agreement. Planters vs Fenians, Presbyterian vs Catholic, Taig vs Orangemen. It still matters, but they seem more bothered by the surgeons and scientists coming from war torn France than each other today.

Identity among the native French (or anyone who isn't a Muslim) is essentially irrelevant today. Years of Laïcité (the policy of state enforced secularism) and until relatively recently the death-grip of the Académie Française, the national body that controls and moderates the lexicon of French, had ensured that the communes couldn't develop distinctive slang or otherwise marked themselves off from the rest of society. Go back to 1789 where 50% of France did not speak Parisian French and local cultural and religious identities, even among people who were ethnically homogeneous, were far more distinct.

It is, I think, one of those things that wax and wane depending on context. Even during the early 20th century, the people of rural Greece only really began an identifying as Greek or Hellenes instead of Romanoi to distance themselves from the Ottomans who would (though less often in those days) describe themselves as the continuation of the Roman empire. They were never Muslim or Turkish (although DNA testing has shown modern Turks and Greeks are far closer than either of them would want to think), but the right word to define who they were as a broader group wasn't a particular focus before then.

Self identifying as Llamas or transgender though? Validating mental illness is uniquely new. While Eunuchs have had a place in many societies, nobody though losing their nuts made them a woman.

 

[Nicholas Gur]

Jews have been dick riding the concept of identity since at least roman times. Probably because the majority of them (as is true today) were not even semitic people and instead of bunch of ugly italian slave converts using the identity crutch to validate their lie.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

Ever see those charts about Jewgle and MSM media usage of the words "Racism" and "Dieversity" post-2014?

They're quite telling, usage of those divisive words skyrocketed after Nigger Obongo slayed the Smith-Mundt Act. I wonder what changing that allowed the Kike State to Fund?

Mexicans and wanna-be Irish were super into "identity".

"ARE". We have an American-born Spicquita in my coding class, the HR whore type... and she said Trump turning the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America was "Colonizing her people". She unironically said that. And this anchor cunt was born in America. They All Have To Go Back, they have been trained Not to Assymilate here...

 

[skykiii]

Ever see those charts about Jewgle and MSM media usage of the words "Racism" and "Dieversity" post-2014?

No I haven't, actually, and I'm not aware of that Obama act you mentioned.

Would you mind telling me more?

 

[Grub]

I don't remember identity politics being a thing but I think that's because identity politics have been pushed to try and replace nationalism. What I do remember is national identity being way more important pre-identity politics bullshit. People gave way more of a fuck about their national or even local identifies. I feel like that made it more difficult to have a dystopian technocratic globalist slave empire though so they needed to curb that shit.

 

[Yamaha YM2612]

Yes. It started at the beginning of the industrial age with the Rothschilds, Carnegie, and Rockefeller influence

After the cultural windfall of capitalism, the concept of unified people needed to be disrupted. Typical divide and conquer thing.

 

[Slap47]

"Identity" is just a useful term for a concept literally every human has. It emerged in the 60s when postmodernists tried to make a claim to rediscovering the fact that yes, humans are all tribalist by nature. "White identity" and "black identity" were baked into the law and culture of the United States since before there even was a United States.

And yes, it's fixed from birth. You can be a white person and get adopted by some African tribe and live your whole life among them, but there's always a part of you that can literally never be African. Just like you can be a black person and do the same with whites. You will be anything but a token exception and an honorary member of the race you live among. That is "identity." Although not in the leftist sense since leftists believe in retarded shit like changing your gender identity which is also nonsense.

Gender and sex are social constructs that can be changed, but not race. Race is a social construct one cannot change.

Post modernism has very arbitrary rules.