When a single group dominates the political agenda, its grievances and demands are just coded as politics, and the vast majority of policy is designed in response to its concerns. But that changes when no one group can control the agenda but many groups can push items onto it; then the competition among identity-based groups becomes visible. It wasn’t called identity politics when every cabinet member of every administration was a white male. It’s only identity politics when there’s pressure to diversify appointments. And yet that process doesn’t reflect a strengthening of a particular
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