The process that created identity politics began in the 1960s and 70s, when campaigners on the left started to ask some searching questions of liberalism. What exactly was this thing called the individual? Liberals had an easy answer. The individual was everyone. The whole point of the individual was to create a set of political rules that treated people as moral equals. It was a category that stood for universal humankind. But if that was true, why did the entire practice of liberalism appear to refute it? Why did it take so long for women to enter the conversation? Why were black people
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