by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D, AABP<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is one of those terms that many people in the media throw around, but few in real life understand.\u00a0 Let me describe it simply as far as what is going on in the media.<\/span><\/p>\n Basically, it is about the power of the voice.\u00a0 The straight white American male has the least voice and sits as the baseline.\u00a0 Now above the baseline are any persons who belong to a group that can claim they are victimized, or oppressed, or have effects of being victimized or oppressed in the past.\u00a0 Basically, the white American female makes claim to being victimized because of sex and can be seen as above the American male.\u00a0 The same is for people of color \u2014 Black, Hispanic, Indian, West Indian, etc.\u00a0 Basically, they are rank ordered even further within this category and depending on how loud they get at the time.\u00a0 Now if you are a member of more than one identity group you have even more power.\u00a0 So, a Hispanic female has even more power in identity politics than a Hispanic male.\u00a0 Now further, sexual orientation gives you a bigger voice in some political circles, so if you are a gay white male you have a larger voice in political identity that the straight white American male.\u00a0 Religion plays a large role also.\u00a0 The Muslim is probably first on the identity power list, but Jewish people have a good case because of the Holocaust.\u00a0 If you are a gay Jewish female Hispanic you have a pretty powerful voice.\u00a0 Although a Muslim Hispanic female transgender would even trump the voice of the Jewish gay.\u00a0 Geez, why is this so complicated.\u00a0 That\u2019s the tongue-in-cheek approach to what is meant by identity politics.\u00a0 Now let\u2019s apply it to policing\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n Police Officers are the straight white American male.\u00a0 Just by assumption, they are angry bigoted narcissists that will shoot anyone who doesn\u2019t do what they want. \u00a0Their color doesn\u2019t matter, and their genders matters very little. \u00a0The common criminal on the street who claims brutality has a stronger voice, but if that person is black, or Hispanic (and their \u201c\u2026Lives Matter\u201d), their voices have more power than the cop.\u00a0 People you wouldn\u2019t want to meet on the street in broad daylight, will garner interviews on the evening news if a cop is involved.\u00a0 Add any combination of gender, or gender identification and the cop with no identity (except his profession) will be definitely be wrong.\u00a0 I almost find it funny when someone with 30 plus arrests is assumed to be the person in the right in a police altercation because he spoke bad about the cops and is a member of an identity group.\u00a0 Actually, I don\u2019t find that funny, I worry!<\/span><\/p>\n We have become a world of extremes.\u00a0 Fox News and CNN (and MSNBC, and \u2026.) present such a one-sided picture of the world, they create dramas out of missteps.\u00a0 \u201cThey are ripped from their parents and marched off to the showers just like in Nazi Germany.\u00a0 And just like in Nazi Germany, many will not return.\u201d\u00a0 Or how about \u201cthe children are put into a spa-like atmosphere when they play games and watch TV hardly knowing their parents are gone.\u201d\u00a0 This is the immigrant children crisis of the past week, as described by two cable-news channels one number away from each other.\u00a0 What a complete like of crap, but what do you expect from identity politics.\u00a0 Identity politics breeds extremism.<\/span><\/p>\n I can remember the concern in the 1970\u2019s when affirmative action was giving college scholarships to black kids and many people would complain that they were taking that money away from kids who deserve it and giving it to lower functioning kids.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t see the wisdom then either because I was in college in the 70\u2019s, but I see the logic behind it now and the world is a better place because of affirmative action (in education at least).\u00a0 Maybe some people need to get upset a little to have progress.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Back in the 70\u2019s there was a different kind of identity politics as the world was getting used to accepting black people as equals.\u00a0 \u201cI had a black person at my cocktail party\u201d was the claim of adults in the 70\u2019s.\u00a0 My generation was the first to not even think about that. Maybe identity politics is the affirmative action of this generation.<\/span><\/p>\n My advice when faced with identity politics is fight extremes whenever it occurs in yourself first.\u00a0 Extremes are the root of many of the psychological problems that I see in my offices.\u00a0 Life tends to return to the middle, that\u2019s called \u201cregression to the mean\u201d and it is a statistical principle.\u00a0 We always go back a little toward the average.\u00a0 Avoid the extremes and let the natural process of life to return it back to the middle.\u00a0 Maybe there is a higher purpose.\u00a0 Law enforcement officers were superheroes after Sept 11, 2001, now they are in a stunning crash and the true victims of identity politics.\u00a0 \u00a0If you can avoid the extremes in yourself, it will make its way back to the center.<\/span><\/p>\n