Identity Politics and Elite Capture with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

Laborwave Radio

Joining Laborwave is Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, to discuss his piece on Identity Politics and Elite Capture published by the Boston Review. "If elite capture boils down to the way power and resources tend to be distributed within groups, and not simply across groups, then it is a fully general problem of politics in a world that distributes power and resources unjustly and unequally. Elites get outsize control over the ideas in circulation about identities by, more or less, the same methods and for the same reasons that they get control over everything else." We discuss how elite capture is on display in the op-eds of Andrew Yang and calls for better representation within mainstream media, its manifestations in current discourse around "cancel culture," and the prospects for revamped social movements, especially in organized labor, to elevate politics to a level that transcends the capture of elites. http://bostonreview.net/race/olufemi-o-taiwo-identity-politics-and-elite-capture Music: Damaged Bug- Sold America Transcript available at https://www.laborwaveradio.com/post/olufemitaiwo