Why Do They Do That? – How Identity Became Authority in Activist Politics

One key idea behind activist-left identity politics is the ladder of oppression: the more marginalized identity categories a person can claim, the more moral and political weight their speech is assumed to carry.

The theory has an old philosophical root. In the master/slave dialectic, the subordinate person is said to understand both worlds: his own condition and the world of the master who rules over him. The master, by contrast, often knows only his own comfort, his own assumptions, and the social order that flatters him. From this comes the later activist claim that oppressed people possess a clearer or “truer” insight into reality because they see power from below.

There is a partial truth here. People who live under a system often notice things the comfortable miss. A disabled person may see barriers others walk past. A woman may notice male behaviour men excuse or ignore. A racial minority may recognize social patterns the majority experiences only as normal background noise. Lived experience can expose blind spots.

The problem comes when this insight hardens into hierarchy.

Instead of treating experience as evidence to consider, activist politics often treats identity as authority. The more oppression factors a person can claim — race, sex, gender identity, sexuality, disability, poverty, colonial history — the higher they stand on the moral ladder. Their narrative is then “centred,” while those lower on the ladder are expected to listen, defer, apologize, or stay quiet.

At that point, argument has been replaced by ranking. A weak claim from the approved identity can be protected from criticism, while a strong claim from the wrong identity can be dismissed as privilege, fragility, or harm.

Lived experience matters, but it does not make someone automatically right. Suffering can reveal truths, but it can also narrow vision, sharpen resentment, or turn personal pain into bad policy.

A serious society listens to experience without making identity a substitute for reason. The question still has to be: is the claim true?