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The Limits of Identity Politics: Neoliberal Co-optation and the Urgent Call for Class-Based Solidarity

Meeting of the United Packing House Workers of America (CIO), who went out on strike (1946), Bettmann/Getty

 In the contemporary landscape of global capitalism, identity politics has emerged as a dominant framework for understanding and addressing social injustices. Rooted in the struggles of marginalized communities for recognition and rights, identity politics has undeniably played a crucial role in highlighting the experiences of oppression based on race, gender, sexuality, and other markers of difference. Yet, as a scholar grounded in the culture-centered approach (CCA), I argue that the current iterations of identity politics, particularly under the grip of extreme neoliberalism, serve more to obscure than to liberate. This blog post interrogates these limits, exposing how neoliberalism deploys identity politics as a tool to deflect from working-class politics, perpetuating economic exploitation while offering superficial representations of diversity.
Neoliberalism's Strategic Deployment of Identity Politics
Extreme and aggressive neoliberalism—characterized by deregulation, privatization, austerity, and the relentless commodification of life—thrives on division. It fragments collective resistance by elevating identity-based grievances above shared economic struggles. In this paradigm, identity politics becomes a convenient deflection mechanism. Rather than confronting the structural violence of capital accumulation, which disproportionately burdens the working classes across racial lines, neoliberal ideologies channel dissent into silos of individual or group-based recognition.
Consider the corporate boardrooms and political arenas where "diversity and inclusion" initiatives flourish. These efforts prioritize symbolic victories: a Black CEO here, a queer executive there, or a woman of color in a high-profile government role. Such representations are celebrated as progress, yet they mask the deeper entrenchment of inequality. Neoliberal multiculturalism, as I have conceptualized in my work on cultural studies and communication, emphasizes identity and representation as endpoints of justice. It reduces antiracism, feminism, and LGBTQ+ advocacy to matters of visibility and personal empowerment within existing power structures.
This emphasis serves a dual purpose. First, it assimilates privileged elites from marginalized identities into the folds of capital. Individuals with access—to elite education, networks, and cultural capital—find pathways into neoliberal structures. They become the tokenized faces of progress: the South Asian tech mogul, the Latinx finance leader, or the Indigenous consultant advising on "inclusive" policies. Their success is heralded as evidence that the system works, provided one "leans in" or "hustles" hard enough. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people of color—those in precarious labor, facing eviction, or trapped in the gig economy—are rendered invisible.
Second, this framework minimizes working-class politics by pitting identities against one another. Neoliberalism amplifies intra-group hierarchies, where elite voices from marginalized communities speak for the oppressed, often aligning with corporate interests. Working-class Black and Brown people, alongside working-class White people, are systematically disenfranchised, exploited, and erased. They share the brunt of wage stagnation, job precarity, healthcare inaccessibility, and environmental racism in sacrifice zones. Yet, identity politics, in its neoliberal form, frames their struggles as separate: racism for people of color, economic anxiety for Whites. This bifurcation deflects from the common enemy—capital—and prevents cross-racial solidarity.
Empirical evidence abounds. In the United States, the rise of "woke capitalism" has seen corporations like Nike or Google champion Black Lives Matter aesthetics while lobbying against labor protections. In India, neoliberal reforms under the guise of "empowerment" have uplifted a tiny Dalit or Muslim bourgeoisie, even as caste-based exploitation in informal sectors intensifies. Globally, the IMF and World Bank's structural adjustment programs impose austerity that devastates working classes, only to be softened with rhetoric of gender equity or ethnic inclusion. The result? Power and control remain concentrated in the hands of a transnational elite, now diversified in hue but unified in class interest.Toward a Culture-Centered Alternative: Solidarity Through Class and Structural AntiracismThe culture-centered approach, which I have developed over decades of engagement with subaltern communities, offers a radical departure from this neoliberal trap. CCA centers the voices of the margins—those erased by dominant discourses—in co-creating knowledge and solutions. It rejects top-down expert interventions, instead fostering dialogues that emerge from cultural contexts. At its core, CCA sutures connections across differences, building solidarities that transcend identity silos.
In addressing the limits of identity politics, CCA turns to class and economic marginalization as the foundational basis for organizing. Class is not an add-on but the structural thread that binds oppressions. Racism, sexism, and other -isms are not free-floating cultural biases; they are materially embedded in capitalist extraction. By anchoring solidarity in shared experiences of exploitation—low wages, debt traps, land dispossession—we create coalitions that include working-class Black, Brown, White, Indigenous, and migrant peoples.
This class-based organizing does not erase identity; it transforms it. CCA builds a register for antiracism that is structurally transformative. Antiracism here is not about individual allyship or corporate training sessions but about dismantling the economic architectures that reproduce racial hierarchies. For instance, in CCA-inspired projects with adivasi (Indigenous) communities in India or Maori in Aotearoa, we have seen how foregrounding land rights and labor exploitation fosters alliances with urban proletariats of all races. These solidarities challenge eviction for "development" projects that benefit elites, demanding instead collective ownership and redistribution.
Imagine a politics where a Black factory worker in Detroit links arms with a White Appalachian miner and a Brown farmworker in California—not through shared "trauma" narratives curated by NGOs, but through joint struggles against corporate polluters and trade deals that offshore jobs. This is the suture: connections woven at the margins, amplifying subaltern agency to imagine and enact alternatives to neoliberalism.A Call to Action: Reclaiming Politics from the MarginsThe limits of identity politics under neoliberalism are clear: it deflects, divides, and depoliticizes. Privileged elites of color ascend, while the working classes—multiracial in their oppression—sink deeper into precarity. The culture-centered approach invites us to reclaim politics through solidarity, grounding it in class while pursuing a transformative antiracism.
As we navigate this era of crises—climate collapse, pandemics, wars fueled by profit—it is time to listen to the voices at the margins. Let us build movements that suture wounds of division, organizing for economic justice that uplifts all. Only then can we move beyond representation to genuine liberation.

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