Manjot Singh, Sofia Moreno Haq, Fabienne Roth, and Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed are the four UCLA students who believed that being Jewish rendered their fellow student Rachel Beyda incapable of serving on the judicial board of the university's student council. At a February meeting, they asked questions like, “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community . . . how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” Had an advisor not stepped in to suggest that the discussion of Beyda's Jewishness might be discriminatory, their nay votes would have kept her off the seat.
When video of the discussion found its way to Youtube, a furor erupted on the UCLA campus and the four members who voted against Beyda decided to issue an apology. Good for them—and better yet for us. The apology demonstrates the perils of adjudicating our disagreements in the language of identity politics.
“As individuals committed to social activism and advocating on behalf of underrepresented communities, we understand the importance and urgency of wearing our identities as a badge of honor,” they write. “Integral to this is respecting and celebrating identities other than our own, and for this reason it is vital to hold ourselves accountable when we fail to respect this necessity.”
Why are the students who voted against Rachel Beyda incapable of seeing her as anything other than a Jew? Why does she only gain moral status as the victim of an injustice by virtue of being part of an “underrepresented” minority? And might this not be a dangerously unstable premise on which to hang one’s conclusion when admissions and diversity offices are more likely to consider Jewish students “overrepresented” minorities?
For many of the most socially engaged and conscientious members of the left, it is impossible to acknowledge a discrete injustice without describing the wronged party as the member of a general victim class. Being a member of such a class allows one to wear what they call, without any apparent irony, a “badge of honor.” Of course, as with any such badge, it will be awarded at the whim of those who hold power and at their whim can be revoked.
Even as the millet system we call identity politics grows more byzantine and binding, no one can admit to being an Ottoman. This is why there’s likely to be trouble for many future Rachel Beydas—especially those whose diverging views and interests can’t be so easily tied to a racial or ethnic identity. When those who wield power believe themselves to be victims, they are not likely to be liberal in their means or merciful in their judgments.
Matthew Schmitz is deputy editor of First Things.
