I think I understand your point, but in judging these "identity groups" as bad, I I feel you're not giving proper weight to a practical aspect of human behavior: most people don't spend a lot of time defending other people from problems that they don't experience themselves.

I don't consider the fruits of that process as being "practical" in any way. It took me awhile to come to the conclusions I am sharing here. I didn't always think this way. I just look at problems, and I look for patterns. Sometimes I spot them. I also often have a weird way of thinking that I've been told often makes me come up with ideas that someone hadn't considered. I don't know when that is the case so I just share what I am thinking at the time. It may be common knowledge, or it may be unique. I can't tell that myself since it is normal in my own head. chuckle or perhaps abnormal.

I'll try to pick a group that you're more likely to feel neutral to, as an example. Let's take the Kurds.

I may not have been clear enough. I am talking about immutable traits about someone. The things that you cannot change about yourself. Sure that may be true of any ethnic group but simply by looking at them a person would not know they are "kurds" for certain. Their ancestors may have been, but they may not have been raised that way.

To me that type of ethnicity is more about geographical location you are born at coupled with the culture you are raised in. Cultures are much like software. Unlike the immutable characteristics we can change our culture. I'm not saying it is easy. It is still possible though. All cultures are not created equal and nor should we treat them as they are. Some ideas are bad and destructive and need to be treated as such.

I don't have a problem with people identifying as Americans, Kurds, Jews, Germans, etc.

If I asked you "What does a Kurd look like?" you might offer me a generalization but I bet there are exceptions to that. It is not immutable.

If you make something anti-white, anti-black, white lives matter, black lives matter, etc. those are immutable traits. People cannot choose whether they are black, white, or whatever.

Thus embracing movements that segregate in that fashion can only lead to division and bigotry. It is truly going in the opposite direction from seeking equality.

Will there be people that do bad things because they are racist and bigots? Of course. We deal with that incident we don't stereotype/generalize and state we must do this to stop ALL people like this person in the future.

Once we do that we need to define what people like that person are. Will it be skin color, nose length/shape (Rwanda used that I think for it's massacre), hair color, gender, sexual preference, etc.? Thus we introduce racism and/or other forms of bigotry based upon generalization and stating we are doing it to prevent something that happened from ever happening again.

That wasn't the answer. The answer was to deal with the incident. Then continue to treat people equal and the same.

have learned is that it's much easier

Yes, we are definitely addicted to EASY. That is often not the path to walk. So many things that are worth doing are not easy.

We have a problem with mental laziness, and laziness in general. Perhaps that is because compared to other people in history for the most part we have it REALLY good in the world compared to the generations that came before us.

This seems to often cause problems when people have not had to survive. They can perceive the most insignificant of things as being important. Why? They don't have much to worry about so it is the things a person that has experienced true hardship would consider trivial that they latch onto.

This is NOT always the case. There are exceptions. Yet if we want equality we cannot overreact to exceptions and decide due to that we can ditch equality. You either want it or you don't. Some people will be a problem. We deal with them on an individual basis. We don't stereotype and bring segregation into play.

Of course, you're correct that too strongly identifying with a group can easily lead to problems as well. One of them being that it can lead to new conflicts.

I would say it is almost a guarantee. How long it might take and what fashion that conflict occurs in can be vastly different. Sometimes potentially predictable, and other times not.

But at its heart, identity politics is usually spawned from some association for mutual benefit

That is what it SEEMS like. That is what the people often believe themselves. Ultimately it does not succeed in that. It may for a very short period seem like it does. The problem is if you want equality then you can't give anyone special treatment. The two things a mutually exclusive.

If you don't want equality then yes some identity group needs to be superior and treated as such.

Also the mutual benefit and reaction can often be due to an emotional response and the entire premise can be based upon the wrong causation. I personally think this is the case with BLM. I explained that in the post.

If there is a problem it can also be addressed as a problem that could impact ANYONE without going to an identity group and addressed that way. Then you are working on the problem for everyone without needing to point out one group as the reason. Law enforcement is getting too aggressive. Why? What can we do about it? Let's try this. Did it work? Yes. Okay problem solved. No. What else could we do? Did we correctly identify the cause?

All of the issues these identity groups claim to be trying to solve could actually be solved without mentioning an identity group. It is not necessary unless you think they need special treatment. Again, you can't have equality if there is special treatment.

EXCEPTIONS: Making wheel chair accessible ramps and such. It is about equality of opportunity not true equality. You cannot make that person magically walk so they will never be equal in that way. Yet we can do things to make them have the same opportunities as though they could walk.
(I mention this because I've had that come up in discussions before)

When a minority group is attacked by a majority group, it is almost inevitable that the minority group will band together, and if they don't, they will probably suffer worse.

Yep that is because of the identities. If you don't identify as a group and instead identify as a human then there are no such thing as minorities and majorities. Just equality.

There will always be minorities and majorities in ANY group as long as you are CHOOSING to see them and segregate by them. It is a choice.

It is easy to then see another group or person happening to have something happen to them positive or negative and evoke envy or rage depending upon what it was.

If you then decide the problem was due to the GROUP you chose to segregate them to you are introducing bigotry if it was due to skin color you are introducing racism.

EQUITY and EQUALITY of OUTCOME are not possible. That is very easy to prove. I can if you would like. We can strive for equality of opportunity though as the wheelchair example above illustrates. We can try to present the doors to people. They can open the ones they want. That doesn't mean they will have the aptitude, interest, or commitment to take full advantage of that opportunity. Unless we are a bunch of robots with all the exact same abilities that will forever be the case.

We should treat each other as humans. That's it. We should try to make as many doors available for all humans to try to walk through as possible. Though it will be impossible to insure they all can. We give them the opportunity to try the doors they want to try.

They will fail. We all do. Failure is not a bad thing. We should learn from it. That is another thing they have been conditioning people to not want to admit. When they have failed, or when they are wrong. I've encountered many people that the problem was NEVER their fault. There is always someone else, or something else to blame it on. I watch some of those people repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Being wrong is not a bad thing, as long as we learn from it. Our society seems to try to make people think the opposite of that and I know a lot of it comes from the education system.

It is okay for people to be wrong. We need to be able to let them learn. We should not condemn people for eternity unless it was something truly bad like murder, rape, etc.

To me evil is when force is applied to another person or their property either physical or coercive. If you force me to "choose" to do something because if I do not bad things will happen that is coercive force. I am of no organized religion but for me that is my simple definition of what I consider evil.

Evil seems to ALWAYS eventually rise from groups. That doesn't mean it is the only place it happens. Individuals can be evil as well.

Yet I don't know of any group that has not gone on to do evil. There may be some exceptions (if so they existed for a brief time) but I can't think of them at the moment.

Anyway thanks for the engaging reply. I didn't see it until when I began to respond.

This thing would have made an interesting post by itself.