This was a very important read on how politics of deference have taken over left-wing spaces and work to our detriment. "Identity politics" have become such a nebulous buzzword, far from the original definition laid out by the Combahee River Collective. 

Táíwò shows how the mainstream establishment has taken identity politics and transformed it into something complacent and anti-revolutionary, in the same manner that it has watered down countless revolutionary moments to absorb them back into a state of complacency.

Táíwò illustrates how seemingly good concepts such as "the most marginalized person should be the one we listen to" end up becoming useless and keeping us in continual circles of all-talk and no action. It is a dead-end to speak of the most marginalized person in the room, given how many don't have the ability to be in the room at all.

Deference to someone based purely on identity, and the inevitable competition to weigh identities against each other to see who is most oppressed, is antithetical to meaningful dialogue and progress. 

Activist groups end up spending all their energy and resources making sure their narrow spaces are considered safe, and devote no attention to transforming the world outside. What good is it if the activist space itself practices proper deference, when no networking or action is broadened from it? We are left with isolated safe spaces that do nothing to lift up the marginalized or truly ensure everyone's voices are heard, only servicing those who are able to exist and talk in these small circles.

The book is quite brief and could have gone more in-depth, but it's a great read as an introduction to the problem of what identity politics has become, and how it can be brought back into the original, radical intentions laid out by the Combahee River Collective.