"The idea of elite capture has been around for decades and typically describes how the most advantaged people in a group take control of benefits that are meant for everybody..."

"Táíwò’s innovation is applying this idea to identity politics, the concept devised in 1977 by the Black radical feminists of the Combahee River Collective. He argues that their project has been hijacked. 'We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity,' they wrote, because organizing around what was good for people at the bottom of social hierarchies would be good for all oppressed people. But rather than using personal identity as an entry point to building radical coalitions, as these innovators intended, elites are using it as a tool to advance their own narrow interests. He gives recent examples: when Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser had the words BLACK LIVES MATTER painted on a street days after her police force was brutalizing protesters in 2020, and the 'Humans of CIA' video series, in which the agency tried to attract new recruits by appealing, for instance, to their queer identities. Both were efforts to pacify dissent or to rebrand violent institutions using the symbols of identity politics.... Táíwò proposes a 'constructive politics' — a shift in focus to specific results. To him, this means redistributing resources and power downward to the people most negatively affected by the status quo. That may seem frustratingly general, and Táíwò is up front about not offering a how-to guide for equality....."

From "What’s Wrong With Identity Politics?/Philosopher Olúfemi O. Táíwò’s new book reclaims the concept from elite power brokers" by Zak Cheney-Rice (NY Magazine).

The headline got my attention, but the article itself left me with nothing useful, but Táíwò is "up front about not offering" anything useful... other than that he seems to be advising progressives to think about doing what is actually useful.