"identity police" meaning in English

See identity police in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: identity police [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|identity police}} identity police (plural identity police)
  1. (figurative, somewhat derogatory) A person or other entity who attempts to convince another person, usually one with a marginalized identity, that their identity is invalid or that they do not belong to a group with whom they claim to identify. Tags: derogatory, figuratively Derived forms: identity policing
    Sense id: en-identity_police-en-noun-Yv2y7wAn Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "identity police",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "identity police"
      },
      "expansion": "identity police (plural identity police)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "identity policing"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              25,
              40
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1994, M. Annette Jaimes, “American Racism: The Impact on American-Indian Identity and Survival”, in Steven Gregory, Roger Sanjek, editor, Race, page 52:",
          "text": "The self-ordained Indian identity police have begun to spread rumors and spurious allegations on university campuses and in other institutions about persons whom they claim are imposters \"masquerading as real Indians.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              83,
              98
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2013, Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity, page 285:",
          "text": "On the one hand, some observers charged the Cherokee Nation with racism, of being \"identity police” by excluding non-enrolled individuals.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              99,
              114
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2020, Stan Grant, On Identity:",
          "text": "Identity, even with the best of intentions, falls too easily into the hands of petty tyrants—those identity police who monitor our words and actions, trolling social media to keep people in their lanes, telling us who qualifies to write or read—or monstrous despots who crush love under their boots.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person or other entity who attempts to convince another person, usually one with a marginalized identity, that their identity is invalid or that they do not belong to a group with whom they claim to identify."
      ],
      "id": "en-identity_police-en-noun-Yv2y7wAn",
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "person",
          "person"
        ],
        [
          "entity",
          "entity"
        ],
        [
          "attempt",
          "attempt"
        ],
        [
          "convince",
          "convince"
        ],
        [
          "marginalized",
          "marginalized"
        ],
        [
          "identity",
          "identity"
        ],
        [
          "invalid",
          "invalid"
        ],
        [
          "group",
          "group"
        ],
        [
          "claim",
          "claim"
        ],
        [
          "identify",
          "identify"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative, somewhat derogatory) A person or other entity who attempts to convince another person, usually one with a marginalized identity, that their identity is invalid or that they do not belong to a group with whom they claim to identify."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory",
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "identity police"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "identity policing"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "identity police",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "identity police"
      },
      "expansion": "identity police (plural identity police)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              25,
              40
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1994, M. Annette Jaimes, “American Racism: The Impact on American-Indian Identity and Survival”, in Steven Gregory, Roger Sanjek, editor, Race, page 52:",
          "text": "The self-ordained Indian identity police have begun to spread rumors and spurious allegations on university campuses and in other institutions about persons whom they claim are imposters \"masquerading as real Indians.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              83,
              98
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2013, Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity, page 285:",
          "text": "On the one hand, some observers charged the Cherokee Nation with racism, of being \"identity police” by excluding non-enrolled individuals.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              99,
              114
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2020, Stan Grant, On Identity:",
          "text": "Identity, even with the best of intentions, falls too easily into the hands of petty tyrants—those identity police who monitor our words and actions, trolling social media to keep people in their lanes, telling us who qualifies to write or read—or monstrous despots who crush love under their boots.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person or other entity who attempts to convince another person, usually one with a marginalized identity, that their identity is invalid or that they do not belong to a group with whom they claim to identify."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "person",
          "person"
        ],
        [
          "entity",
          "entity"
        ],
        [
          "attempt",
          "attempt"
        ],
        [
          "convince",
          "convince"
        ],
        [
          "marginalized",
          "marginalized"
        ],
        [
          "identity",
          "identity"
        ],
        [
          "invalid",
          "invalid"
        ],
        [
          "group",
          "group"
        ],
        [
          "claim",
          "claim"
        ],
        [
          "identify",
          "identify"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative, somewhat derogatory) A person or other entity who attempts to convince another person, usually one with a marginalized identity, that their identity is invalid or that they do not belong to a group with whom they claim to identify."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory",
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "identity police"
}

Download raw JSONL data for identity police meaning in English (2.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-20 using wiktextract (89e900c and ea19a0a). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.