You know what, I'm going to put in a big quote because a) I can and b) it's also a long article (that you really should read in its entirety):

Something has happened to identity politics. The phrase “identity politics” was coined by the Combahee River Collective, a group of radical Black feminists and socialist organizers active in the 1970s. What they meant by it was almost the opposite of what it has come to mean. For them, identity was not a personal brand, an exclusive boundary or zero-sum game, but was a political position formed by overlapping systems of oppression.

As Black women, they had learned that white feminists often ignored racism, while Black liberation spaces sidelined sexism and homophobia. They fought both at once, refusing to rank or isolate these struggles. “We do not separate race from class,” they wrote, “because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously.”

Identity was the starting point, not the destination. They refused to reduce politics to separate camps. Their vision was unapologetically anti-capitalist and universalist in every sense.