Identity-oppression theory was adopted instrumentally for professional advancement by immigrant male academics

Evidence

Among critiques that needed to be jettisoned, or at least greatly modified, were the Marxist ones, because Marxists had this habit of speaking about classes, even in Asia and Africa. What the upwardly mobile professionals in this new immigration needed were narratives of oppression that would get them preferential treatment, reserved jobs, higher salaries in the social position they already occupied: namely, as middle-class professionals, mostly male. For such purposes Orientalism was the perfect narrative. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 821

Categorization

• QUESTION: Directly relevant to whether ‘strategic’ essentialism can be held without collapse: Ahmad argues the oppression narrative is genuinely believed because it serves class interest — collapsing the strategic/distinctive distinction from the start.
• XREF: connects to: Diasporic upper-class academics adopted identity-oppression narratives that delegitimized class analysis — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 820