Word.ws English Dictionary

identity police

identity police noun: 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.

Noun

identity police (plural identity police)

  1. (derogatory, figuratively) 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.
    • 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."1994, M. Annette Jaimes, “American Racism: The Impact on American-Indian Identity and Survival”, in Steven Gregory, Roger Sanjek, editor, Race, page 52
    • On the one hand, some observers charged the Cherokee Nation with racism, of being "identity police” by excluding non-enrolled individuals.2013, Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity, page 285

Forms of identity police

pluralidentity police

Words formed from identity police

Questions about identity police

What does identity police mean?
Identity police means 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.
What part of speech is identity police?
Identity police is a noun.
What is the plural of identity police?
The plural of identity police is identity police.

Words near identity police in the dictionary

  1. identity morphism
  2. identity morphisms
  3. identity of indiscernibles
  4. identity parade
  5. identity parades
  6. identity police
  7. identity policing
  8. identity politician
  9. identity politicians
  10. identity politics
  11. identity properties

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: identity police (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “identity police.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/identity_police. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.