The Identity Trap
Hello, I hope all is great on your end! I visited Pittsburgh and Houston this week for Forward, including endorsing a local candidate and visiting a night market in Houston. I also continued doing interviews for my new novel “The Last Election” with Stephen Marche, which we’ve been getting great feedback on.
This week on the podcast I interview professor and writer for the Atlantic Yascha Mounk on his new book, “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power In Our Time.” For those of you who have been following me for a while, Yascha’s book tackles similar ideas as John McWhorter’s “Woke Racism” and Tim Urban’s “What’s Our Problem?” both of whom I’ve had on the podcast.
Yascha describes what he calls “The Identity Synthesis,” a worldview that puts race, gender and sexual orientation above other considerations. “In this view, even situations that seemingly have nothing to do with identity, like a run-of-the-mill dispute between two friends, need to be analyzed through the lens of the relative social power each of them enjoys by virtue of the respective identity groups to which they belong. Because of this focus on identity as a way of interpreting social reality, parts of the left are now more likely to invoke new concepts like ‘microaggressions’ and ‘implicit bias’ than they are to invoke older concepts like social class.”
The recommendation of the identity synthesis is to treat people differently based on which group they belong to. “Because neutral rules like nondiscrimination laws are supposedly insufficient to make a difference, the advocates of the identity synthesis insist that we need social norms and public policies that explicitly make how the state treats its citizens— and how we all treat each other— depend on the identity group to which they belong.”
Yascha describes this approach as very alluring and often well-intended. “The identity synthesis calls attention to real injustices. It gives people who feel marginalized or mistreated a language in which to express their experiences. And it affords its followers the sense of being part of a grand historical movement that will make the world a better place. All of this helps to explain why it is so alluring, especially to the young and idealistic.”
Unfortunately, Yascha writes that the identity synthesis will “ultimately prove counterproductive . . . it undermines progress toward genuine equality between members of different groups. In the process, it also subverts other goals we all have reasons to care about, like the stability of diverse democracies. Despite its allure, the identity synthesis turns out to be a trap.”
He goes on: “The identity synthesis is a political trap, making it harder to sustain diverse societies whose citizens trust and respect each other. It is also a personal trap, one that makes misleading promises about how to gain the sense of belonging and social recognition that most humans naturally seek,” Yascha writes. “Progressive separatism is a dead end. Its vision of the future is neither realistic nor attractive. And partial success – a world in which whites do come to define themselves by their ethnic identity yet fail to dismantle the advantages that have historically flowed from it – may transport us into the worst of all possible timelines.” In other words, we should be very careful about getting everyone in America to think of themselves along racial lines, because the results could be disastrous.
So what’s a better approach? According to Yascha, numerous studies have shown that intergroup interaction can diminish bias if a number of elements are in place:
Equal status. Members of different groups are regarded as in the same boat, as for example teammates or colleagues.
Common goals. The groups have a goal in common, such as a project or winning a competition.
Intergroup cooperation. Members of different groups work together, as in passing the ball to each other or dividing up responsibilities.
Support from authorities and customs. Members are encouraged to get along by the leadership, such as a supervisor or coach or authority figure.
In these environments, people start to feel better about people from different groups. Well-run companies, teams or military units are examples of places where bias diminishes because you work alongside someone every day toward a common goal.
These are the kinds of organizing principles that give us a better chance as a society. Yascha writes of universalist goals, e.g., “everyone should be treated fairly, equally and free of discrimination” as the kind of unifying message that bore real results during the Civil Rights Movement, even if the progress hasn’t been as complete as many would like.
I agree with Yascha on making universal appeals. When I ran for President, I talked about giving everyone a certain amount of money as a foundation. Poverty afflicts every community. I thought that it was the kind of unifying vision that would give us a chance at a better future.
Can we form common, unifying goals that span our differences, including the political divide that threatens to tear our society apart? The future of the country rests on our answering that question positively by bringing different groups together. We’re all American, whatever our background. Let’s start there.
For Yascha’s book “The Identity Trap” click here and for my interview with him click here. To check out what Forward is doing to overcome divisions in your area, click here.
