The Identity Trap

Yascha Mounk (2023).? The identity trap: A story of ideas and power in our time.? Penguin Books: New York

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2? race-segregated “affinity groups.” … At some of America’s most elite schools … teachers now routinely divide students into different groups based on their race or ethnicity

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4? In the place of universalism, parts of American mainstream are quickly adopting a form of progressive separatism.? Schools and universities, foundations and some corporations seem to believe that they should actively encourage people to conceive of themselves as “racial beings.” … also … other forms of identity … gender, their cultural origin, or their sexual orientation as their defining attribute

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5? for the past decade, some influential doctors, activists, and experts have been pushing to make triage decisions on the basis of a different consideration: racial equity … A host of studies has shown that historically marginalized communities, like African Americans in the United States and some groups of British Asians in the United Kingdom, have worse health outcomes

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6? Some leading academics have even suggested that we should prioritize equity over the imperative to save patients’ lives

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6? COVID treatments … The State of New York … committed itself to adopting medical policies that would advance “racial equity and social justice” in 2021

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7-8? Concerns about the role that identity now plays in countries from the United Kingdom to the United States are often ridiculed as an unhealthy obsession with culture war battles on social media … A new way of thinking about identity has gained tremendous influence in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States … Instead of pretending that these changes are irrelevant or imaginary, we need to analyze and assess them in a serious manner?

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8? The left has historically been characterized by its universalist aspirations … But over the past six decades, the left’s thinking on identity has – for reasons that are in many ways understandable – undergone a profound change

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9? Ten year ago … “identity politics.” … “woke.” … the use of both terms has since become deeply polarizing … So it would be helpful to settle on a name that is acceptable both to its supporters and to its critics … “identity synthesis.”

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10? Many advocates of the identity synthesis are driven by a noble ambition: to remedy the serious injustices that continue to characterize every country in the world, including the United States

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11? It is possible to recognize these injustices and fight against them without subscribing to the identity synthesis

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12? The identity synthesis calls attention to real injustices … But sadly, the identity synthesis will ultimately prove counterproductive … Despite its allure, the identity synthesis turns out to be a trap

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13? the identity synthesis … the actual influence of this new ideology is likely to make us stray from, not guide us toward, the kind of society to which we all have reason to aspire

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13? As social psychologists have demonstrated again and again, drawing lines between groups seems to come naturally to members of our species … Any decent ideology must have an account of how to attenuate the ill effects … One key problem with the identity synthesis is that it fails to do so

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13-14? while humans will always retain a tendency to draw distinctions between “us” and “them,” the criteria for who is included in the in-group, and how members of the out-group are treated, are deeply dependent on context.? When I encounter somebody who stems from a different … group … I can also recognize that we are compatriots, agree on important political ideals, and share the fact of our humanity … Far-right ideologies are so dangerous because they discourage people from widening their circle of sympathy in this manner … My concern about the identity synthesis is that, in its own way, it too makes it harder for people to broaden the allegiances beyond a particular identity in a way that can sustain stability, solidarity, and social justice

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14-15? 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 … A society that encourages all of us to see the world through the ever-present prism of identity will make it especially hard for people who don’t neatly fit into one ethnic or cultural group to develop a sense of belonging … since all of us are much more than the matrix of our particular group identities, many are likely to find themselves disappointed

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16? The lure that attracts so many people to the identity synthesis is a desire to overcome persistent injustices and create a society of genuine equals.? But the likely outcome of implementing this ideology is a society in which an unremitting emphasis on our differences pits rigid identity groups against each other in a zero-sum battle for resources and recognition – a society in which all of us are, whether we want to or not, forced to define ourselves by the groups into which we happen to be born.? That’s what makes the identity synthesis a trap

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16? A trap has three key attributes.? It usually contains some kind of lure.? It is usually capable of ensnaring people even if they are smart or noble.? And it usually subverts the goals of those who get caught up in it, making it impossible for them to accomplish what they set out to do

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16-17? The most striking political development of the past decade has been the rise of the illiberal right … right-wing parties that once paid allegiance to basic rules and norms of constitutional? democracies have gradually embraced a form of authoritarian populism that presents an acute danger to the survival of our political system.? Today, dangerous demagogues continue to pose an existential threat to democracies from India, to Hungary and the United States

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18? right-wing populism and the identity trap feed on each other … each is the yin to the other’s yang … everyone who cares about the survival of free societies should vow to fight both

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?26? Why did the left jettison its universalism?? And how did it come to embrace a new form of tribalism that seems diametrically opposed to its historical core?

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31-32? [Michel] Foucault … The real point of mental institutions … was not to heal; it was to exclude those labeled aberrant … The purpose of the modern criminal system … is “to punish less, perhaps; but certainly to punish better.” … The primary aim of modern societies … is to ensure that as many citizens as possible follow their norms

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34? Foucault argued that labels like “mental illness” and “homosexuality” are tools of power rather than descriptions of reality

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46-47? [Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak] If people are oppressed on the basis of some characteristic they share … there are two possible responses.? One is to fight to dismantle the category …. The other is to organize political action around this marker of group identity … strategic essentialism

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50? In some ways, the progress the country has made as a result of the civil rights era is remarkable … And yet … measured against the exalted hopes of the civil rights era, America really did – and does – fall painfully short

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51? Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw set out to understand what had gone wrong

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53? Bell observed that many civil rights attorneys litigating cases over public schools in the American South were guided by an ideological commitment to desegregation.? But the Black clients on whose behalf they were working often had different goals.? They wanted their children to have access to a quality education, irrespective of the composition of the student body

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56? Bell … “The interests of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites.”

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58? Crenshaw … “Critical Race Theory” … 1989 … “intersectionality.”

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65? “identity synthesis.”? Inspired by … postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory … characterized by a widespread adherence to seven fundamental propositions: a deep skepticism about objective truth inspired by Michel Foucault; the use of a form of discourse analysis for explicitly political ends inspired by Edward Said; an embrace of essentialist categories of identity inspired by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; a proud pessimism about the state of Western societies as well as a preference for public policies that explicitly make how someone is treated depend on the group to which they belong, both inspired by Derrick Bell; and an embrace of an intersectional logic for political activism as well as a deep-seated skepticism about the ability of members of different identity groups to understand each other, both associated with Kimberlé Crenshaw

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76? The identity synthesis was inspired by major thinkers including Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Derrick Bell, and Kimberlé Crenshaw.? But ironically, many of these thinkers have expressed serious misgivings about the way in which their work has transformed the left

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83-84? Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree … 1999 … The idea that social media would lead people to bridge long-standing divides looks na?ve in the wake of the rise of polarization, and the ascent of far-right populists, the bloody failure of the Arab Spring, and the consolidation of increasingly repressive regimes in Russia and China

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84-85? the effects of social media … Twitter … Facebook … perhaps … Instagram … TikTok … virtually vanished … Tumblr

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86? Two core themes that have roots in the identity synthesis came to be especially important on Tumblr: standpoint epistemology and intersectionality

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92? [Matthew] Yglesias … some of the most important media trends of the mid-2010s … “… hard core identity politics and simplistic socialism performed incredibly well on Facebook during this period.”

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94-95? between 2013 and 2019 … because the audience of mainstream news outlets is disproportionately white and educated, attitudes about race changed much more drastically among this comparatively “privileged” group of Americans than they did in the population at large

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97? Rudi Dutschke … 1967 … “long march through the institutions.” … 1972 … Herbert Marcuse … “working against the established institutions while working within them,”

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98? Canada, the United States and (to a lesser extent) the United Kingdom over the course of the past decade … “short march through the institutions”

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106? Over the course of the past decade, major grant-making foundations and key activist groups alike have undergone an enormous change, embracing the core tenets of the identity synthesis and weakening their commitment to philosophically liberal principles

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108? young employees … started to engage in … “insider activism.”

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109? Once some top firms and companies agreed to meet key demands of such insider activists, most of the others in the same industry quickly followed suit

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110? a legal dimension … companies … whether they have instituted the kinds of practices and offered the kinds of training programs that are typical among their peers

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113-117? What a thousand political scientists and campaign strategists had declared impossible … Donald J. Trump … president of the United States … as the high hopes … were dashed … they redirected their anger toward the inside … dissent discouraged … from 2016 to 2020, some of the most intense energy on the left was devoted to getting rid of anybody who supposedly threatened to pollute the moral purity of their community … By the end of the 2010s, a constricting orthodoxy had descended … progressive institutions proved especially vulnerable to this self-destructive dynamic

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118-119? Solomon Asch … whole groups can come to embrace wrong, extreme, or even dangerous ideas

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119? Cass Sunstein … “the law of group polarization”: after groups of like-minded people have a chance to deliberate … the conclusions they come to are more radical than the beliefs of their individual members

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120-121? “Internal criticism and dissent are vital for social groups’ success,” … Levi Adelman and Nilanjana Dasgupta … They also prevent groupthink … But often is not always … there is a particular set of circumstances that makes it much more likely for a group to become less tolerant of dissent … The pressure to conform … becomes much bigger when a group is in the middle of a conflict that involves high moral stakes

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130-131? five … concepts, norms, and policy frameworks … they are a trap …

1.????? Standpoint theory …

2.????? Cultural appropriation …

3.????? Limits on free speech …

4.????? Progressive separatism …

5.????? Identity-sensitive public policy

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131 ?the best way to remedy persistent injustices consists of a renewed commitment to core universal principles

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135? there are two big problems with the way in which many writers and activists are now invoking lived experience to justify much more far-reaching conclusions.? The first is that the core claims of the popularized form of “standpoint theory” are unconvincing … Empathy with the plight of others may take hard work, but it remains both possible and politically indispensable.? The second problem is that standpoint theory fails as a set of practical guidelines for how to take effective political action in the real world

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137? philosophers and social theorists who have thought hardest about standpoint epistemology tend to reject the core claims of its popularized version

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140? the so-called Nordic model … legal for sex workers to offer their services but illegal for clients to buy them … puts sex workers at greater risk of harm … Though you or I may not share their experiential knowledge we are able to understand and act on the propositional knowledge they derived from it

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142? Who gets to decide whether a Black politician does or does not represent the “authentic” Black voice?

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143? In societies with significant inequalities of power and status, it is the affluent and well connected who are in the best position to determine who gets to speak on behalf of various identity groups

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144? Embracing a vision of political solidarity based on thoughtless deference rather than hard-won empathy makes it harder to bring about real political progress

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149? Far-right populists love to denounce the ways in which immigration and the growth of minority groups are supposedly eroding social norms, supplanting native languages, or displacing local cuisines … Traditionally, it has been the right that opposed and the left that defended new cultural influences. ?But in recent years, many progressives … have started to warn about the dangers of “cultural appropriation.”

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151? cultural appropriation … it is high time for a full-throated defense of cultural hybridity … the ever-present reality of mutual inspiration is one of the most attractive features of diverse societies

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153-154? Since its dawn, human culture has evolved by remixing and reappropriating a rich array of cultural influences … Nearly all of the greatest dishes, customs, and inventions on which humanity can pride itself have roots in multiple cultures … it would fundamentally undermine our collective creativity if humans were restricted from drawing on the cultures of all groups in the future

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154? Kwame Anthony Appiah … “… Societies without change aren’t authentic; they’re just dead.”

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158? Throughout human history, different groups of people have influenced and emulated each other’s cultures.? This is especially true in Canada and the United States … It should be little surprise that some of the most celebrated epochs of human history have come at times, and in places, that allowed different cultures to inspire each other

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161? Around the world, authoritarian populists such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are attacking free speech

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164? a free society requires a genuine culture of free speech

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165? large parts of the American left have openly turned against the ideal of free speech

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165? a true culture of free speech has important benefits, allowing us to recognize our errors and develop a deeper understanding of our own beliefs

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170? the best case for free speech focuses not on the positive consequences that often flow from its maintenance but rather on the negative consequences that are likely to result from its absence

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172? The core promise of electoral democracy is that you can always live to fight another day … As the events of January 6, 2021, remind us … once partisan polarization grows so intense that many people consider a victory by the opposition intolerable

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173-175? limits on free speech are so counter-productive … limits on free speech … undermine the ability of a society to course correct … a society that values free speech would protect its citizens’ ability to express unpopular opinions … It would make sure that the state cannot throw them in jail for their views

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175? hate speech laws now poses a serious threat to freedom of speech … thinkers from Voltaire to James Baldwin recognized, the right to offend has always stood at the very core of any serious notion of free speech

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176? “academic freedom” … it is better to have some professors spreading falsehoods or saying offensive things than to risk that nobody can call into doubt a popular consensus that might well be wrong

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177? Anybody who cares about upholding a genuine culture of free speech must therefore care about reining in the ability of private actors to punish people for expressing unpopular views or to police the boundaries of legitimate debate

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178-179? social media.? Facebook and Twitter function as key venues for political debate.? And yet they frequently ban users on arbitrary grounds … social media companies should voluntarily adopt stringent restrictions on their own ability to censor … Twitter and Facebook are effectively acting as publishers … they should … be held responsible for the content they spread

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180? extreme forms of social pressure and collective punishment can add up to a real attack on the culture of free speech … Jonathan Rauch … at least four warning signs to help distinguish healthy instances of … a “critical culture” from worrying indications that people are being “canceled” … Punitiveness … Deplatforming … Organization … Secondary boycotts … Unlike a healthy critical culture … cancellation “is about shaping the information battlefield, not seeking truth; and its intent – or at least its predictable outcome – is to coerce conformity.”

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183? John Dewey … “the intermingling in the school of youth of different races, differing religions, and unlike customs creates for all a new and broader environment.” … Barack Obama … “our goal is to have a country that’s not divided by race,” … “when children learn and play together, they grow, build, and thrive together.”

Over the course of the past few years, this universalism has fallen out of favor … rather than focusing on efforts to integrate society, progressives have increasingly militated for the creation of spaces and organizations in which members of minority groups can remain among themselves

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184? Over the past decade, many schools have introduced race-segregated affinity groups … In place of liberal universalism, parts of the American mainstream are quickly embracing what we might call “progressive separatism.”

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185? In a pluralistic society, freedom of association will always lead to some amount of “homophily,” the well-documented tendency of people to seek out those who resemble them … The rise of progressive separatism … is likely to be dangerously counterproductive

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185? Ta-Nehisi Coates … “Race is the child of racism, not the father.”

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187? “safetyism.”

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188? leaders … could have focused on reducing the role that race plays within their organizations and making them more welcoming to members of minority groups … But as the twin influence of strategic essentialism and safetyism grew … They now opted to create more spaces in which members of such groups could engage in consciousness building … and would be protected from the threat posed by members of dominant groups

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190? social psychologists and political scientists … demonstrate that the embrace of progressive separatism is a dangerous trap

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190? Is a hot dog a sandwich?

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191? Human beings … are “groupish.” … This tendency to favor the in-group over the out-group helps to explain much of what is noble and most of what is vile in human history

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192? What set of policies and practices should we adopt if we want to maximize the chances that the members of highly diverse societies … will treat each other with empathy and respect?

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193? four key conditions help to ensure that intergroup contact has positive effects … Equal status … Common goals … Intergroup cooperation … Support from authorities and customs … Anybody who is serious about fostering better relations between different identity groups needs to take this research extremely seriously

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196? it is crucial for the people who are exposed to each other to get the message that they are expected to get along

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198? white Americans are more, not less, likely to engage in out-group discrimination against “people of color” if they are primed to think of belonging to a group defined by the color of their skin as their primary identity

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199? Progressive separatism is a dead end … there is an alternative: a society that tries to overcome the segregation that has historically defined it, encourages its members to develop greater compassion for each other, and inspires them to place more emphasis on the markers of identities they share than on those that divide them

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201? one important goal of … education should be to create as many opportunities as possible for students from different groups to have meaningful contact with each other

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212? Public policies that benefit all needy citizens irrespective of their race or gender are more likely to address poverty, and perhaps even to reduce disparities between different groups, than the identity-sensitive policies that are now in vogue

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213? [Ralph] Leonard … distinction between race blindness and racism blindness

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214? race-neutral policies, not just race-sensitive ones, are capable of attenuating the effects of historical disadvantage

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215? an antipoverty policy that targets the roughly ten million poor Black Americans would fail to assist the even greater number of twenty-three million poor white Americans

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216? while the concept of equity has some intuitive plausibility, an uncritical focus on it would lead to very bad outcomes … At the moment … the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer

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217? The other problem with equity is … the “leveling-down objection.”

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219? policies that favor members of one group usually also disfavor members of another group … Black students … Asian American applicants … white peers … universities like Harvard just so happen to rank Asian American applicants far lower than those of any other racial group

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219? when public policy is formulated in race-sensitive terms, each group has an interest in mobilizing along ethnic lines to fight for its own interests … Hubert Humphrey … giving preferential treatment to a group on the basis of tis ascriptive characteristics can very easily go awry.? “Do you want a society that is nothing but an endless power struggle among organized groups?”

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221-222? Ruth Bader Ginsburg … [and] Antonin Scalia … both agreed on a basic set of criteria for how the Supreme Court should evaluate programs that give minority applicants a leg up … First, it must serve a “compelling interest.” … Second, these programs need to be “narrowly tailored” to accomplish that compelling state interest … And third, the courts need to apply “strict scrutiny” to any such governmental programs

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232? One essential reason to hold on to some basic form of meritocracy is, quite simply, to preserve an incentive for young people to develop socially valuable skills

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240? “liberalism.” … has become associated with a partisan political identity in a number of countries … Liberalism, in the sense in which I will defend it, is based on the rejection of natural hierarchy … Liberalism is, these days, much maligned on both the left and the right

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242? Rudolf Carnap, we should aim at a “rational reconstruction of an entity which has already been constructed, in a partly intuitive, partly rational way in daily life or in the sciences.”

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247? Every society in history has presented itself in a more flattering light than its reality warranted

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250? virtually all democracies have become much more diverse at the top, with women, immigrants, sexual minorities, and members of historically marginalized ethnic groups vastly more likely to be lawyers and doctors, business leaders and elected officials than in the past

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250-251? an accurate assessment of the past fifty years suggest that the push to live up to universal values and neutral rules is capable of bringing about enormous improvements

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254? communists … In every single country in which their ideas were tried, they failed to deliver on their enticing promises … despotism in lieu of emancipation, and deprivation in the place of affluence

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255? There are many societies today that afford their members far greater freedom and dignity, affluence and security than humans have enjoyed at virtually any juncture since the beginning of recorded history … such societies … are guided by the philosophically liberal emphasis on individual freedom and collective self-government

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255? Humans need government

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256-257? The best foundation of a legitimate political order, liberals claim, is not some supposedly natural hierarchy – but the recognition that, in matters of politics, we are all “created equal.” … Over time, liberals have derived three ambitious conclusions from this simple starting point.? First, liberals deny that anybody can invoke their noble birth or their superior wisdom to force others to obey … “one person, one vote.” … the second institutional reference … even laws that are legitimate because they are derived from the will of the people need to leave key decisions about how to live, whom to worship, and what to say up to each individual.? Finally, a government that takes the equality of its citizens seriously will also refrain from privileging some (groups of) citizens over others … for political purposes, all human beings are born equal

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260? liberal democracies are hugely overrepresented among the world’s most successful countries

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260? Statistics show that liberal democracies outperform their rivals on key metrics that virtually every human being values

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261? liberals must hold two beliefs … at the same time.? We should celebrate the way in which our principles have helped to bring about vast improvements in the world.? And we should remember that liberalism is a force of progress, not of the status quo

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262? The identity synthesis … will always be mired in zero-sum competition

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267? [Eboo Patel]? “… responsible citizenship in a diverse democracy is not principally about noticing what’s bad; it’s about constructing what’s good.”

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270? 2022 … Barack Obama … “sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells.? They want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment can say things the wrong way.”

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272-281? find a way to fight back against the dangers of the identity trap within your own personal and professional spheres … here are six pieces of advice for arguing and organizing against the identity trap …

1.????? Claim the Moral High Ground …

2.????? Don’t Vilify Those Who Disagree … it is precisely their tendency to confuse political disagreement with moral failure that has transformed public discourse for the worse over the course of the past decade …

3.????? Remember That Today’s Adversaries Can Become Tomorrow’s Allies … Though few people acknowledge defeat in the middle of an argument, most do shift their worldview over time …

4.????? Appeal to the Reasonable Majority …

5.????? Make Common Cause with Other Opponents of the Identity Synthesis …

6.????? … But Don’t Become a Reactionary

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281? One of the stranger aspects of the way in which social media has transformed America over the past decade is the fear of many institutional leaders to exercise their authority

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282? in the end, institutional leaders who are afraid to uphold rational rules or punish those who blatantly disregard them will succeed only in emboldening activists who are intent on usurping what remains of their authority, making their organizations even more acrimonious and dysfunctional

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282-283? institutional leaders need a plan …

1.????? Clearly communicate that employees are expected to be tolerant toward different points of view …

2.????? Solicit real feedback instead of letting activists hijack the conversation …

3.????? Stop employees from bullying each other on social media …

4.????? Don’t discipline anybody before the facts are clear and passions have cooled …

5.????? Don’t apologize unless you’ve done something wrong

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286? The identity trap poses serious dangers.? It undermines important values like free speech.? Its misguided applications have proven deeply counter-productive in areas from education to medicine … We must not let the identity trap lure us into giving up a future in which what we have in common finally comes to be more important that what divides us