In the latest ethos, which has spun well beyond college campuses in short order, any tradition, any experience, any costume, any way of doing or saying things that is associated with a minority or disadvantaged group is ring-fenced: look but don’t touch. Those who embrace a vast range of “identities”—ethnicities, nationalities, races, sexual and gender categories, classes of economic underprivilege and disability—are now encouraged to be possessive of their experience and to regard other peoples’ attempts to participate in their lives and traditions, either actively or imaginatively, as a form
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