The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

by Yascha Mounk

My students, though supposedly so tolerant, are willing to take home less money to make sure that classmates who disagree with them about the nature of the hot dog fare worse than them.

If you say that “we are all Americans” or “we all go to Haverford,” they claim, you are downplaying the importance of race and sweeping social conflicts under the carpet.

This makes it harder for members of different groups to see themselves (however temporarily) as sharing a broader identity or pursuing common goals.

But in practice a greater identification with their skin color is likely to make them fight for their collective interests, encouraging more zero-sum conflict between different demographic groups.

These plans, they pointed out, inscribed racial discrimination at the very heart of American public policy. They accepted that thousands of people would needlessly die.

the policy was so focused on reducing the disparity in the number of vaccines that members of different races would receive that it likely resulted in an increase in deaths in the very groups whose welfare it was supposedly designed to prioritize.

Republican governor of Vermont announced that all “Black, Indigenous residents and other people of color” would be given access to COVID vaccines at a time when most white residents continued to be ineligible for them; when the policy proved controversial, he dismissed its critics as “racist.”

For much of American history, explicit racial discrimination was inscribed in the law.

This can all be summed up with "two wrongs don't make a right". The oddity is when the benevolent decision to reverse privilege causes more harm to the historically underprivileged. In this sense I don't see a clear connection with affirmative action in traditional concepts of work and education - provided of course it isn't a sit of under-qualification/desperation to increase diversity stats

All governmental use of race must have a logical end point.”

it has in many quarters become taboo to claim to be color-blind.

microaggression.”

Given how the research on this failed replication studies, the overall concept is probably categorized as progressive truthiness: it feels true, but is not.

The Difference Between Being Race-Blind and Being Racism-Blind

But being sensitive to the realities of racism is so important precisely because the aim should be to build a world that is truly insensitive to race.

Many people have a difficult start in life because they suffer from entrenched disadvantages.

So true. And we deeply discount this because of our need to believe in the bootstraps american exceptionalism myth

equity and equality don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

problem with equity is rooted in what philosophers call the “leveling-down objection.”

After all, nobody sets out to remedy racial disparity by making everyone equally poor.

But remember the closure and privitizing of pools when integration occurred. Public goods were lost because whites didn't want to integrate. Public pools disappeared.

In Lebanon, where Shias, Sunnis, and Maronite Christians are subject to different sets of laws governing important areas of personal life,

Is this pluralism or apartheid? How do we gloss over counties organized thusly? It feels so wrong to me.

Another problem is that policies that favor members of one group usually also disfavor members of another group.

This is rough justice. But when it comes to the unfairness question, i personally don't hate recruited athlete admits or those chosen for race gender or geographic diversity. College is more than pure academics

But 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.

Why does this only apply to race and not musicians or jocks though? The US has a tortured relationship and squeamishness around race. They could look at religious diversity as a key factor in admissions. Quotas for pagans

“Do you want a society that is nothing but an endless power struggle among organized groups?”

ugh. is that where identity synthesis leads? I'm not sure we've discussed what the end goal really is.

The failure of the referendum suggests a final drawback of race-sensitive policies: in a democracy, supposedly progressive measures that are incapable of winning popular majorities—even in a highly diverse and left-leaning state like California—simply aren’t capable of delivering on the benefits they promise in a sustainable manner.

That is the truth. Winning hearts and minds is hard work. That is why activists of all stripes favor power plays instead. They are fundamentally wrong in their short-term approach.

The U.S. Constitution rightly promises to treat each citizen as an individual rather than as a member of a group.

He doesn't argue this though. It's stated as a fact. The author is not defending his world view.

Because racism does not have anything to do with individual attributes, and members of groups that are comparatively powerless are incapable of carrying out “systematic discrimination” against members of groups that are comparatively powerful, even the vilest forms of hatred need not count as racist. As Manisha Krishnan put the point in Vice, “It is literally impossible to be racist to a white person.”

Now I get it! I didn't understand this before. It always seemed like such an odd belief to have. But the idea that individual racism doesn't exist, it's all structural now clarifies how people can think all white people are racists just because they are white & black people are incapable of being racist even if their views uphold racist beliefs. Similarly, women can't be sexist, even when their views uphold misogyny.

mainstream newspapers have been reluctant to report on hate crimes committed by African Americans against Asian Americans during the COVID pandemic, only rarely labeling such attacks as racist.

yup. that's the trap. but this is the problem of victim/oppressor dichotomy that underlies the identity synthesis. The concept that ends justify the means is what excuses all bad acts by a victim.

It would be wrong to say that the existence of people who have some hair means that there is no such thing as people who either are bald or have a full head of hair; similarly, it is wrong to say that the existence of people who are intersex means that there is no such thing as people who are biologically male or biologically female.

Meritocracy, it seems to me, is the worst system for distributing these kinds of positions except for all the alternatives.

But whether you have good grounds to complain depends on why somebody else was chosen instead of you. If the coach tells you that your competitor is more likely to help the team win, her decision is justified by the purpose of this particular social institution. If, on the other hand, the coach tells you that she picked your competitor because he offered more money to be on the team, comes from a family with the right connections, or happens to have the right skin color, you have good reason to feel wronged.

Except where there are so many qualified applicants. Perhaps Mounk would support a lottery process. But I do think allowing people to make selections for other reasons is not fair to the applicants but a reward to the administrators

better solution is to hold on to the ideal of meritocracy, striving to create a society in which people truly have equal opportunities—and those who don’t end up in the most prestigious or lucrative positions also get to lead a good life.

“complacent, backsliding liberals represented the principal impediment to racial progress.”

universal values and neutral rules merely serve to hide the true purpose of the social order they uphold: to perpetuate the power and the privilege of dominant identity groups.

That's the perspective of proponents of identity synthesis

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

societies should strive to live up to their universalist aspirations instead of abandoning them.

As a result, 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. The biggest difficulty faced by liberal democracies lies in how to remedy the lasting consequences of discrimination and injustice.

would simply be wrong to claim that the past half century has failed to bring about significant progress.

The ranks of those who thought that they had a historical calling to liberate humanity by imposing upon it their vision of all that is right and good include theocrats and nationalists, monarchists and utopian socialists.

In every single country in which their ideas were tried, they failed to deliver on their enticing promises.

they posited that some people naturally have more of a claim to rule than others.

Most common. This is also the cry for misogynists everywhere as their divine right to subordinate and subjugate women.

Philosophical liberalism is founded on the rejection of this premise.

This is why women cannot win under communim that pretends to suppoort equality only to result in abject repression -- former ussr and china being key examples.

government that takes the equality of its citizens seriously will also refrain from privileging some (groups of) citizens over others.

But what of those citizens who reject the premise of liberal democracy? Should they be disfavored? That is the fundamental question behind identity synthesis. He doesn't really engage on this, except to determine that any attack on free speech is a problem.

all human beings are born equal.

But can they lose that right by virtue of their choices? For instance, if they ascribe to an abhorrent philosophy that dictates women must serve men or non pagens are evil creatures to be exterminated?

And they don’t like being told what to say or whom to worship (unless they fantasize that the government will impose beliefs they already hold and customs they already practice on everybody else).

Um. This is exactly what most people think. Different rules for thee and me is the norm

avoiding the worst forms of government abuse, keeping the peace, and holding intergroup competition in check.

abstain from using force to deprive others of their enjoyment of the same—a price that is hardly trivial for those who feel a calling to proselytize their moral or religious convictions, but that most have historically become willing to pay when faced with the consequences of violent and protracted struggles for power.

What i don't see is the argument in favor of diminishing ones freedom of association for this

commitment to government neutrality helps to avert the most destructive forms of intergroup competition. In

Has he been watching too many episodes of the crown?

biggest reason why liberal democracies thrive has to do with the principles that animate them. The values of political equality, individual freedom, and collective self-determination make a huge contribution to fostering tolerance and prosperity,

He really doesn't defend this prospect, except to say it's better than all other alternatives. Why does he say that the fracturing of society along gender/race lines will absolutely not yield better results? What is the end goal of identity synthesis -- to separate into groups completely, then to have separate societies? It's unclear to me, so his defense/elevation of liberal democracy feels light.

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

For it is only when you can take care of your basic needs, live in a community that is comparatively peaceful, and are free to develop your talents that you have the best chance to order your life in accordance with your convictions and aspirations.

liberal society does not impose a particular account of human flourishing on its citizens.

That is key. But when resources flow to those who pursue wealth at the expense of other aspects of flourishing, liberals condemn those individuals as bad. No one is furious at the salt of the earth grandma who acted all her life selflessly to care for her family and community, leaving her with a wealth of happiness/community, but financially poor. Instead, we seek to tear down the lonely and isolated single male exec who works 80-hour weeks and cannot hope to spend all his cash wealth.

“The deeper I read, the more I saw the entire world through that lens. I soon couldn’t see much else. Racism permeated everything. My principal identity was as a victim of racism.”