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

by Yascha Mounk

A conversation between experts convened by a prominent organization that has worked closely with the school and is fittingly called EmbraceRace points out that when students are young, “even a person of color or Black person might say: I don’t see myself as a racial being. I’m just human.” The task of a good education is to change that attitude: “We are racial beings.” And the first step toward that goal is to reject the “color-blind idea” that our commonalities are more important than our differences.

In the place of universalism, parts of the 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.” Increasingly, they are also applying the same framework to other forms of identity, encouraging people to think of their gender, their cultural origin, or their sexual orientation as their defining attribute. And of late, many institutions have taken yet another step: they have concluded that it is their duty to make how they treat people depend on the groups to which they belong—even when it comes to such existential decisions as whom to prioritize for lifesaving drugs.

The left has historically been characterized by its universalist aspirations. To be on the left was to insist that human beings are not defined by their religion or their skin color, by their upbringing or their sexual orientation. A key goal of politics was to create a world in which we collectively realize that the things we share across identity lines are more important than the things that divide us, allowing us to overcome the many forms of oppression that have marked the cruel history of humanity.

This body of ideas draws on a broad variety of intellectual traditions and is centrally concerned with the role that identity categories like race, gender, and sexual orientation play in the world. So I will, for the most part, refer to it as the “identity synthesis.”

Indeed, virtually everything that has been written about this topic so far falls into one of two camps. Either it uncritically celebrates the core ideas of the identity synthesis as a necessary tonic to the injustices of the world, or it summarily dismisses them as a fad that need not be taken seriously from an intellectual point of view.

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

Advocates of the identity synthesis reject universal values and neutral rules like free speech and equal opportunity as mere distractions that aim to occlude and perpetuate the marginalization of minority groups. Trying to make progress toward a more just society by redoubling efforts to live up to such ideals, its advocates claim, is a fool’s errand. That is why they insist on making forms of group identity much more central, both to our understanding of the world and to our sense of how to act within it.

But sadly, the identity synthesis will ultimately prove counterproductive. Despite the good intentions of its proponents, 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.

Taken together, these kinds of norms and policies are likely to create a society composed of warring tribes rather than cooperating compatriots, with each group engaged in a zero-sum competition with every other group.

Others still are going to take up the call to conceive of themselves, first and foremost, as members of some ethnic, gender, or sexual group with great enthusiasm, hoping that this will allow them to be recognized and appreciated for who they truly are. But since all of us are much more than the matrix of our particular group identities, many are likely to find themselves disappointed. For a culture that thinks of people primarily in relation to some collective is incapable of seeing and affirming its members in all of their glorious individuality. It is surely necessary for a society to communicate respect for all of its members, irrespective of their race or origin, for them to feel a sense of belonging and social recognition. But it does not follow that most people will succeed in gaining such a sense of belonging and social recognition by making their membership in these kinds of identity groups central to their personal sense of self.

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. 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.

Third, the identity synthesis is likely to prove counterproductive to many of the causes about which its advocates have good reason to care. An atmosphere of misplaced reverence for the core claims of this new ideology makes it hard for well-meaning critics to point out instances when its suggested solutions cause real damage—whether directly, because the policies it encourages are liable to worsen the fate of the most disadvantaged, or indirectly, because the confrontational framing it encourages makes it hard to sustain public support for policies that actually do improve people’s lives.

Many critics of so-called wokeness have argued that it is a form of “cultural Marxism.” But the true history of the identity synthesis turns out to be more surprising. It features the rejection of grand narratives, including both liberalism and Marxism, by postmodern thinkers such as Michel Foucault; an embrace of the need for intellectuals to speak on behalf of oppressed groups by adopting a form of “strategic essentialism” by postcolonial thinkers such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; and the rejection of the key values of the civil rights movement, including the goal of racial integration, by critical race theorists such as Derrick Bell.

And finally, the election of Donald Trump supercharged well-founded concerns about threats to minority groups, making it seem disloyal for progressives to criticize any ideas associated with the left and rendering criticisms of the identity synthesis taboo in many milieus.

To those who want to understand the intellectual history of the identity synthesis, part I will be of greatest interest. To those who want to understand the political, sociological, and technological reasons that led this ideology to escape campus and conquer the mainstream, part II will be of greatest interest. To those who want to understand why the ways in which these ideas have been applied to topics from free speech to cultural appropriation are likely to prove counterproductive, part III will be of greatest interest. And to those who are searching for a coherent alternative to the identity trap, part IV can serve as a guide.

they believed that the historical mission of the left consisted in expanding the circle of human sympathy across the boundaries of family, tribe, religion, and ethnicity. To be on the left was to believe that humans matter equally irrespective of the group to which they belong; that we should aim for forms of political solidarity that transcend group identities rooted in race or religion; and that we can make common cause in pursuit of universal ideals like justice and equality.

People, Foucault believed, would always chafe against the form that power takes at their particular historical juncture: “Where there is power, there is resistance.” But this resistance itself will, if it should prove successful, immediately come to exercise a power of its own. Because resistance “is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power . . . there is no single locus of great Refusal.” Even the most noble struggle against present-day oppression, Foucault was warning his readers, would contain within itself the seed for new and equally constraining forms of future oppression.

For despite Foucault’s refusal to propose a better model for society, it was his rejection of universal truth, his skepticism about the possibility of progress, and his warnings about the power of oppressive discourses that ended up inspiring an ideology that has gone on to transform the left and gain unexpected influence in the mainstream: the identity synthesis.

Key “postmodern” theorists like Michel Foucault were steeped in communist ideas. But the core of their philosophy consisted of a rejection of all “grand narratives,” including Marxism. The rejection of grand narratives led postmodern theorists to grow deeply skeptical of claims to both objective truth and universal values. It even led them to reject stable identity categories, like “woman” or “proletarian.”

Foucault argued against the widespread notion that democratic societies have become more humane in their treatment of criminals, the mentally ill, or sexual minorities. In reality, he believed, societies have merely found more sophisticated ways of controlling the behavior of the aberrant.

Philosophers have traditionally assumed that formal institutions like states wield power from the top down. But Foucault argued that modern societies exercise social control in a more subtle way. He argued that it is informal “discourses” which determine what people can do or think. This called into question...

During the 1980s, postmodernism quickly gained popularity in American academia, with French theorists and their disciples coming to dominate literature departments around the country. But the style of “theory” they popularized was highly self-referential and deeply obscure to outsiders. Over time, Said grew increasingly concerned about the “institutionalization and professionalization of literary studies,” complaining that his colleagues were fleeing politics to play obscure word games (or, as he put it, “retreat into a labyrinth of ‘textuality’ ”).

For when thinkers like Foucault attacked grand narratives, they had not only rejected the idea of universalist values or scientific truths; they had also argued that it is dangerous to refer to people by virtue of the identity groups to which they belong. Labels like “women,” “proletarians,” or the “masses of the Third World,” they argued, are essentializing distortions that will succeed only in perpetuating oppression.

The key to doing better, she argued, was to embrace identity markers that could prove useful in practice even if they might be suspect in theory. “I think we have to choose again strategically,” she suggested, “not universal discourse but essentialist discourse. . . . I must say I am an essentialist from time to time.” Spivak’s interlocutor seemed surprised and perhaps a little confused by this proposition. How, she asked, is it possible to use essentialist concepts without becoming committed to them? “My search is not a search for coherence,” Spivak replied. In theoretical terms, she admitted, “it’s absolutely on target to take a stand against the discourses of essentialism. . . . But strategically we cannot.” To clear up the confusion, Spivak gave a concrete example. On theoretical grounds, she admitted, it might be wrong to say that women are defined by having a clitoris. But because “the other side [defines] us genitally,” it made sense, for practical purposes, to make the fact of having a clitoris the basis for a common self-definition as women: “You pick up the universal that will give you the power to fight against the other side.” Though doing so involves giving up on one’s “theoretical purity,” it’s a price worth paying to avoid becoming unwittingly complicit in the West’s “narratives of exploitation.”

This attempt to square the circle is still apparent today when activists preface their remarks by acknowledging that race (or gender or ability status) “is a social construct,” before going on to make surprisingly essentializing claims about what “Black and brown people” (or women or the disabled) believe.

Postcolonial scholars like Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak sought to speak to the challenges facing former colonies from Asia to Africa without embracing the long-standing Western traditions they distrusted. Postmodernism, with its attack on supposedly universal truths, provided them with a key tool for doing so.

Edward Said built on the kind of “discourse analysis” pioneered by Michel Foucault to critique Western narratives about the “Orient.” His aim was to uncover the ways in which a set of supposedly objective claims about Asia and Africa served as a justification for colonial domination.

Said and other postcolonial scholars eventually grew dissatisfied with the apolitical nature of postmodernism. They resolved to put discourse analysis to explicitly political use by trying to reshape dominant discourses in ways that would help the oppressed. This soon came to serve as a model ...

Postmodern theorists were also deeply skeptical of the validity of seemingly neutral identity categories, such as “women” or “the oppressed.” In response, Spivak advocated the embrace of “strategic essentialism.” She recommended that activists should, insofar as this might prove politically...

To deny that the United States has made genuine progress toward equality is to insult the memory of the millions who suffered open and explicit restrictions on their freedom to go where they wish or marry whom they love. And yet it is impossible to understand the present intellectual moment without taking seriously the reasons why a cohort of Black scholars and intellectuals came to feel bitterly disappointed. For, measured against the exalted hopes of the civil rights era, America really did—and does—fall painfully short.

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. At times, this even made them oppose efforts at desegregation outright.

Some legal academics started to blame the basic moral framework of the civil rights movement, with its emphasis on universalism, for these disappointments. Derrick Bell, the biggest influence on the new movement of critical race theory, concluded that civil rights lawyers erred in making desegregation the principal aim of school reform. Bell and other theorists within the tradition of critical race theory also denied that universal moral principles could help to bring about genuine political progress. On closer inspection, they argued, the apparent progress of the civil rights era turned out to be a function of the racial self-interest of whites. They saw American racism as a permanent condition that might shift its nature but would never attenuate.

Kimberlé Crenshaw called attention to the way in which different forms of disadvantage can compound. The concept of “intersectionality” captured how existing discrimination law failed to recognize that the challenges faced by Black women cannot be reduced to a sum of the challenges faced by white women and Black men. The concept of intersectionality soon took on a life of its own, becoming a shorthand for two related yet distinct ideas. According to advocates of this broader sense of intersectionality, members of different identity groups can never fully understand each other’s experiences. And because different forms of oppression reinforce each other, any effective form of activism against a particular injustice also needs to fight all other forms of identity-based oppression.

At first gradually and then suddenly, the center of gravity on the left swung from class and economics to culture and identity.

Many Departments of African American Studies, for example, remain split between faculty members who defend a philosophically liberal vision for the United States, like Harvard University’s Henry Louis Gates Jr., and those who prefer a more identitarian vision, like Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi. But despite these important areas of difference, the dominant set of views in these disciplines did come to cohere in key ways. In all of them, the prevalent paradigm was deeply shaped by the triple influence of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory.

Despite the real variation within and between different academic departments, this synthesis is 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.

Building on the skepticism about “grand narratives” and the focus on the dangerous power of “discourses” championed by postmodern theorists like Michel Foucault, they claim that there is no objective truth, just an infinite series of viewpoints. Those who pretend otherwise aren’t struggling, as best they can, to understand the world; they are concealing the way in which they exercise power over the oppressed and marginalized.

This supposedly provides the grounds for a rejection of any set of political institutions, including liberal democracy, that claim to be founded on universal values.

How can they both emphasize that race and gender are social constructs and encourage people to identify as, say, Black or transgender?

When scholars and activists use the term “intersectionality” today, they usually think of it as a kind of logic of political organizing. Drawing on Crenshaw, they emphasize that different forms of oppression reinforce each other. They then draw the inference that effective action against one form of oppression requires effective action against all. As a result, intersectionality is now often taken to imply that activist movements should require their members to sign up to a very broad catalog of causes and positions—with the necessary stance on each being determined by the group that is most directly affected.

For the story of Foucault’s influence on the identity synthesis is about as good an instance of “careful what you wish for” as intellectual history has on offer.

But in other important respects, Foucault would, I believe, have pushed back against the ideology his work inspired. He would have recognized that the attempt to reshape existing discourses for political ends, though conceived as an act of liberation, was likely to create new forms of repression.

Gradually, the triple influence of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory gave rise to an “identity synthesis.” This new ideology was defined by seven major themes: a rejection of the existence of objective truth; the use of a form of discourse analysis for explicitly political ends; an embrace of strategic essentialism; a deep pessimism about the possibility of overcoming racism or other forms of bigotry; a preference for public policies that explicitly distinguish between citizens on the basis of the group to which they belong; an embrace of intersectionality as a strategy for political organizing; and a deep skepticism about the ability of members of different groups to communicate with each other.

The ACLU had abandoned parts of its historical mission, refusing to assist defendants whose speech it deemed too offensive.

In a final step, the rise of a genuine threat in the form of Donald Trump increased the pressure to conform within many left-leaning institutions, making it easier for a minority of ideological hard-liners to impose their views on everybody else.

Given the freedom to communicate with anybody in the world, most people have chosen to talk to those who already belong to the same identity group.

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

As a result, it became very fraught to criticize any position for which a member of a disadvantaged group could claim special authority derived from their “lived experience”—even when there was little evidence that most members of that group agreed with the person making the claim on their behalf.

But as shared and celebrated on Tumblr, intersectionality became an all-purpose operating system for online activism. It allowed each group to define a correct set of views in its area of presumed competence while demanding unquestioning fealty to that new orthodoxy from everyone else.

Tumblr proved to be at the vanguard of the internet: it was one of the first online spaces in which users regularly experienced a sudden and dramatic fall from grace on the basis of some minor violation of ever-shifting community norms.