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

by Yascha Mounk

By the middle of the decade, the identity synthesis had come a long way. Born as a set of sophisticated, if rightly controversial, academic ideas, it had—by the power of memes and viral articles—been transformed into a series of slogans that were capable of appealing to a mass audience.

Objectively speaking, hard-core identity politics and simplistic socialism performed incredibly well on Facebook during this period.” This gave seasoned journalists an incentive to cultivate an interest in these topics and allowed younger writers who were true believers in the identity synthesis to outcompete their colleagues. “So you ended up with this whole cohort of discourse structured around ‘Is Bernie Sanders perfect in every way or is it problematic to vote for a white man’ as the only possible lens for examining American politics.”

The share of New York Times articles using the term “racist,” for example, increased by an astonishing 700 percent in the eight years between 2011 and 2019, according to an analysis by Zach Goldberg, a doctoral student in political science at Georgia State University. Over the same time period, uses of the word “racist” in The Washington Post increased even more quickly, by 1,000 percent.[*]

Both in The Washington Post and in The New York Times, the share of articles invoking “systemic racism,” “structural racism,” or “institutional racism” increased by tenfold between 2013 and 2019.

The rise of social media fundamentally transformed the role that group identity plays in the lives of young people. Making it far easier for them to experiment with new labels with which to describe themselves, it encouraged the emergence of a popularized version of the identity synthesis,

In the past, top managers might have resisted the demands of junior employees if they considered them expensive, ineffectual, or potentially controversial. But in the last decade, a mixture of insider activism, competition with peers, pressure from social media, and legal risk has given them strong reason to override such qualms.

Or, to quote the anthropologist Roy D’Andrade: “Isn’t it odd that the true enemy of society turns out to be that guy in the office down the hall?”

When groups of people who largely agree on an answer to some pressing moral or political question debate the issue together, they don’t tend to moderate or split the difference; on the contrary, they tend to egg each other on. In a surprising number of cases, they come to a conclusion that is more radical than that initially embraced by any individual member of the group. This is what the eminent Harvard behavioral economist Cass Sunstein has termed “the law of group polarization”: after groups of like-minded people have a chance to deliberate about some question of morality or politics, the conclusions they come to are more radical than the beliefs of their individual members.

Two assertions became especially effective enforcers of the new identity orthodoxy, and neither would be surprising to anybody who has read the psychological literature on how groups vilify dissenters under conditions of perceived threat. The first claimed that there are only two sides in the fight between racists and antiracists, making anybody who refuses to join the (supposedly) antiracist side a racist—a very effective way of portraying those who are not in full conformity with the new norms of the community as moral deviants. The second insisted that any form of resistance to this orthodoxy must be motivated by a self-serving refusal to acknowledge one’s own complicity with racism—a very effective way to portray all dissenters as having nefarious intentions.

Every act, person, institution, and public policy, Ibram X. Kendi argued in a bestselling 2019 book, is either racist or antiracist; there is no such thing as a neutral act:

The enforcement of the identity orthodoxy was given an intellectual superstructure by two bestselling authors. According to Ibram X. Kendi, every person is either racist or antiracist; this made it easy to accuse anybody who disagreed with his prescriptions for how to remedy injustice of being a bigot. And according to Robin DiAngelo, anybody who denies that all white people are racist must be motivated by a self-serving refusal to acknowledge the truth. This helped to turn the popularized version of the identity synthesis into a non-falsifiable theory: in many milieus, any public disagreement with it would henceforth be seen as a form of self-incrimination. The mainstreaming of the identity synthesis was complete.

All five applications are inspired by the identity synthesis and are now in the process of transforming mainstream institutions. All five have intuitive appeal because they give voice to real concerns about genuine injustices. But all five would ultimately fail to address the grievances that motivate them, and even undermine the goals they supposedly serve. Like the ideology from which they derive, they are a trap. These claims are: Standpoint theory: Citizens drawn from different groups can never truly come to understand one another. Those who are comparatively privileged should therefore defer to the factual assessments and political demands of those who are comparatively marginalized. Cultural appropriation: Groups do (or should) enjoy a form of collective ownership over their cultural products and artifacts, from distinctive modes of dress to particular culinary dishes. This puts restrictions on how people who do not belong to those groups can legitimately make use of them. Limits on free speech: The state should make laws that rein in misinformation and protect minority groups from being exposed to hurtful or bigoted speech. Even when it comes to forms of expression that remain legally permitted, society should uphold a “consequence culture” that makes people less likely to express views that others will see as offensive. Progressive separatism: Social and educational institutions should encourage people to identify themselves by the ethnic, racial, religious, sexual,...

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, a character in a play by the ancient Roman playwright Terence famously said: “I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.” For centuries, this humanist tradition was especially cherished on the left. But of late, a big part of the left—and, increasingly, much of the mainstream—has turned on universalism. The (admittedly kitsch) insistence in “We Are the World” that we are “all a part of God’s great big family” is gradually being supplanted by an emphasis on the way in which the members of privileged groups, like straight white men, are incapable of understanding the experiences of oppressed groups.

In corporate diversity trainings, the focus has shifted from celebrating cultural differences to recognizing the impossibility of overcoming ingrained racism and implicit bias.

There is a kernel of truth to the emphasis on “lived experience.” How we experience the world is mediated by our identity. This gives all of us a moral obligation to listen carefully when members of different groups call our attention to injustices they encounter.

Empathy with the plight of others may take hard work, but it remains both possible and politically indispensable.

Today, philosophers debate such questions as the difference between “true belief” (when our beliefs happen to be true because we get lucky) and genuine “knowledge” (when our beliefs are both true and justified in the right ways).

But four interlocking claims are particularly central to the forms of standpoint theory[*] that now routinely influence public debate: There is a set of significant experiences that (virtually) all members of (particular) oppressed groups share. These experiences give members of the group special insight into the nature of their oppression and other socially relevant facts. Members of the group cannot fully or satisfactorily communicate these experiences to outsiders, even insofar as they have important political implications. When an oppressed group makes political demands based on the identity its members share, outsiders should defer to them.

The first core claim of standpoint theory runs into trouble because it is extremely hard to identify meaningful experiences that all members of a socially relevant group share.

Even insofar as many members of a relevant group do have common experiences, it is not clear that these bestow an overall advantage in understanding the world.

People, she points out, “often want to say that the fruits of oppression are a kind of virtue, a kind of admirable illness. I think that’s just not there in the intellectual tradition. There’s a kind of naïveté to that perspective that is very difficult to actually find in the academic work.”

put simply, standpoint theory just isn’t a realistic guide for how members of different identity groups can make common cause with each other.

The key problem with Pressley’s position consists of the difficulty in determining who can call themselves a legitimate spokesperson for a particular group.

But in practice, the determination of who is a legitimate representative and what policies or norms a group favors is almost always made by people who are comparatively privileged.

As the legendary civil rights activist Bayard Rustin wrote, “The notion of the undifferentiated black community is the intellectual creation of both whites . . . and of certain small groups of blacks who illegitimately claim to speak for the majority.”

And yet the version of standpoint theory that is so often voiced in popular discourse today is likely to prove counterproductive. It wrongly claims that people from different groups are incapable of empathizing with each other’s experiences of injustice—and that it would be better for them to stop trying. Embracing a vision of political solidarity based on thoughtless deference rather than hard-won empathy makes it harder to bring about real political progress.

As long as we put in the work, we can come to understand each other’s experiences, especially insofar as they are politically relevant.

Standpoint theory consists of three key philosophical claims: First, there are significant experiences that members of oppressed groups share. Second, these experiences give members of the group special insight into the nature of their oppression as well as other politically relevant facts. And third, members of the group cannot fully or satisfactorily communicate these experiences to outsiders.

Even most feminist philosophers who advocate some forms of standpoint epistemology reject the core claims of its popularized version. There are, they argue, no meaningful experiences that all members of particular identity groups, like women, share. Members of marginalized groups need not have superior insight into the true structure of society, in part because they might be excluded from spaces where important decisions are made. And though there are limits to the extent to which they can share “experiential” knowledge (for example, what it feels like to be discriminated against), they can communicate the “propositional” knowledge they derive from such experiences (for example, the fact that such forms of discrimination are unjust).

Standpoint theory also entails a fourth claim, which is more political in nature: that members of dominant groups should defer to members of marginalized groups in the name of political progress. But in a pluralistic society, it is unclear who can legitimately speak on behalf of relevant identity groups. In practice, most members of dominant groups are going to either ignore demands to defer to members of marginalized groups or anoint people with whom they already agree as the “true” spokespeople of those groups.

We should therefore insist on a more ambitious account of political solidarity and the role of empathy. True solidarity would have two elements: First, each of us would listen to members of other identity groups with an open mind, empathizing with the forms of oppression to which they may be subject. And second, each of us would strive to remedy genuine injustices, not out of a misguided sense of deference, but because they violate our own aspirations for the kind of society in which we want to live.

In the face of varied anxieties about the way in which cultures influence each other, it is high time for a full-throated defense of cultural hybridity. For far from explaining the nature of genuine injustices, the concept of cultural appropriation actually muddles our thinking, making it much harder to understand what renders those cases unjust. And rather than being something we should guard against, the ever-present reality of mutual inspiration is one of the most attractive features of diverse societies.

This raises a host of difficult questions that have not been satisfactorily answered—and, I believe, never will. These include the following: How does a group come to enjoy ownership over a set of cultural products? Who counts as a member of that group? What is the decision-making mechanism for determining who can legitimately partake in its cultural products? And how will those who violate these rules be punished?

Since its dawn, human culture has evolved by remixing and reappropriating a rich array of cultural influences. So if we were to apply the same rules to the groups that first produced cultural artifacts whose use the critics of cultural appropriation now seek to limit, we would quickly find that the supposed victims of cultural appropriation have themselves perpetrated the very same sin.

In philosophy, one powerful way to notice that you have gone astray is when the moral principle you defend pushes you to evaluate the world by means of increasingly absurd criteria.

The left has traditionally celebrated art’s ability to speak to people beyond the boundaries of race and religion. But of late, many left-leaning milieus, especially in the arts, have endorsed the idea that any instance in which a member of a dominant group uses, co-opts, or partakes in the culture of a marginalized group constitutes a dangerous form of “cultural appropriation.”

The concept of cultural appropriation is based on an implicit notion of collective ownership over particular products and ideas. But it is unclear how the inventions of particular individuals who lived at a different time and place (like indigenous craftswomen in Central America) should convey ownership over such products to the kinds of broad identity categories (like Latinos) that are most salient today. Because virtually all cultural artifacts and ideas are themselves inspired by a broad range of preexisting cultures, it is also unclear why a particular innovation should give rise to such a form of collective ownership.

In philosophical terms, cultural appropriation misidentifies the “wrong-making feature” of unjust situations. When supposed instances of cultural appropriation really are bad, the injustices at stake can be explained in simpler terms, such as discrimination against Black artists or an intent to mock Latinos. When it is impossible to express the supposed wrong involved in cultural appropriation in such simple terms, it is a mistake to pathologize otherwise healthy forms of cultural exchange.

The ability of people from different cultural backgrounds to inspire each other is one of the most attractive features of diverse societies. While genuine injustices motivate the opponents of cultural appropriation, we s...

But as a longtime member of the left who is deeply committed to the value of free speech, I find one reason for this transformation especially remarkable: large parts of the American left have openly turned against the ideal of free speech.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps the most prominent young progressive in the United States, has repeatedly put free speech in scare quotes and insinuated that the First Amendment is “merely a service for the powerful.”

As philosophers have long recognized, a true culture of free speech has important benefits, allowing us to recognize our errors and develop a deeper understanding of our own beliefs. Even more important are the bad things that would happen if we gave up on free speech. When censors rule the day, the powerful decide who gets to speak, the stakes of elections grow existential, and social progress moves out of reach.

Marcuse’s idea that “true” tolerance requires intolerance toward offensive views, for example, now holds tremendous cultural sway.

Similarly, Fish’s idea that those who favor free speech merely have different preferences about where to draw the line between permissible and impermissible speech—and that this indeterminacy serves the interests of the powerful—has quickly gone mainstream.

But as it happens, 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.

Three negative consequences of abandoning free speech are particularly important at a moment when levels of political polarization are at record highs. All three are intimately connected to the way in which restrictions on free speech entrench the dominance of those who are already powerful. For if those who hold power are able to censor what they consider noxious views, then the ideas of the powerful are going to be systematically favored over those of the powerless, perpetuating the kind of injustice that progressive opponents of free speech rightly abhor; the stakes of who gets to hold power vastly increase, incentivizing political partisans to refuse to accept the outcome of elections or even engage in violence; and society will lose a crucial safety valve that allows the victims of bad public policies to protest the status quo, making it harder to achieve much-needed social change.

If universities are to serve their core mission, 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.

The culture of free speech is under serious threat around the world. In Western democracies, part of this threat comes from a surprising source: while the left has long championed the importance of free speech, recognizing its centrality in historical struggles against oppression, many progressives have of late derided its defenders as “free speechers” and advocated for a “consequence culture” that holds people to account for unpopular statements.

Traditional arguments about free speech are mostly about the benefits of this social practice, such as the ability to make scientific progress. While these arguments remain relevant, the strongest reasons to hold on to free speech, especially at a time of deep polarization, have to do with the bad things that would happen in its absence.

Because the people making decisions about what speech to allow or to ban are by definition powerful, limits on free speech usually serve to entrench their hold over society; it is naive to think that a pervasive social practice of censorship would systematically serve the “right” causes. Limits on free speech also increase the stakes of elections. If members of a political movement believe that losing the next election will ham...