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

by Yascha Mounk

Finally, free speech functions as a crucial safety valve that allows people to organize against all kinds of injustices; limiting free speech therefore m...

It is possible to take proactive steps to uphold a genuine culture of free speech. States should not be able to punish their citizens for what they say, however heinous. The power of private actors like big corporations to undermine the culture of free speech must be limited, for example by rules that make it illegal for companies to fire employees for their political views or for providers of basic financial services to refuse service to customers on ideological grounds; similarly, social networks should voluntarily limit their ability to favor some political causes over others. Finally, all of us can help to stand up for a culture of free speech by being on guard against the key tactics that make the difference between a healthy critical culture and an unhealthy cancel culture.

Progressive educators have traditionally conceived of their mission as emphasizing what all people have in common.

Over the course of the past few years, this universalism has fallen out of favor. Many progressives have come to believe that the traditional emphasis on our common humanity amounts to an erasure of the injustices facing oppressed groups.

In the place of liberal universalism, parts of the American mainstream are quickly embracing what we might call “progressive separatism.”

As Ta-Nehisi Coates succinctly put the point in Between the World and Me, “Race is the child of racism, not the father.”

But as the twin influence of strategic essentialism and safetyism grew, many of them changed course. They now opted to create more spaces in which members of such groups could engage in consciousness building (as demanded by the advocates of strategic essentialism) and would be protected from the threat posed by members of dominant groups (as inspired by safetyism).

One way of understanding the rise of progressive separatism, in other words, is to see it as the love child of strategic essentialism and safetyism.

Building on Allport’s initial intuitions, and analyzing hundreds of studies, psychologists gradually confirmed that four key conditions help to ensure that intergroup contact has positive effects. Each of these needs to apply to the particular situation in which they encounter each other, even if it is not (yet) true in the relations between these two groups more broadly: Equal status: Members of different groups need to enjoy equal status, for example because they are teammates or colleagues working in a similar capacity. Common goals: Members of different groups need to have common goals, such as winning a match or completing a group project. Intergroup cooperation: Members of different groups need to actively cooperate to accomplish their common goals, for example by teammates passing a ball to each other or colleagues collaborating on a presentation. Support from authorities and customs: Members of different groups need to be encouraged to get along by the relevant authorities, such as a team’s coach or a workplace’s boss.

But sadly, the practices encouraged by the advocates of progressive separatism fly in the face of these insights. Instead of encouraging citizens of diverse democracies to reconceptualize themselves as part of a broader whole, progressive separatism encourages them to see each other as members of mutually irreconcilable groups. And instead of creating more situations in which they can cooperate as equals, it encourages them to self-segregate and primes them to focus on the status inequality between them. The key precepts of progressive separatism fly in the face of fifty years of research about how to build cross-ethnic and cross-cultural solidarity.

He therefore championed a form of “jigsaw pedagogy” in which students would try to solve puzzles that require every student to contribute a part of the answer based on information to which only he or she has access; if any student wants to gain points, they have to ensure that all of them are included.

Why do people at ethnically diverse campuses like Yale and Oxford struggle to get along while ethnically diverse employees at McDonald’s or Burger King tend to do just fine? Allport’s intergroup contact theory helps to provide part of the answer: it is because many ordinary businesses and institutions still try to facilitate the conditions for greater mutual understanding, while some of the most elite ones are systematically undermining them.

Many important institutions have recently embraced practices, from affinity groups to Black-only dorms, that separate people on the basis of their skin color or sexual identity. They believe that it is their duty to encourage people to define themselves in terms of the identity groups into which they are born and to protect them from the ever-present danger of harm posed by members of dominant groups. Historically, this new form of “progressive separatism” can be understood as the love child of two major intellectual influences: strategic essentialism and safetyism.

In particular, contact between different groups can reduce long-standing prejudices when four conditions are met: they enjoy equal status within the situation; they have common goals; they have to work together to achieve them; and they are expected to get along. The norms and customs encouraged by progressive separatists systematically violate the four conditions that allow members of different groups to forge a bond. They encourage members of different identity groups to see each other as always having a big difference in status; they discourage an emphasis on shared forms of identity that make common goals more salient; they reduce opportunities to work together; and they create incentives for conflict.

A better solution to the persistent problem of segregation is a redoubled commitment to integration. The goal must be to create more contexts and opportunities in which people from different groups can interact and cooperate.

But both liberals and conservatives have historically expressed the hope that such policies would be temporary. A 2003 Supreme Court decision upholding race-sensitive admissions policies at the University of Michigan Law School, which was written by Sandra Day O’Connor and joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explained that “racial classifications, however compelling their goals, are potentially so dangerous that they may be employed no more broadly than the interest demands. . . . All governmental use of race must have a logical end point.” At the time, O’Connor and Ginsburg expected that “25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

Ever since the French Revolution, the left has touted “equality” as one of its core values. But over the past decade, many politicians, activists, and writers have instead begun to emphasize what they call “equity.” Though both of these terms admit of many different definitions, making their meaning somewhat dependent on context, the most common interpretation of equity entails a commitment to eliminating group-level disparities, especially between different races and ethnicities. As Adolph Reed Jr., a Black Marxist who has long taught at the University of Pennsylvania, has pointed out, it should be thought of as a form of “disparitarianism.”

If race-neutral policies really made us incapable of perceiving racism or of boosting the opportunities of historically disadvantaged groups, it would be hard to justify them. But that is not the case. It is possible for a state to recognize and combat the racism that continues to characterize most societies without making how it treats people turn on the identity group to which they belong. 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. Conversely, a society that aims for equity instead of equality is unlikely to reduce the vast socioeconomic disparities between the rich and the poor. It could even make citizens from all groups worse off. And far from being merely theoretical, these problems are already showing up in real-world applications of race-sensitive public policies.

The discussion of race blindness usually lumps two very different questions together. The first is about how we should understand the world. The second is about how we should act in it.

When public policy is formulated in race-neutral terms, members of all demographic groups have a stake in its success.

As the Supreme Court held in Adarand Constructors Inc. v. Peña, the Fourteenth Amendment “protects persons, not groups.” This creates a strong presumption against any attempt by public authorities to treat members of different groups differently from each other: “Government may treat people differently because of their race only for the most compelling reasons.”

Any government program that distinguishes between different people on the basis of their race must therefore meet three stringent criteria. First, it must serve a “compelling interest.” This means that distinguishing between different citizens on the basis of their race must serve an essential or necessary purpose of public policy, not merely be motivated by considerations that are reasonable or rational. Second, these programs need to be “narrowly tailored” to accomplish that compelling state interest. This means that the relevant government entity needs to have made a serious effort to serve the compelling interest that is at stake in a way that does not require an explicit distinction between different people on the basis of their race. And third, the courts need to apply “strict scrutiny” to any such governmental programs. As the Supreme Court wrote in 1989, “We apply strict scrutiny to all racial classifications to ‘smoke out illegitimate uses of race by assuring that [government] is pursuing a goal important enough to warrant use of a highly suspect tool.’ ”

Advocates of equity make two claims that are meant to show why universal policies are morally unacceptable. First, more universal policies supposedly force us to ignore the role that racism continues to play in reality. And second, they are supposedly incapable of attenuating disparities between different identity groups or dealing with the long-run repercussions of past injustices, like slavery. But on closer inspection, universal policies turn out to be more attractive than they first appear. They do not make us incapable of recognizing or remedying the existence of racial discrimination. They can help to attenuate racial disparities because a universal welfare state will in any case channel more resources to groups whose members are disproportionately in need. And finally, they are even conformable with reparations for past injustices, which should be based on individual descent rather than broad identity categories.

At the same time, the ideal of equity turns out to be far less attractive than it seems at first sight. Philosophically, it suffers from two major drawbacks: First, because equity merely focuses on the disparities between different ethnic groups, it is possible to achieve equity by making a few members of a historically marginalized groups very rich; an equitable society could therefore be a highly unequal one. Second, it is possible to achieve equity by making members of all groups worse off; an equitable society could therefore be a very poor one.

The legal framework embraced by both progressive judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and conservative judges like Antonin Scalia can set better guidelines for when to adopt race-sensitive public policies. There should always be a strong presumption against the state making how it treats people depend on identity markers like the color of their skin. This presumption can be superseded only when three strict conditions are met: There must be a compelling state interest in pursuing the policy. The policy must be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. And race-neutral alternatives to the policy must be unavailable. For all these reasons, it is both a moral and a practical mistake to turn identity-sensitive public policies into standard operating procedure.

In each case, I have instead advocated for a solution that takes concerns about persistent injustices seriously without giving up on long-standing universal norms. It is possible for citizens to develop genuine empathy for each other if they make the time and effort to listen to the experiences of their compatriots. We can address genuine exploitation or ridicule without stigmatizing healthy cultural exchange as a dangerous form of “cultural appropriation.” Politicians and leaders of key social institutions can express their passionate disagreement with racism or other forms of bigotry without giving up on the First Amendment or undermining a culture of free speech. Society can respect the freedom of association and encourage members of minority cultures to take pride in their heritage without succumbing to pernicious forms of progressive separatism. Finally, public policies can protect citizens against discrimination, and address persistent inequalities, without routinely making the way the state treats people depend on markers of their identity such as the color of their skin.

Many advocates of the identity synthesis rightly point out that an account of racism that focuses purely on individual beliefs or motivations runs the danger of concealing important forms of injustice. Even if everyone has the best of intentions, the aftereffects of historical injustices can ensure that many immigrant students attend underfunded public schools or that many members of ethnic minorities suffer disadvantages in the housing market. It therefore makes sense, they argue, to add a new concept to our vocabulary: structural racism.

In its most radical form, this claim explicitly entails the implication that it is impossible for a member of a historically marginalized group to be racist toward a member of a historically dominant group. 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.”

Sometimes, activists even claim that anybody who thinks that a person’s biological sex can retain relevance in certain contexts is denying the right of trans people to exist; this accusation, which is especially popular on social media, uses the different meanings of the word “exist” to insinuate that those who take a different view on the role of biological sex want particular individuals who identify as trans to die.

But even if we succeed in transforming the economy in this radical way, there will still be some positions in society that carry much greater reward and prestige than others. On what basis should these be allocated? Meritocracy, it seems to me, is the worst system for distributing these kinds of positions except for all the alternatives.

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.

But it is a mistake to think that the importance of the concept of gender makes the concept of biological sex incoherent or unimportant. In some contexts, including medicine, institutions need to take an individual’s biological sex into account. A recognition of the enduring relevance of both sex and gender can help us to find humane compromises in situations that feature genuine trade-offs between the legitimate interests of different groups, such as prisons or sports competitions.

A world in which top positions are not even supposed to go to the most deserving would be less affluent because unqualified people would ascend to important positions of leadership and everyone would have fewer incentives to develop their talents. A 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.

My own politics are based on the conviction that principles such as the political equality of all citizens, the ability to rule ourselves through democratic institutions, and the central role individual freedom should play in the world remain the best guide to building a better future—especially if we recognize that these ideals are yet to be fully realized.

When one friend interrupts another to finish their sentence, some might interpret this as a way to affirm their mutual understanding; linguists call this a “rapport interruption.”

Now big parts of the left have, under the influence of the identity synthesis, come to believe that norms like free speech are actively harmful. They don’t just emphasize the obvious point that the universal aspirations of free speech are often violated in practice, for example because the powerful may at times flout the stated norms of their society by punishing the marginalized for criticizing them. Rather, they argue that the norms of free speech must be jettisoned altogether because they merely cloak what is really going on, actively helping to entrench the power of the privileged.

In diversity trainings, for example, the focus has increasingly shifted from encouraging a form of mutual respect that aims for equal treatment to an awareness of the ever-present potential for implicit bias and microaggressions that encourages people to be highly aware of the specific identity markers of their interlocutor.

But liberalism has coherent responses to these ideas. Building on the criticisms I have made of particular applications of the identity synthesis in part III, these responses take well-founded criticisms of past and persistent injustices seriously while offering a more constructive way forward; recognize the great importance that markers of group identity play in the real world without taking them to be the key to all of cultural and political life; beware the tendency of all institutions to favor the powerful while recognizing the ability of universal values and neutral rules to push societies closer toward treating all people as genuine equals; and encourage us to live up to the ideals on which liberal democracy is based rather than to abandon them because we will inevitably fail to do so perfectly.

1. To understand the world, we must pay attention to a broad set of categories, including—but not limited to—forms of group identity like race, gender, and sexual orientation.

All of this makes philosophical liberals, like me, skeptical of any conception of what truly matters in human affairs that focuses on a single dimension.

2. In practice, universal values and neutral rules do often exclude people in unjust ways. But an aspiration for societies to live up to the standards they profess can allow them to make genuine progress in treating their members fairly.

3. To build a more just world, societies should strive to live up to their universalist aspirations instead of abandoning them.

But there are many important reasons to gain an accurate view of reality, one that is neither blithely optimistic nor cynically pessimistic. Perhaps the most important is that we need an accurate assessment of recent changes to know whether the tools we have deployed to make progress are working. And as it happens, an accurate assessment of the past fifty years suggests that the push to live up to universal values and neutral rules is capable of bringing about enormous improvements.

Advocates of the identity synthesis have long thought of philosophical liberals as their main adversaries. To evaluate the identity synthesis and its attack on liberalism, it makes sense to boil this tradition down to its main claims. Such a “rational reconstruction” would focus on three propositions. First, the key to understanding the world is to examine it through the prism of group identities like race, gender, and sexual orientation. Second, supposedly universal values and neutral rules merely serve to obscure the ways in which privileged groups dominate those that are marginalized. And third, to build a just world, we must adopt norms and laws that explicitly make the way the state treats each citizen—and how citizens treat each other—depend on the identity group to which they belong.

Liberals can give a convincing response to this attack while taking the most valuable insights from the identity synthesis on board. To understand the world, they point out, we must pay attention to a broad set of categories, including—but not limited to—forms of group identity like race, gender, and sexual orientation. In practice, universal values and neutral rules do often exclude people in unjust ways, but an aspiration for societies to live up to the standards they profess can allow them to make genuine progress in treating their members fairly. And to build a more just world, societies should strive to live up to their universalist aspirations instead of abandoning them.

The identity synthesis portrays itself as an ambitious ideology that seeks to make the world a better place. But its vision is ultimately neither realistic nor desirable. One of the ...

Of all these dreamers and idealists, it was communists like my own grandparents who proved to have the biggest influence on the events of the last century. In every single country in which their ideas were tried, they failed to deliver on their enticing promises. North Korea and the Soviet Union, Maoist China and the East Germany of Erich Honecker delivered despotism in lieu of emancipation, and deprivation in the place of affluence.

What does this foundational commitment to political equality mean, in concrete terms, for the kinds of institutions that we should embrace? 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. Instead, they think of power as emanating from the people and insist on the egalitarian principle of “one person, one vote.” Some citizens may be richer, smarter, or taller than others. Elections may even confer some special privileges and responsibilities to those who hold high office. But in a well-functioning democracy, officeholders are elevated to their status on the basis of a free vote of their peers and can, if they fall out of favor, just as quickly be removed from power by the same mechanism. Rather than being governed by kings, aristocrats, or priests, humans should collectively be able to decide what kinds of rules they should obey; this helps to settle the vexed question of how to maintain an effective government without coming to blows over who gets to rule.

The one price we all have to pay for this freedom and tranquility is to abstain from using force to deprive others of their enjoyment of the same—a

All twenty of the countries in which people report being the happiest are democracies. Out of the thirty countries with the highest human development index, twenty-seven are liberal democracies. Out of the thirty countries with the longest life expectancy, twenty-nine are liberal democracies.