[Oe List ...] The End of Identity Liberalism - NYTimes.com

[RICHARD HOWIE via OE]

Thanks Randy,  Who wrote this?  It is very helpful as I muse of 'what  
now?'.
Ellen
On Nov 20, 2016, at 6:38 AM, Randy Williams via OE wrote:

> Colleagues,
> Another thoughtful theory about the plight of liberalism, prompted  
> by the recent U.S. election.
> Randy
>
> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of- 
> identity-liberalism.html
>
> The End of Identity Liberalism
> November 18, 2016
> Opinion
>
> It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It  
> is also a beautiful thing to watch. Visitors from other countries,  
> particularly those having trouble incorporating different ethnic  
> groups and faiths, are amazed that we manage to pull it off. Not  
> perfectly, of course, but certainly better than any European or  
> Asian nation today. It’s an extraordinary success story.
>
> But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard  
> liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should  
> become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a  
> splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a  
> foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In  
> recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral  
> panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted  
> liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying  
> force capable of governing.
>
> One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election  
> campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity  
> liberalism must be brought to an end. Hillary Clinton was at her  
> best and most uplifting when she spoke about American interests in  
> world affairs and how they relate to our understanding of  
> democracy. But when it came to life at home, she tended on the  
> campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric  
> of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino,  
> L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic  
> mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had  
> better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will  
> notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what  
> happened with the white working class and those with strong  
> religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without  
> college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of  
> white evangelicals.
>
> The moral energy surrounding identity has, of course, had many good  
> effects. Affirmative action has reshaped and improved corporate  
> life. Black Lives Matter has delivered a wake-up call to every  
> American with a conscience. Hollywood’s efforts to normalize  
> homosexuality in our popular culture helped to normalize it in  
> American families and public life.
>
> But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has  
> produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically  
> unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and  
> indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk  
> of life. At a very young age our children are being encouraged to  
> talk about their individual identities, even before they have them.  
> By the time they reach college many assume that diversity discourse  
> exhausts political discourse, and have shockingly little to say  
> about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the  
> common good. In large part this is because of high school history  
> curriculums, which anachronistically project the identity politics  
> of today back onto the past, creating a distorted picture of the  
> major forces and individuals that shaped our country. (The  
> achievements of women’s rights movements, for instance, were real  
> and important, but you cannot understand them if you do not first  
> understand the founding fathers’ achievement in establishing a  
> system of government based on the guarantee of rights.)
>
> When young people arrive at college they are encouraged to keep  
> this focus on themselves by student groups, faculty members and  
> also administrators whose full-time job is to deal with — and  
> heighten the significance of — “diversity issues.” Fox News and  
> other conservative media outlets make great sport of mocking the  
> “campus craziness” that surrounds such issues, and more often than  
> not they are right to. Which only plays into the hands of populist  
> demagogues who want to delegitimize learning in the eyes of those  
> who have never set foot on a campus. How to explain to the average  
> voter the supposed moral urgency of giving college students the  
> right to choose the designated gender pronouns to be used when  
> addressing them? How not to laugh along with those voters at the  
> story of a University of Michigan prankster who wrote in “His  
> Majesty”?
>
> This campus-diversity consciousness has over the years filtered  
> into the liberal media, and not subtly. Affirmative action for  
> women and minorities at America’s newspapers and broadcasters has  
> been an extraordinary social achievement — and has even changed,  
> quite literally, the face of right-wing media, as journalists like  
> Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham have gained prominence. But it also  
> appears to have encouraged the assumption, especially among younger  
> journalists and editors, that simply by focusing on identity they  
> have done their jobs.
>
> Recently I performed a little experiment during a sabbatical in  
> France: For a full year I read only European publications, not  
> American ones. My thought was to try seeing the world as European  
> readers did. But it was far more instructive to return home and  
> realize how the lens of identity has transformed American reporting  
> in recent years. How often, for example, the laziest story in  
> American journalism — about the “first X to do Y” — is told and  
> retold. Fascination with the identity drama has even affected  
> foreign reporting, which is in distressingly short supply. However  
> interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender  
> people in Egypt, it contributes nothing to educating Americans  
> about the powerful political and religious currents that will  
> determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own. No major news  
> outlet in Europe would think of adopting such a focus.
>
> But it is at the level of electoral politics that identity  
> liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen.  
> National politics in healthy periods is not about “difference,” it  
> is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best  
> captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny. Ronald  
> Reagan did that very skillfully, whatever one may think of his  
> vision. So did Bill Clinton, who took a page from Reagan’s  
> playbook. He seized the Democratic Party away from its identity- 
> conscious wing, concentrated his energies on domestic programs that  
> would benefit everyone (like national health insurance) and defined  
> America’s role in the post-1989 world. By remaining in office for  
> two terms, he was then able to accomplish much for different groups  
> in the Democratic coalition. Identity politics, by contrast, is  
> largely expressive, not persuasive. Which is why it never wins  
> elections — but can lose them.
>
>
> The media’s newfound, almost anthropological, interest in the angry  
> white male reveals as much about the state of our liberalism as it  
> does about this much maligned, and previously ignored, figure. A  
> convenient liberal interpretation of the recent presidential  
> election would have it that Mr. Trump won in large part because he  
> managed to transform economic disadvantage into racial rage — the  
> “whitelash” thesis. This is convenient because it sanctions a  
> conviction of moral superiority and allows liberals to ignore what  
> those voters said were their overriding concerns. It also  
> encourages the fantasy that the Republican right is doomed to  
> demographic extinction in the long run — which means liberals have  
> only to wait for the country to fall into their laps. The  
> surprisingly high percentage of the Latino vote that went to Mr.  
> Trump should remind us that the longer ethnic groups are here in  
> this country, the more politically diverse they become.
>
> Finally, the whitelash thesis is convenient because it absolves  
> liberals of not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity  
> has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of  
> themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being  
> threatened or ignored. Such people are not actually reacting  
> against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all,  
> to live in homogeneous areas of the country). But they are reacting  
> against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they  
> mean by “political correctness.” Liberals should bear in mind that  
> the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux  
> Klan, which still exists. Those who play the identity game should  
> be prepared to lose it.
>
> We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the  
> past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would  
> concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as  
> Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of  
> them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are  
> in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues  
> that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies  
> away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a  
> liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense  
> of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired  
> of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.)
>
> Teachers committed to such a liberalism would refocus attention on  
> their main political responsibility in a democracy: to form  
> committed citizens aware of their system of government and the  
> major forces and events in our history. A post-identity liberalism  
> would also emphasize that democracy is not only about rights; it  
> also confers duties on its citizens, such as the duties to keep  
> informed and vote. A post-identity liberal press would begin  
> educating itself about parts of the country that have been ignored,  
> and about what matters there, especially religion. And it would  
> take seriously its responsibility to educate Americans about the  
> major forces shaping world politics, especially their historical  
> dimension.
>
> Some years ago I was invited to a union convention in Florida to  
> speak on a panel about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms  
> speech of 1941. The hall was full of representatives from local  
> chapters — men, women, blacks, whites, Latinos. We began by singing  
> the national anthem, and then sat down to listen to a recording of  
> Roosevelt’s speech. As I looked out into the crowd, and saw the  
> array of different faces, I was struck by how focused they were on  
> what they shared. And listening to Roosevelt’s stirring voice as he  
> invoked the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom  
> from want and the freedom from fear — freedoms that Roosevelt  
> demanded for “everyone in the world” — I was reminded of what the  
> real foundations of modern American liberalism are.
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
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