Political Tribes

by Amy Chua

  Not everyone on the Left is happy with the direction that identity politics has taken. Many are dismayed by the focus on cultural appropriation. As a progressive Mexican American law student put it, “If we allowed ourselves to be hurt by a costume, how could we manage the trauma of an eviction notice?” He added: “Liberals have cried wolf too many times. If everything is racist and sexist, nothing is. When Trump, the real wolf, came along, no one listened.”

  THE NEW TRIBAL RIGHT

  Meanwhile, identity politics has seized the Right, too, in an about-face from its longtime rhetoric of color blindness. Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington was a pivotal figure in this shift. His controversial 1996 bestseller The Clash of Civilizations framed Islamic culture as inimical to Western values; his even more controversial 2004 bestseller Who Are We? warned of the threat to “Anglo-Protestant culture” posed by large-scale Hispanic immigration. Viewed by many as shocking at the time, the us-versus-them, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant sentiments that Huntington expressed were bread and butter for conservatives on the 2016 campaign trail.

  Candidate Trump famously called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” described illegal Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” and referred disparagingly to an Indiana-born federal judge as “Mexican,” accusing the judge of having “an inherent conflict of interest” rendering him unfit to preside over a suit against Trump. (Making the argument that Trump used identity politics to win the White House is like shooting fish in a barrel.) Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, asserted in August 2016 that Islamism “is a vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people on this planet and it has to be excised.” Senator Marco Rubio compared the war with Islam to America’s “war with Nazis.” Even moderate Republicans like Jeb Bush advocated for a religious test to allow Christian refugees to enter the country preferentially.

  At the same time, we are also seeing on the right—particularly the alt-right—political tribalism directed against minorities perceived as “too successful.” At the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, David Duke warned a raucous crowd that “the American media and the American political system” are “dominated” by “a tiny minority—the Jewish Zionist minority.” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, has complained that America’s “[e]ngineering schools are all full of people from South Asia, and East Asia. . . . They’ve come in here to take these jobs” while Americans “can’t get engineering degrees . . . [and] can’t get a job.” Bannon has also warned: “Two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia . . . A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.” The “two-thirds or three-quarters” figure asserted by Bannon is a wild exaggeration—and reminiscent of the kind of targeting of market-dominant minorities common in the developing world.

  This brings us to the most striking feature of today’s right-wing political tribalism: the white identity politics that has mobilized around the idea of whites as an endangered, discriminated-against group. In part this development carries forward a long tradition of white tribalism in America. But white identity politics has also gotten a tremendous recent boost from the Left, whose relentless berating, shaming, and bullying might have done more damage than good. One Trump voter claimed that “maybe I’m just so sick of being called a bigot that my anger at the authoritarian left has pushed me to support this seriously flawed man.” “The Democratic party,” said Bill Maher, “made the white working man feel like your problems aren’t real because you’re ‘mansplaining’ and check your privilege. You know, if your life sucks, your problems are real.” When blacks blame today’s whites for slavery or ask for reparations, many white Americans feel as though they are being attacked for the sins of other generations.

  Or consider this blog post in the American Conservative, worth quoting at length because of the light it sheds:

  I’m a white guy. I’m a well-educated intellectual who enjoys small arthouse movies, coffeehouses and classic blues. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably mistake me for a lefty urban hipster.

  And yet. I find some of the alt-right stuff exerts a pull even on me. Even though I’m smart and informed enough to see through it. It’s seductive because I am not a person with any power or privilege, and yet I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me that I’m a cancer, I’m a problem, everything is my fault.

  I am very lower middle class. I’ve never owned a new car, and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money. I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege, and America will be a much brighter, more loving, more peaceful nation when I finally just keel over and die.

  Trust me: After all that, some of the alt-right stuff feels like a warm, soothing bath. A “safe space,” if you will. I recoil from the uglier stuff, but some of it—the “hey, white guys are actually okay, you know! Be proud of yourself, white man!” stuff is really VERY seductive, and it is only with some intellectual effort that I can resist the pull. . . . If it’s a struggle for someone like me to resist the pull, I imagine it’s probably impossible for someone with less education or cultural exposure.

  If the Left’s exclusionary identity politics is ironic in light of the Left’s ostensible demands for inclusivity, equally ironic is the emergence of a “white” identity politics on the right. For decades, the Right has claimed to be a bastion of individualism, a place where those who rejected the divisive identity politics of the Left found a home. For this reason, conservatives typically paint the emergence of white identity as having been forced on them by the tactics of the Left. As one political commentator puts it:

  Most on the right still perceive racial groupings of any kind as anathema. They still view individualism as one of America’s greatest strengths and still view as disreputable political movements that organize around racial identities. . . . At the same time, many feel that society has come to glorify all things non-white, demonize all things white, and that if they do not fight back no one will. In short, feeling as though they are under perpetual attack for the color of their skin, many on the right have become defiant of their whiteness, allowing it into their individual politics in ways they have not for generations.

  At its core, the problem is simple but fundamental. While black Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, and many others are allowed—indeed, encouraged—to feel solidarity and take pride in their racial or ethnic identity, white Americans have for the last several decades been told they must never, ever do so. People want to see their own tribe as exceptional, as something to be deeply proud of; that’s what the tribal instinct is all about. For decades now, nonwhites in the United States have been encouraged to indulge their tribal instincts in just this way, but, at least publicly, American whites have not. On the contrary, if anything, they have been told that their white identity is something no one should take pride in. “I get it,” says Christian Lander, creator of the popular satirical blog Stuff White People Like, “as a straight white male, I’m the worst thing on Earth.”

  But the tribal instinct is not so easy to suppress. As Vassar professor Hua Hsu put it in an Atlantic essay called “The End of White America?,” the “result is a racial pride that dares not speak its name, and that defines itself through cultural cues instead.” In combination with the profound demographic transformation now taking place in America, this suppressed urge on the part of many white Americans—to feel solidarity and pride in their group identity, as others are allowed to do—has created an especially fraught set of tribal dynamics in the United States today.

  ETHNONATIONALISM LITE

  In early 2017, a Foreign Policy headline proclaimed, “The GOP Is America’s Party of White Nationalism.” Trump
is an “ethno-nationalist president,” declared a columnist in Vice, with Muslims, “migrants from Latin America,” and “all non-whites” now “subordinate and unwelcome.” “White Nationalism is upon us,” wrote Jamelle Bouie in Slate.

  It is a stunning and frightening fact that an openly white nationalist movement exists in America today with a prominence, or at least a brazenness, hard to imagine only a few years ago. The leader of this movement, the well-educated and articulate Richard Spencer, has gone out of his way to be incendiary, invoking Nazi symbolism, opposing interracial marriage, donning a “fashy” (fascist) haircut, and calling for an all-white “ethno-state” to be achieved through “ethnic cleansing.” Although Spencer has said that this ethnic cleansing would be “peaceful,” in November 2016 he told a Washington Post reporter, “Look, maybe it will be horribly bloody and terrible. That’s a possibility with everything.” Many hear echoes of Spencer’s rhetoric in statements from some of Trump’s closest advisers, including Stephen Miller and the now ousted Steve Bannon.

  And it’s not just rhetoric. In February 2017, a white navy veteran gunned down two Indian American engineers in Kansas, shouting, “Get out of my country.” A few weeks later, an Indian-born U.S. citizen was murdered right outside his home in South Carolina, and in Washington State, a white gunman shot a Sikh American in the arm, telling him, “Go back to your country, terrorist.” In May 2017, a knife-wielding man yelling anti-Muslim epithets on a Portland commuter train fatally stabbed two people who tried to subdue him. In the first three months of 2017, mosques were “targets of threats, vandalism, or arson” on thirty-five occasions.

  Nevertheless, it would be absurd to attribute Spencer’s white nationalist views to the half of American voters who supported Donald Trump. White nationalism of this kind would require expelling or exterminating between a third and half of America’s population, and to suggest that 62 million Americans endorse this is preposterous—just more partisan vitriol. An August 2017 NPR/PBS Marist poll showed that only 4 percent of Americans support white nationalism. Indeed, according to the Pew Foundation, a majority of Republicans (56 percent) say it is “neither good nor bad” that “in the next 25 to 30 years African Americans, Latinos, and people of Asian descent will make up a majority of the population.”

  But those who believe that we are in “an ethnonationalist moment” in America are not entirely wrong. A kind of “ethnonationalism lite” is widespread among white Americans today. It does not dream of an all-white America; it opposes racism and celebrates tolerance and exults in the image of America as a “nation of immigrants.” But it is nostalgic for a time when minorities were not so loud, so demanding, so numerous—a time when minorities were more grateful.

  This demand for gratitude is well expressed by Internet sensation Tomi Lahren, the controversial twenty-five-year-old conservative political commentator who recently became a Fox News contributor. Like many of the most visible pro-Trump female talking heads, Lahren is white, blond, and attractive. Here’s part of what Lahren said in a viral video takedown of Colin Kaepernick—the former 49ers quarterback who refused to stand for the national anthem:

  Colin, I support the First Amendment. I support your right to freedom of speech and expression. Go for it, bud. It’s this country, the country that you have so much disdain for that allows you the right to speak your mind. It protects your right to be a whiny, indulgent, attention-seeking crybaby. It also protects my right to shred you for it.

  See, the national anthem and our flag, they are not symbols of black America, white America, brown America, or purple America, for that matter. There are patriots of every race that have fought and died for this country, and we honor the flag and sing the anthem as a reminder. And Colin, if this country disgusts you so much, leave. I guarantee there are thousands and thousands of people around the world that would gladly take your spot . . .

  A mind-boggling 66 million people have viewed this video. Lahren obviously resonates with huge numbers of white Americans when she criticizes minorities for blaming whites without recognizing how much America, and specifically how much white America, has “done” for them. “Do you know how many of our ancestors fought in the Civil War to free your ancestors?” Lahren has said on another occasion. “The bloodiest war in U.S. history was over what was right, and it was largely white people fighting it.”

  It is easy to see why Lahren is so popular. She celebrates America as a great, moral, and exceptional nation, with a moral and exceptional Constitution. She ignores everything bad that white America has ever done. She even credits whites with freeing the slaves without mentioning who enslaved them in the first place.

  To ask for gratitude from minorities is to ask for a kind of subservience—gratitude is what’s owed to a benefactor; it implies a debt—while also asserting an ownership of the country’s past: We built this land of opportunity and invited you in, and now we’re being demonized for its imperfections.

  Many Americans want to celebrate the country’s history and greatness without having to dredge up its racist past every single time. They want to be able to take pride in the Founding Fathers without always having to apologize for slavery, the Trail of Tears, or segregation. They love the story of America as a land of freedom and opportunity—but they are starting to fear that when minorities become a majority in America, the story will change. History books will be rewritten to depict America as a land of oppression, racism, and imperialism. Beloved classics like Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables will be banned for promulgating white supremacy, the Jefferson Memorial will be torn down, and the Oscar for Best Picture will go only to movies like 12 Years a Slave. America will be cast as a nation, in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s words, of “majoritarian pigs.”

  Whites who believe that minorities hold these views of America necessarily look with anxiety on the prospect of minorities becoming a majority. Their love of country becomes tied up, even if unconsciously, with the idea of whites remaining in control of the nation’s politics, culture, and identity.

  But how can minorities be filled with gratitude when in their view Americans elected a president who, as Toni Morrison puts it, “questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States,” “seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally,” and made white nationalism possible again? If Lahren, with her 66 million views, is going to remind minorities of how much whites have done for them, how can minorities not respond, as Coates has, that America is a land where it is not only “traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage”?

  We’re not only in a zero-sum game. We’re in a vicious circle. Is there any way out?

  Epilogue

  Despite everything, I sense a shift in America.

  It could just be congenital optimism on my part. Or it could be because I’m the daughter of immigrants and my view of America will always be shaped by how they see the country and taught me to see it.

  But for whatever reason, I see something new happening. You’d never know it from cable news or social media, but all over the country there are signs of people trying to cross divides and break out of their political tribes.

  In small-town Utica, New York, Bosnian Muslims and Unitarian Christians made it a point to watch the Super Bowl together, wanting to understand one another as “human beings first.” Neighbors in Hackettstown, New Jersey, organized a Meetup to “Make America Relate Again,” for everyone in the community “regardless of how you voted in the last election” to socialize “in a non-politicized way,” because “we are all Americans. And approaching each other with compassion is the only way we will be able to heal the deep rifts that divide us.” Silicon Valley’s Ro Khanna is hammering away at the tech industry to seek out talent in America’s heartland, to expand operations there, and to “approach the rest of the nation with more humility.” Van Jones, visibly upset on election night, famously sat down for dinner with a family of Trump
voters in blue-collar Ohio a month later, pleading with them, “Help me understand.” His CNN colleague, the African American comedian W. Kamau Bell, books gigs at noncoastal universities like Appalachian State, and actually interviewed Richard Spencer at Alabama’s Auburn University for Bell’s documentary series United Shades of America. The University of Minnesota has established a fellowship called “Crossing the Divide,” for “emerging journalists” to travel across the country over a three-month period, with the goal of shedding light on not only “the divisions that are pulling the country apart, but how communities are trying to bridge the differences.”

  Individually, any single example will seem trivial, and it’s hard to prove they represent a trend. There are certainly powerful voices opposed to conciliation, insisting, as Charles Blow has, that “[t]he Trump phenomenon is devoid of compassion, and we must be closed to compromise.” Nevertheless, if you look beyond the headlines, and listen past the loudest partisans, you’ll find something quite remarkable. All over the country, ordinary Americans are making heartfelt efforts to “reach across the aisle,” “understand the other side,” and “empathize with each other’s humanity.”

  This may all seem pie-in-the-sky—or like a Band-Aid for bullet wounds—but a prodigious body of evidence shows that when individuals from different groups actually get to know one another as human beings, tremendous progress can be made.

  This phenomenon was first analyzed by Gordon W. Allport in his 1954 book, The Nature of Prejudice. By looking at the racial integration of merchant marines, police departments, and housing projects, Allport found that face-to-face contact between members of different groups can dismantle prejudices, build common ground, and even change lives. In the last sixty years, the same basic findings have been replicated all over the world, from England to Italy to Sri Lanka, with respect to all forms of group prejudice, from ethnicity to sexual orientation to mental illness.