More on Identity

Woke is Not Left

Culture wars are often proxies for deep and important disagreements with how democratic societies should deal with the challenge of diversity. One school of thought is to abandon the experiment and recover a past that was highly homogeneous or had a clear ethnic and religious pecking order. A second school of thought is to accommodate diversity without making any serious adjustments to the rules or the stories the society tells about itself.

But formally neutral rules can disadvantage minorities who were marginalized at the time of the rule creation. A final school of thought argues that democracies must abandon their liberal principles and individualistic assumptions to remake society from scratch with a focus on the rights of the oppressed groups. But doubling down on identity runs the risk of losing all that was good. 

Technically, this third school of thought is what you might call woke though the term has morphed to just mean anyone that might vote for Biden. But there is a kernel of truth to the danger of wokeness, one that is deserving of critical thinking. I listened to Yascha’s interview with Susan Neiman, the author of “The Left is Not Woke.”

Mounk wrote another whole book on identity politics which I will cover in the future. But for now, a few points. There are attributes of the woke ideology that are incompatible with liberalism. Wesley Yang calls it woke a successor ideology and calls attention to the ways the theory aims to replace principles that have governed western democracies. But since it implies the fight is over with the new movement sure to win, Mounk prefers to use the term, challenger ideology. 

Racial categories (and some aspects of gender categories) are socially constructed and not biological. They were invented for political purposes with the goal of elevating one group and subjugating the other group. One solution to this, the one that was once the main appeal on the left, was to emancipate ourselves completely from these concepts, the exact opposite of focusing on identity politics. But as we know, another way of dealing with these differences is to act as though they are true identities and focus on identity based solutions. 

If you have been reading me for a while, you know that I was doing a lot of reading about gender to try and work through my confusion about why the current trends around the transgender identity have given me concern. I am still in the camp that so much of gender (not all but so much) is an artificial category. For myself,  I would love to focus on accepting diversity and what I wear or what parts my body has does not define my identity. It may however define how I am able to compete in sports.

Artists once tended to emphasize the universality of the human condition but now they think it is more important to represent lived experiences of the identity groups. So that leads to the impossibility of mutual comprehension. For many, that is the core goal of literature. Others claim that the differences go deeper than these commonalities. Those who have privilege will never understand underprivileged groups. Therefore, they cannot judge what is needed to remedy past injustices. Instead of forming their own opinions, they should defer. But the ability to think for yourself is key to liberalism. 

For members of advantaged groups, true political solidarity demands decentering yourself and privileging the demands of the oppressed. A third rail of this is the idea of cultural appropriation. In the past, humanists used to celebrate the idea of different cultures mixing. This is not the same as white artists stealing the work of black singers or donning their clothing to mock them. Now chefs get into trouble for fusion cuisine. 

The problem is that because the groups themselves are diverse, whose opinion gets heard. Either you turn to the powerful members of those groups or pick someone based on their own political predilection, saying only those voices are authentic. The final result of all of this is often pessimism, the belief that the race divide will never end. When in reality, we have made great strides and we should recognize that in an effort to avoid hopelessness. Mounk believes we can do better. 

He suggests a form of political solidarity that is based on great empathy. Yes, there are barriers to fully understanding each other but that doesn’t mean we should give up on it. Citizens are unlikely to stand up for the interests of an outgroup because they have been told to defer to them but are capable of courage and altruism based on empathy and mutual humanity.

We should reject cultural purism. Catholics were once part of the outgroup but somehow over the years, the Protestants and Catholics seem to have become more ecumenical and have shared values between the two faiths. Cultures are continually evolving and newcomers can’t integrate without making their own contributions. Identity groups don’t enjoy collective property rights over particular cultural practices or foods, nor should they. Diverse democracies cannot succeed if people are scared. 

So tell me the honest truth, if you have lived your life as a white person, did you find yourself tiptoeing around your statements to your Black friends in 2020. I did and it resulted in me pulling away, which sucks for all of us. I once would have assumed they would know I was trying and open to hearing their side of experience. Once I might have thought that would be enough but suddenly, I didn’t feel like I was enough. 

We can instead emphasize what we share. While individuals may identify with their own groups and we must continue to recognize the historic consequences of our identity, we should never build our future in a world where these identities play a larger role.