Why Are Identity Politics So Intense in America?

people want to feel important we all have a storyline going in our heads and we're the main characters of that storyline we want the world to at least some extent reflect that that means that down inside we're not just machines that want material things we don't just want food drinks houses or cars we also have other Cravings we want to be recognized respected and even loved it's a basic principle of human nature that's been reiterated countless times but is perhaps best captured by Dale Carnegie in 1936 who argued that if you want to win friends and influence people you have to pay people respect you have to pay attention to them and you have to make them feel important but what does this have to do with identity politics identity Politics as we understand the term now emerged and you could say became possible once we started structuring societies around that principle the principle of the importance of individual people and the United States of America is the prominent Society on the planet structured around that principle so there's a lot to unpack here today we're going to talk about identity why we care about it why we fight over it and why that fighting is so bitter in America I think it'll help to start by comparing people in societies now to people and societies say 500 years ago or a thousand years ago it doesn't seem like average people in earlier societies spent much time thinking about who they were deep inside because the societies that they're born into didn't leave much space for that you were probably told your place in the social order your Customs your beliefs probably who you're going to marry and probably what your job was if you're unhappy you'd probably go to a religious figure or an elder who would say the solution would be to get back in alignment with society's expectations so basically the modern idea of a therapist was inconceivable at the time people were aware of identity characteristics at the time but they didn't have an idea of an authentic inner self being separate from the identity that Society placed on them so you probably wouldn't find for example people saying that Society labels them a woman but deep down inside they're authentic in herself is actually a man Martin Luther is understood as the person who changed that at least for Western Civilization when he nailed his 95 Theses to the wittenberg's church door and began the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther importantly made a distinction between inner lives and outer lives our outer life is how we conceive of ourselves in relation to society and our inner life is how we genuinely feel inside he said the word of God cannot be received and honored by any works by that he means rituals but by faith alone and that Faith Can Reign only in the inward man Martin Luther's inner self only only had one dimension it just meant your relationship with God your decision to have faith or not of Faith but for Martin Luther faith suffices for everything so that marked a shift where it became politically conceivable to prioritize our inner life and not our outer life the idea of our inner life developed over time it was pushed Along by Romantic Poets who glorified their own inner thoughts and feelings and philosophers like John Jacques Rousseau who believed that people were inherently happy and good and that it was society that accounted for most of Humanity's problems gaining Mastery over other animals he said produced Humanity's first moment of Pride gaining Mastery over Arts and Sciences corrupts Humanity's Souls man is Born Free he said and everywhere he is in Chains as the idea of the inner self-developed the idea also spread that Society wasn't adequately recognizing the value of individuals and their inner selves corresponding with these ideas was the rise of the political philosophy liberalism which argue argued that the purpose of government was to protect the individuals living under it if you asked which individuals liberals would answer all of them that was notably brought along by John Locke who argued that the purpose of government was to protect the life liberty and property of its citizens it was becoming possible to say that Society should be structured around the needs of individuals rather than saying individuals should be expected to conform to society and with that our institutions changed outwent societies that were structured to recognize the inherent Superior value of an elite few namely monarchies and in came democracies which at least in theory are structured to recognize the inherent equal value of everyone the United States of America was the first society that took this step to base itself on those principles its ideology is captured in the Declaration of Independence which reads we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among the our life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to Institute new government we'll get back to the Declaration in a bit let's think for a moment about the concept of self one way that we think about self is in terms of our own individual person I am me and you are you but another way that we think about self is in terms of groups human beings have a natural tendency to categorize things we say this group of people all have a certain thing in common so I'll create a word for that for generalization purposes we say these people are men and these people are women these people are short and these people are tall as we make these categories we're aware when we ourselves fit into them and we're also aware that there are other people who don't fit into them so there's a relative aspect to these categories for example we understand the concept of being short relative to other people who are not short human beings also have a natural tendency towards tribalism we naturally create in groups and out groups people who are part of our group and people who are not part of our group we don't have to make groups based on the classic identity categories we can make groups based on other lines if you assign two colors of shirts for kids to wear for example kids wearing the same color shirt will treat each other preferentially kids will show that bias even without prompting from adults it's also the basic psychological driver behind the popularity of sports we like having our team and we like seeing our team beat their team even if the members of our team change arbitrarily over time now with that in mind let's go back to the first line I read from the Declaration of Independence we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal this is a declaration of inherent equality this is declaring that no one is inherently born with higher value or lower value is declaring a certain amount a baseline level of dignity and respect for everyone in America but we naturally categorize and were inherently tribal that means that the Declaration is basically an ideal that's hard to reconcile with reality I'm sure you've seen this before but if you just look at all the faces of American presidents to date you might notice some similarities in identity traits so this is a kind of identity politics happening whether or not the name is invoked people in one group being tribal and privileging members of its own group I think from here we can go right into the heart of the matter America is what you could call a disharmonic society the ideals of America and the reality of America are in Conflict when you're born and raised in America you're told those ideals but when you get to a certain age or you do a certain amount of thinking where you have a certain amount of experiences you might realize that in some ways those ideals aren't being met so what do you do a major solution historically has been to try to craft a universal Melting Pot ideal that encourages Americans to overcome their group differences to come together and form a singular American identity Woodrow Wilson delivered perhaps the most famous statement to that effect when he was speaking to an audience of recently naturalized citizens in Philadelphia after the sinking of the Lusitania he said you cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourself in groups America does not consist of groups a man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular National Group in America has not yet become an American but the problem is despite that ideal we still have group-based behavior and group-based politics in America today and that was even more true back in Wilson's time not only did we have identity-based discrimination and even persecution back when Wilson made that speech but as law Professor Amy Chua pointed out Wilson was himself a beneficiary and practitioner of tribal politics like every president before him as well as nearly every holder of an important public office Wilson was a white Protestant male You could argue that we should stick with this Melting Pot approach and that America will fully integrate and achieve identity-based equality if you give it a long enough timeline so that might be theoretically possible and I'm not here to talk you out of that but it should be uncontroversial enough to say that it hasn't fully worked yet another solution to the problem would be to say that these ideals don't work and that we need a new Society ID with new ideals but I don't think that's a popular enough attitude to really get into here a third solution Which is popular is to push for more listic reforms which highlight the problems that specific groups face here's Samuel Huntington a respected political scientist describing how the reform approach typically Works major groups in American society become obsessed with the facts of inequality lack of Freedom arbitrary power they dramatize those facts and force them upon the public Consciousness making it impossible for decision makers and the attentive public to ignore the extent to which the actuality of political life contradicts American beliefs that was written in 1981 but describes the type of identity politics that we're used to when we hear the word today people in America are encouraged to get in touch with themselves they're told that their personal experiences and their personal feelings matter they're also told that they live in a society where no one is supposed to be regarded as inherently Superior or inferior to another they then find contradictions in their actual experiences and feel entitled to air their grievances publicly and demand that Society adjust to fix those problems and iron out its hypocrisy other people don't recognize those problems or they believe that their own problems are worse or they believe that these grievances are in some way an attack on America and its ideals but in any case battle lines form and then we get the drawn out political fighting that we're used to today I wanted to examine why this fighting was so bitter specifically in America America from time to time is racked to its core from this fighting it became popular even just a couple years ago to speculate if America was headed towards another civil war just the fact that we can parse that sentence that America might be headed towards another civil war again largely from Identity problems I think is remarkable and I think the answer as to why it's so bitter in America comes down to the nature of American identity American identity is unique there's no other country in the world that has entity quite like it and to make that point I'll again lean on Samuel Huntington who wrote for most peoples national identity is the product of a long process of historical Evolution involving common ancestors common experiences common ethnic background common language common culture and usually common religion national identity is thus organic in character such however is not the case in the United States American nationalism has been defined in political rather than organic terms American national identity is unusual in that it was founded as specific moment in time and on a political act on July 4th 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed the principles that are contained in the Declaration formed what you could call the American creed or American values so what are those values you could break it down to five principles Liberty equality individualism democracy and rule of law under Constitution you can call these values the American consensus they're so widely shared and held by Americans that there isn't really much in the way of competition for them those values basically have a political Monopoly in America there are no major political parties or powerful movements that are explicitly against them wrapped up in those values really all five of them is the statement that all men are created equal since we believe at least as an ideal that no one is born inherently inferior or Superior to another we also believe that we should structure our society based on the principles of freedom and equality where every single person is considered important where all legal adults have the right to politically participate and where no one is above the law while Americans do broadly agree on those values generically understood they disagree on how to interpret them so for example think about affirmative action does affirmative action make America a more equal country or a less equal country what does the word equality even mean when it comes to affirmative action so it's a complicated question and there isn't broad agreement on the answer the point is that when Americans fight over an issue like affirmative action which is ultimately based on identity they're fighting holding the same core values and just disagreeing on how to interpret them another thing that leads to fighting is the fact that we don't have the same experiences and we're often working off different sets of facts so for example whether or not you support affirmative action might be shaped by your experiences or the set of facts that you're working off of so another way to say it is that while we hold the same values we might be living in different realities and that can lead to fighting despite those differences those values come together for Americans to form a strong and distinctly political national identity that can't be readily found elsewhere in the world Canada for example doesn't have a strong sense of national identity as their first prime minister put it Canada has too much geography and too little history not only is American national identity strong but it's also a distinctly political ideal Amer Americans can be accused of being Un-American when they don't live up to the ideals of their country and that's an accusation that's widely understood across the country again that's unusual most other countries don't have that the French for example aren't accused of being politically unfrench the Spanish aren't accused of being politically unspanish another thing that's unusual about America is that those values run to the very bottom of American identity so there's nothing really under them China for example is another country that's dominated by a single political ideology which is communism or a socialism with Chinese characteristics but you could take that ideology away and Chinese national identity would remain they have enough shared history and enough of a shared culture in China that existed before communism did to make that pretty much a certainty Americans don't have that again American identity began a specific Moment In Time on July 4th 1776 and we've built American culture and American history on top of that so that was about 250 years ago since then we've had one consistent set of ideals one Constitution and one government that all comes together to form the Bedrock of how we think about America and American identity if you look around the world and try to find another country in the same situation I think you'll gain an appreciation for how unique that is but that also puts a sense of importance on America and its institutions and its ideals so if you took them away if you took away our constitution or you took away our government or you took away our ideals then what would be left of America what would happen to American national identity what would hold Americans together the answer is that nobody knows because it's never happened with that importance comes passion when Americans are told that America is failing that it's hypocritical that it's racist or sexist or whatever it feels like a deep nerve is being hit it feels like an existential threat to the Bedrock of American identity so then people rush to defend it and you get these dramatic political battles on public display for the world to see I think there's also a simple power politics component to all this where people believe that placing attention and giving into the interests of one group hurt the prospects of their own group so I think that's definitely a major component of what's happening but also that happens everywhere and we're trying to answer the question why is this fighting so bitter specifically in America so I think what I've laid out here answers that question and hopefully helps your understanding of what's happening when America is racked by this fighting it can seem like it's falling apart and of course that's a possibility but I think in some other senses it means that America is coming alive we all want to live in a society based on the principles of freedom and equality we want to live in a society with individualism democracy and rule of law under Constitution we all want to live in a society where all are indeed created equal what we disagree on is what exactly those words mean and whether or not they've been attained in short the values that unite us also divide us thanks for watching goodbye

Channel: Ryan Chapman

Views: 272,609

Keywords: identity, identity politics, video essay, blm, feminism, trans rights, american identity

Id: WBJg3hjRAZg

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022