The End of Identity Liberalism
By MARK LILLA NOV. 18, 2016
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.
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html?mwrsm=Facebook
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