Take me to your leader!

More than a month ago, in my talk at the annual meeting of my peers, I suggested that even as we promote the educational framework within which we situate diversity and empathy, we need to recognize that identities help people deal with the fundamental existential angst.  We need to acknowledge that, and respect it, without any condescending attitude.

I have been saying this for years.  I gained this understanding thanks to the number of students I have interacted with over the years who are very different from me.

Which is why in this post almost exactly three years ago, as Brexit was unfolding, and as candidate tRump promised a Brexit-plus here in the US, I wrote:

It is a "deeper emotional issue" about whatever it is that provides value to people.  In the brief time that we get to live on this beautiful planet, we handle our existential crisis in so many different ways.  We try to answer the question of "who am I?" through many affiliations and ideas,  When people search for meaning, there are different institutions that provide them with comfort.  ...
The political identity also plays an important role. While I personally and intellectually recognize that the political identity is a freakish accident--being born in a country--it is very much like the accident of being born in a family that practices a particular religion, speaks a particular language, eats particular foods, listens to particular music, ... All these accidents together help with understanding our own place in the cosmos.We err when we conclude that those institutions that give us various identities are irrelevant.  It is a huge mistake to force people into behaving as one.

Andrew Sullivan apparently made a similar point more recently:

For Sullivan, cohesion comes from transcendental symbols and stories—i.e. religion, nationhood. Liberalism’s public square has “an empty center” that must be filled. “The fact that liberals do not have a language to speak about nationhood or borders or countries … has led to the far-right gaining power,” Sullivan said

Exactly!

Even prior to that, back in September 2014, I wrote in the context of the Scotland referendum to break free:

We are so much wrapped up with the idea of globalization that we forget we are humans and we like, we love, identities.  Identities especially when there is a long and rich history of the peoples.  Economics--being materially well off--does matter to us, yes.  But, we seem to overlook that we do not live on bread alone.  There is a lot more than mere material satisfaction that makes us human.  Identity--religious, ethnic, linguistic, ... and often these are also intertwined.

The challenge is to let people hold on to whatever identity makes sense to them, even as we develop a greater understanding.  And this is no different a bottom-line from what I have been ranting about forever:

The challenge, as I see it, is to figure out how to understand each other and engage in constructive cross-cultural relationships even while holding on to the identities and without making those identities as a metric for hierarchical comparisons.  The solution is not to erase the identities but to understand that we can create a much better future even as we tightly embrace whatever identity that we want to hold on to.

I reinforced this in the discussions:

I am ok with whatever identity that people want to have. But, what I am not ok with is using that identity in order to promote their supremacy and to systematically keep the "other" out. What I imagine is, I would argue, far more challenging than is to have an EU or an India. In India or EU, the diversity is accommodated under a big tent, but--and especially in India--the bigness of the tent allows for people of similar identities to stick to their own kind.
It is not the size of the geography that should matter--think about the tiny countries in the western part of Africa, for instance. The challenge is whether people are informed, educated, and human enough to think beyond their respective boundaries and identities.  

All these require leadership of a certain kind.  But, instead of sorting these issues out, we are tragically rushing into discussing "electability."  Oh well, we will certainly get the leaders that we deserve!

Sotomayor. Hispanic. Identity politics.

Matt Yglesias has a wonderful post; here is an excerpt:

The idea that any time a person with a Spanish last name is tapped for a job, his or her entire lifetime of accomplishments is going to be wiped out in a riptide of bitching and moaning about “identity politics” is not a fun concept for me to contemplated. Qualifications like time at Princeton, Yale Law, and on the Circuit Court that work well for guys with Italian names suddenly don’t work if you have a Spanish name. Heaven forbid someone were to decide that there ought to be at least one Hispanic columnist at a major American newspaper.

Somehow, when George W. Bush affects a Texas accent, that’s not identity politics. When John Edwards gets a VP nomination, that’s not identity politics. But Sonia Sotomayor! Oh my heavens!

At any rate, Ann Friedman wrote a great piece on the hypocrisy of this back during the Democratic primary. And I think this item from Neil Sinhababu on constructing political identities is insightful.

And, how about the following from Reason's Steve Chapman?

Few objections were heard from Republicans in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush decided that the ideal person to fill the vacancy left by Thurgood Marshall, the court's first black justice, was Clarence Thomas, who just happened to be black as well.

Bush did his best to have it both ways. He insisted that race was irrelevant and that Thomas was simply the "best qualified" candidate in the country. But he also said, "(I)f credit accrues to him for coming up through a tough life as a minority in this country, so much the better."

Back then, conservatives played the identity game gingerly, as if they were slightly embarrassed. But they have since learned to make the most of it. The most recent and regrettable example is Sarah Palin, lustily cheered by Republican audiences last year not because she had the credentials and ability to step into the presidency, but because she was the Right Kind of Person.

First, she was a woman, picked to attract disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, as Palin shamelessly highlighted: "Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

Second, she was not one of those effete urban elitists but a real American—small-town girl, beauty queen, hockey mom, "Bible-believing Christian" (as she put it), mother of five, and moose hunter.

Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), said she was controversial because "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Palin herself celebrated her brethren from small towns, which she called "all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

Of course it's useful to include the perspective of small-town residents in formulating policy, just as it's a good idea to consider the impact of laws on Latinos. But to imagine that either group—or any group—has a unique claim to wisdom or goodness is only to prove that no group is immune to foolishness.