Here’s Why Identity Politics Threaten America

Is there an answer to the problem of identity politics in America? For some, the “solution” is direct.

“We need to take on the oppression narrative,” conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald said at a Heritage Foundation gathering on Capitol Hill.

Americans need to “rebut” the idea “that every difference in American society today is the result by definition of discrimination,” Mac Donald said during the event Monday, called “Identity Politics Is a Threat to Society. Is There Anything We Can Do About It at This Point?”

Without challenging this overarching narrative, the Manhattan Institute fellow said, “there is going to be no end to identity politics.”

The rise of identity politics has become a phenomenon not just in America, but in the West in general.

In many ways, debates over identity are defining and shaping the politics of our time and pose a unique challenge in particular to the United States, a vast, multi-ethnic country with potential identity fault lines that far exceed the more homogenous societies of the world.

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and Mike Franc, director of D.C. programs at the Hoover Institution, brought together a diverse set of thinkers to hash out why identity politics is on the rise and how to address it.

Besides Mac Donald, they included John Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; Michael Lind, a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin; and Andrew Sullivan, a writer for New York magazine.

Each highlighted the problem.

Hudson’s Fonte outlined what has become the framework for identity politics on the left.

“Multiculturalism, the diversity project, and critical theory” are the three major cornerstones of this creed, Fonte said.

In a 2013 article in National Review, Fonte described the “diversity project” as: “[T]he ongoing effort to use federal power to impose proportional representation along race, gender, and ethnic lines in all aspects of American life.”

Multiculturalism comes in a hard version and a soft version, he said.

The soft version celebrates ethnic subcultures, examples being St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo.

The hard version, Fonte said, has damaged society. He concisely summed up its tenets:Read More HERE