Identity Politics and the Threat from the Left

Unfortunately, Democrats cannot credibly speak of a politics of national unity and common American interest unless they make a clear break with the identity politics, multi-culturalism, and group privileges of the party's left. Democrats during the Clinton reign in the 1990's made great progress overcoming two of the three barriers to the party gaining majority status: being trusted on national defense and to provide economic growth. On cultural issues, however, the Clinton program of "100,000 cops" and welfare reform (not to mention Monica Lewinsky) has not reversed the perception that Democrats endorse a politics of "hyphenated" Americans and competing group entitlements that goes against core American values. Until that perception is reversed, there will not be, in the words of Ruy Teixeira and John Judis, an "emerging Democratic majority."

That Democrats are swimming against the tides of history and public opinion on issues like affirmative action is becoming increasingly clear. Despite the Supreme Court's compromise in the University of Michigan cases, Proposition 209 in California, the Court's Adarand decision involving government contracting, and the past rulings in University of Texas admissions reflect the rapidly changing environment. Demographic trends also show the tenuousness of group-based politics. In 2000, California became a "majority minority" state, with white residents constituting under half the population. By 2000, Hispanics surpassed African-Americans as the nation's largest minority group; by 2050, Hispanics will be a quarter of the American population.

The first battles of competing group preferences are already being fought. In San Francisco, to enable access to the city's best high schools, Asian American parents successfully sued to end a court-ordered desegregation plan that had limited any group (black, white, Asian, Hispanic, etc.) to no more than 40% of each school's students. In Los Angeles, a growing rift between blacks and Hispanics for political power and spoils has led to two sharply divisive mayoral elections (both won by white candidates). Left unchanged, the liberal program of balkanized identity politics means that San Francisco and Los Angeles are just a taste of things to come.

The Democrats' current course is a recipe for electoral defeat. Judis and Teixeira's "ideopolis" uniting suburban professionals with growing and active minority populations cannot come to pass for Democrats as long as the regime of affirmative action and group set-asides is in place. There can be no progressive coalition on tax policy, the social safety net, health care, or virtually anything else while these erstwhile allies are separated by group preferences, real or imagined. Republicans will continue to welcome the creation of "majority-minority" districts. And Democrats can be sure that there will still be Reagan Democrats and a persistent male gender gap.

Of course, Democratic social policy should be firmly grounded in the moral principles of our American republic and not mere political expediency. The evolution of affirmative action from a program of compensation for past wrongs to one enshrining diversity as an end in itself has undermined the universal nature of the Democratic message. In this conception, racial and ethnic groups are monolithic; each (black, Hispanic, Asian) has a uniquely different viewpoint and set of life experiences and values, and each member of those groups uniformly shares them. That doesn't sound like a traditional Democratic notion of universal national identity and, at a gut level, certainly doesn't sound like one to most Americans. At a time of growing demographic diversity and consistent (if incomplete) progress in the status of African Americans and other minority groups, the tenets of multi-culturalism and group identity increasingly violate deep-seated beliefs about what it means to be an American.

Democrats in 2004 must begin offering Americans a better choice than the stale debate between the racism of the right and the racialism of the left. Democrats can neither support the status quo nor trigger a return to real or de facto segregation in hiring, contracting and university admissions. Ultimately, Democrats must move to a "Post Affirmative Action" politics, trading the easy work of group preferences for the hard work of investment in education and urban development, day care, class-based programs, and other more universal approaches. As we'll see below ("The Reciprocity Society in Action"), Democrats must phase out affirmative action over time while implementing a new approach, "Open Opportunity."

1. Introducing the Opt Out Society
2. On Your Own: The Opt Out Society in Practice
3. Branding the Opt Out Society
4. Identity Politics and the Threat from the Left
5. A New American Bargain^TM: The Reciprocity Society^TM
6. The Reciprocity Society in Action