Obama’s Contribution to Our Identity Politics Climate

[Geee]

Heritage Foundation:

While in Greece this week, President Barack Obama called the anxieties about national, cultural, and ethnic identities that impacted this election a “volatile mix.” He attributed this angst, though, to impersonal forces such as globalization, deindustrialization, and social media.

 

It wasn’t him. For eight years, the president said, he’s been working hard against approaches “that pit people against each other.”

 

The president is being uncharacteristically modest here. While he didn’t himself start the multicultural, identity politics process—we have a long list to blame for that—he’s done more than his share to contribute to the present climate.

 

As New York University professor Jonathan Haidt told Vox in an interview on Wednesday on the problems roiling the West, “the economic issues are much less than half the story … diversity, immigration, and multiculturalism are right at the heart of the problem in Western democracies.”

 

“Identity politics is like throwing sand in the gears … a world in which factions are based on race and ethnicity, rather than economic interests, that’s the worst possible world.”