Andrew Sullivan, in a recent column for New York Magazine, again expounds on the tribalism consuming the body politic through reviewing two books. Both authors he reviews are on opposite sides of the political spectrum but begin their books through the same premise. Our current political epoch, they argue, is defined by the passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act in the 1960s. These laws, Sullivan argues, “set in motion the creation of a far more racially and ethnically diverse and integrated society than anyone in human history had previously thought possible.”
Sullivan’s ongoing thesis of our time is that of tribalism—a term political personified through “a new and compounding combination of all these differences into two coherent tribes, eerily balanced in political power, fighting not just to advance their side but to provoke, condemn, and defeat the other.” He does not seem tribalism as a flaw in human nature to be abolished, but one that can lead to vibrant societies. “There are,” he asserts, “hip-hop and country-music tribes; bros; nerds; Wasps; Dead Heads and Packers fans; Facebook groups. (Yes, technology upends some tribes and enables new ones.) And then, most critically, there is the Über-tribe that constitutes the nation-state, a megatribe that unites a country around shared national rituals, symbols, music, history, mythology, and events, that forms the core unit of belonging that makes a national democracy possible.” It is the modernization of the melting pot, the America that existed outside the ontological view of the Framers and one of our oldest national fables.
Since the passage of the two beforementioned laws, Sullivan believes the tribes have coalesced around the multi-racial Democratic Party and the lily-white Republicans. He homes in on the two stories he believes the tribes tell themselves. The Democrats “became a regime of ending discrimination by individuals in economic and social life; then it begot affirmative action, in which race played an explicit part in an individual’s chance of getting into college; and it culminated in the social-justice agenda, which would meaningfully do away with the American concept of individual rights and see it replaced by a concept of racial group rights.” Meanwhile, the conservative tribe “sees the last 50 years” as a jousting “between two rival outcomes: one dedicated to freedom, the other to equality of outcomes, or ‘equity.’” Sullivan rejoins the writer for the conservative tribe, adding that “I think he is right to see the former as worth fighting for.”
I have been Black my entire life and taught literacy to children for many years. My experiences have not only bade me to master my stories and my nation’s stories, but to learn how to pass down how stories are created; I had led studies in story structures, and characterization, and the speaker’s intent for the better part of a decade. Sullivan engages in considerable intellectual chicanery to link the story of individual freedom to the white Republican tribe. The result—positing the Republican tribe’s aim of individual freedom against the multi-racial Democratic Party’s “racial group justice”—commits an act of racial essentialism, and is why we are in the political hell we are burning in the first place.
Looking at the scope of American literature, I can’t help thinking that the question should never have been “Why am I, an Afro-American, absent from it?” It is not a particularly interesting query anyway. The spectacularly interesting question is “What intellectual feats had to be performed by the author to erase me from a society seething with my presence, and what effect has that performance had on the work?” What are the strategies of escape from knowledge? Of willful oblivion?
–Toni Morrison, “Black Matter(s)”
The West was built on racial essentialism, as enslaved Africans were kidnapped into the New World due to their supposed suitability for hard work and resistance against tropical diseases. The West concurrently developed many intellectual contortions built on masking its essentialist beliefs as civil rights progress made it gauche to express it openly. We see this with the conservative tribe demonizing their opponents by calling them welfare queens, cutting government aid, and repelling affirmative action and abortion—and then pretending that their actions here are colorblind and is necessary for a new birth of individual freedom. The Democratic party, diverse as it is, also engages in these contortions. Medicare for All is touted as something to help all Americans, but not specifically the Black folk in states like Mississippi that refused to expand healthcare under the Obama administration. Relieving college debt is communicated as freeing an entire generation from crushing financial obligations instead of helping specifically the Black students and HBCU attendees who suffer disproportionally. If today we cannot see the branches of how such language hides essentialist beliefs, the roots are still intact.
Sullivan simply is another branch. To clarify the story he is touting, I am going to do a thought experiment and sketch out the foundation myths of the tribes based on his latest assertions. Let us start with the Republicans, the tribe that is now white and he now argues is fighting a battle for individual freedom. I will write with the best intentions, striving not to be disingenuous with my language. I think Sullivan would agree the broad strokes I paint here;
In 1620, pilgrims seeking the freedom to practice their religion formed a democratic compact with each other and sailed to the New World. More followed, fleeing the continent of kings. The increased immigration and a shared, developing understanding of what individual freedom would require meant that a great conflagration would arise between the worlds Old and New. The war happened, with the result being the birth of a nation that enshrined individual freedoms in a Constitution. Despite the progress made, the tribe entered a nationwide conflict in the latter half of the 19th Century, and between the northern and southern states of the tribe, regarding individual freedom and how it conflicted with property ownership. This march continued into the 20th Century, with more groups demanding the dominant tribe extend the practices of individual freedom to them. When it chose to, and if they did not look considerably physically different, the tribe assimilated the outsiders. Finally, in the 1960s, encroaching opponent tribes that sought to limit American’s individual freedom to eat, live, and school with whom they choose won victories. With the future of the tribe’s freedoms uncertain, they coalesced under a political banner of individual freedom and reduced government. This banner sought to pull funding from public life via small government, ensuring that man would have freedom as long as he worked for it. And to hasten this day, they elected in 2016 a figure who pledged to do that via cutting taxes and resisting the strangers with nation’s borders and on the nation’s shores.
I sought to tell a story that would explain the 2016 presidential election results in which a majority of white people from all economic classes voted for Donald Trump. It took me the better part of a fortnight to write it because I had to rigorously engage in strategies for escaping knowledge—hyping the story of individual freedom while burying any references to race in influencing the story’s progression and conflicts. Writing this built up some cognitive empathy within me for the tribe that accepts this story as existential; how hard they have to work, and how certain they are their story is true when they working to accept it. Some of the techniques I employed:
- Ontological centering. I wrote as if I had accepted the premise that the white tribe and their preoccupation with individual freedom was the focus of the American experiment. Writing as this was the central truth of my historical understanding, I omitted any facts, events, and evidence that suggest that other motives—dominance, control, seeking to replicate the lord’s behavior away from the Old World—may have been at play here. I especially had to work hard to eliminate racial references, despite several of the struggles mentioned in the paragraph being centered racially around the idea of who deserves freedom and life. Such a narrative focuses on a deep political/spiritual belief, and not the ending that Sullivan believes—that the majority white Republican party is the current custodian for individual freedom, a racially essentialist belief. Again—the roots run deep.
- Solipsism of language. This flows logically from the first technique. Often or not, their forefathers are given innocuous names (Pilgrims, Framers, Founding Fathers) that hide the totality of the actions they undertook to become historically noteworthy. Even today, many of the white, Republican tribe describe themselves as pastoral folk suffering from economic anxiety. Such language is needed to hide that a majority of white people of all classes voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and are poised to do so again without adding complexity and nuance to their tribal myth. It is navel-gazing on a world-historical scale and indicative of ontological centering. Sullivan caves into his tribe’s belief to see themselves throughout history and wants to associate their endurance with goodness.
- Erasure of nuance. With few exceptions, the constructed narrative focuses on the tribe’s struggle within themselves. I had to minimize as much as possible the wars they fought—the Civil War, the World Wars—because of the racial consequences they had on the white tribe. The believed long term consequences of this war was tightening the white tribe’s belief that they were the arbiters of individual freedom (the historical record is replete with phrases that the wars were about “property,” being the “arsenal of democracy,” and “making the world safe for democracy”). This erasure of nuance also allowed me to write in simpler, more declarative sentences. It ultimately eases the way for Sullivan to make his racially essentialist statement—that the tribe that is now nearly all white is the current standard-bearer for “individual freedom,” and that this incarnation is “worth fighting for.”
These intellectual feats give the white, Republican tribe a story they can believe with all four chambers of their heart. I am now going to retell the story, adding the African American experience;
In 1619, traders inflicted violence upon the notion of individual freedom by importing 20 enslaved Africans to the shores of North America. The next year, pilgrims seeking the freedom to practice their religion formed a democratic compact with each other and sailed to the New World. More followed, fleeing the continent of kings, forming a concurrent flow with enslaved Africans. After Bacon’s Rebellion, the government began to write laws that separated the enslaved Africans to a “Black” tribe, condemning them and their children and children’s children to involuntary servitude. Increased immigration and a shared, developing understanding of what individual freedom would require meant that a great conflagration would arise between the worlds Old and New. The war happened, with the result being the birth of a nation that enshrined individual freedoms in a Constitution. The Constitution also enshrined slavery, dictated it’s end through enslaving Africans by 1808, and allowed Southern states to boost their legislative representation advantage on the backs of non-citizens. Despite the progress made, the tribe entered a nationwide conflict in the latter half of the 19th Century, and between the northern and southern states of the tribe, regarding individual rights and how it conflicted with property ownership. Said property was slaves, now exclusively referred to as “black,” who were reproducing by the millions, whose acts of self-liberation led the southern portion of the tribe to use its legislative representation—parlayed into judicial influence—to infringe upon the individual freedoms of the northern tribe by making them unwilling watchdogs. An attempt of constitutional and social Reconstruction failed when the government, to hasten the reunification of the northern and southern halves of the tribe, ordered their rifle and bayonets to stop safeguarding the individual rights of Blacks in 1877. Other groups demanded the dominant tribe extend the practice of individual rights to them. When it chose to, the tribe made some of these groups white. These new additions to the tribe—the Irish, the Italians, other European immigrants –increasingly adopted anti-black attitudes as they cloistered themselves into the suburbs and Levittowns, creating a financial chasm that Blacks would not be able to overcome. When this failed, there arose campaigns of riots, bombings, lynchings, and terror. Finally, in the 1960s, encroaching opponent tribes that sought to limit American’s individual freedom to eat, live, and school with whom they choose won victories. The Civil Rights Movement, spearheaded by the black tribe, influenced legislation that banned de jure segregation, created watch systems, and sought to ameliorate the disadvantaged first shackled upon them, like weights in a race, since 1619. With the future of the tribe’s freedoms uncertain, they coalesced under a political banner of individual freedom and reduced government. This banner sought to pull funding from public life via small government, ensuring that man would have freedom as long as he worked for it. To further create more space for individual freedom, the government enacted a program of mass incarceration for Black folk, which ironically called for a reduction of Black’s individual freedom and increases in government spending. And to hasten this day, they elected in 2016 a figure who pledged to do that after, in 2008, the Democratic tribe elected the nation’s first black president.
What I have added—for African Americans—is the evidence basis for the “racial group rights.” It counters the three techniques used to scribe the white, Republican tribe story. First, there is no ontological centering. Peoples interact with other peoples. This new narrative both clarifies the black impact on the now white, Republican tribe. It is inconvenient for nation-building but important for issues concerning grievance and justice. Secondly, such a narrative abolished the solipsism of language that facilitates the formation of tribes. The white, Republican tribe’s story becomes not just the pursuit of individual freedom, but their conception of it as fossil fuel—a finite resource that they had to prevent other tribes from developing a claim. Finally, adding the African-American story adds the spice of history to our current proceedings. History is narrative but also is analysis and evidence-based. Throughout the rewritten story, we see Americans acting contrary to individual freedom, despite claiming that the nation was founded on its pursuit. Adding nuance eliminates the racial essentialism that Sullivan currently sees in the pursuit of individual freedom. We now see a tribe at war with its soul with who should wield individual freedom, a reframing that brings into light the question of the age. Why does a tribe subscribe to stories that allow it to coalesce around one race in opposition to a political party that, demographically, represents the majority of the world?
Despite the body of scholarship that has accumulated to show that this formulation is backwards, that racism precedes race, Americans still haven’t quite gotten the point. And so we find ourselves speaking of “racial segregation,” “the racial chasm,” “the racial divide,” “racial profiling,” or “racial diversity”—as though each of these ideas is grounded in something beyond our own making. The impact of this is not insignificant. If “race” is the work of genes or the gods, or both, then we can forgive ourselves for never having unworked the problem.
–Ta-Nehisi Coates
The great flaw in conservative tribal myths is that of racial essentialism—that there are essentially human behaviors that arise from the marrow and can only be booked in law and shared beliefs (Sullivan laments that only the rise of a world religion like Christianity, with common tribal beliefs, can heal us; from my viewpoint, the countries we bomb and ban from our borders feel Islam would have the same effect on us). This essentialism is the idea of the West. The deceased historian David Byron Davis noted that the Enlightenment unfurled simultaneously with the expansion of slavery to both lateral hemispheres; that the full flowering of human knowledge also provided the commerce, communication tools, and reach to entrench millions of captured Africans into generations of night because white people felt we could recover better from tropical diseases. The spread Davis documented occurred concurrently with the global proliferation of Christianity, making me doubt the religion’s ability to unify
Sullivan’s belief in racial essentialism leads him to believe in fictions such as the Bell Curve that, to many, discredit him as a serious intellectual. This is to his damage, as I see him as a thinker with an earnestness twin to mine. I subscribed to the Dish and happily paid his fee as a broke college student because it was refreshing to read a unique conservative voice that was well written and open to change. But his thinking will ultimately be limited as long as he clings to the greatest fiction the West ever wrote—that whiteness is something that you are, instead of something that you become and that you continually become through the stories they create.
And part of that becoming is a false equivalency, as if one tribe has a higher moral claim than the other. If the essentialism is taken as true, then we cannot be blamed for tribal behaviors. This lets white people, again, off the hook and delays the long reckoning that the Prophet states white people need to elevate themselves to the full level of shared humanity, where we share the Earth instead of slowing burning it down in the name of the freedom to pursue profits. Racial essentialism says that the Republicans, forming a tribe around white grievance, is justified in electing an openly cheating demagogue who ran on a platform of hate and racism. And it also says that the tribe that is working out the perfecting of the American experiment through including as many people as possible should be contrite and impatient, despite them advocating the tools—freedom from poverty, illness, and the systems that shackle men and women—and pushing for their full and immediate adoption.
Sullivan is well-read and sometimes well researched. He needs better stories. My tribe has no interest in the confessionals of tyrants and masterclasses; what does it matter, the inner life of a jackboot?