I would like to extend David’s logic in three ways. First, as I explained in a recent History News Network article, the strong tendency towards zero-sum thinking about ethnic groups is in part the result of widespread public ignorance. For people who don’t know much about about economics or politics (which, sadly, includes a large part of the population), a zero-sum view of the world is intuitively plausible. And “in group-out group” dynamics make it intuitively plausible to divide the world into racial, ethnic, and cultural categories.

AD

AD

Finally, David is right to suggest that one antidote to dangerous zero-sum thinking about racial and ethnic groups is to deemphasize identity politics. This does not mean that anyone should somehow forget their culture and heritage. But it does mean that we should do all we can to avoid basing our political activities around it. That approach is entirely compatible with combating racial and ethnic injustice. These can – and should – be fought on the basis of universal principles rather than appeals to ethnic solidarity. This is hardly a new idea. Frederick Douglass advocated it back in the nineteenth century. If a man who had personally experienced the oppression of racially based slavery could look beyond identity politics, then so can the vast majority of modern Americans who are fortunate enough to have avoided comparable horrors.

One side’s identity-group mobilization is all too likely to generate backlash from the other, a dynamic that all too often results in conflicts in which both groups end up worse off than they would be otherwise. Such struggles reinforce and inflame the dangerous zero-sum thinking that too often leads to intergroup hostility and oppression. As Douglass put it in a famous speech, “[d]o we not know that every argument we make, and every pretension we set up in favor of race pride, is giving the enemy a stick to break our own heads?… We cannot afford to draw the color-line in politics, trade, education, manners, religion, fashion, or civilization. Especially we cannot afford to draw the color-line in politics.” What is true of racial color lines also applies to ethnic divisions.

The goal of deemphasizing identity politics may seem hopelessly utopian, particularly at a time when white ethnonationalism has gotten a boost from Donald Trump’s campaign (zero-sum thinking is at the very heart of Trump’s world-view), and racial tensions are high over issues such as police brutality. But, as David notes, there are many examples of ethnic and racial hostilities that have faded over time. A century ago, there was often great political antagonism between Irish-Americans and WASPs. Today, most Americans barely even remember it.