Definitions of America

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/definitions-of-america.html

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Readers discuss identity politics and how it promotes or impedes our coming together.

To the Editor: Mark Lilla (“The End of Identity Liberalism,” Sunday Review, Nov. 20) gets to the heart of the problem. Identity politics reinforces our differences, defines victim groups and pits them against one another. It makes others “other.”

What made America “exceptional” at its founding was that our ethnic identity was not what made us Americans. Rather, it was simply allegiance to the ideals of the country, even when we fall short of those ideals. In contrast, the worst moments in our history have occurred when we have focused and acted on our ethnic differences: slavery, Japanese internment, extirpation of Native Americans, hostility to the latest immigrant group. Many of world history’s most tragic circumstances developed where ethnic identity superseded tolerance and unity.

Pursuing collective goals of liberty and security and prosperity — and happiness — should unite us both as a people and at the voting booth.

PETER COFFEY

Madison, Conn.

To the Editor: Mark Lilla disparaged an important element of the Democratic Party’s platform, to unproductive effect. Considering the low voter turnout on the left and the fact that there have always been vocal sexists and racists in the American electorate (emboldened, not created, by the alt-right), the work of the Democratic Party in the next two years will not involve minimizing the importance of what Mr. Lilla dismissively calls “identity politics,” but in fact embracing this agenda.

Democrats should double down on the battles for equal rights in America, and work to clarify to the swing voters precisely what these battles consist of — for in their ideal application, equal rights do not step on the toes of any special interest group. In a November marked by the normalizing of hate speech, it would be catastrophic for liberals to shy away from the progressive agenda that has defined the party’s social platform.

Further, a strong liberalism is capable of expanding its tent to include a comprehensive economic plan that might be marketed to voters who consider this their central issue, and this can happen at no expense to the equality rhetoric of the platform. Give us more credit, sir: the Democratic Party is capable of fighting for more than one good thing at a time.

BRITTANY K. ALLEN

Brooklyn

To the Editor: The “fixation on diversity” Mark Lilla refers to is an affirmation process for those of us who are not white. That “laziest story in American journalism” about “the first X to do Y” demonstrates to women, immigrants and minority groups that we can overcome significant barriers to educational, economic and political advancement.

Mr. Lilla suggests that liberals focus on commonality rather than difference. But Donald Trump succeeded by playing the identity card, too. Immigrants, Muslims and women equal bad. White men equal good. To suggest that curriculum, extracurricular activities and a national narrative that uplifts diverse identities are to blame for the failure of our presidential candidates in 2016 is a deeply flawed argument.

And the Kumbaya image at the end of Mr. Lilla’s article happens every day in America, most notably at naturalization ceremonies, in which new Americans from hundreds of countries pledge their allegiance to America. It is a moment that unifies, but it is preceded and followed by a constant journey for belonging in America.

SAYU BHOJWANI

New York

The writer, a former commissioner of immigrant affairs for New York City, is the president and founder of the New American Leaders Project.

To the Editor: Mark Lilla’s article is essential reading. Liberals should weep over the thousands of industrial-state voters who went for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but voted for Donald Trump this time. Those who think that all Trump voters are bigots have their eyes wide shut. Republican wedge and Democrat single-issue politics are flip sides of the same coin. They worked together to encourage maximum demands by both sides, lack of compromise and divisiveness in America.

More important, the inane culture wars of the last 40 years gave liberal and conservative politicians cover for not addressing structural changes in the economy beginning with wholesale closing of steel and auto plants in the early 1980s and the dominance of Big Finance later in the decade.

CARLYN MEYER

Englewood, Colo.

To the Editor: Mark Lilla’s advocacy of a “post-identity liberalism” is really a plea to the disenfranchised and discriminated against to subordinate their fight for equality to the pursuit of some common electoral denominator that won’t discomfort white America. This is neither fair nor realistic.

My fellow progressive Democrats surely must do a better job of weaving the aspirations of all Americans into a common narrative, but not at the expense of those whose primary political goals are merely equal treatment under the law.

RORY I. LANCMAN

New York

The writer is a member of the New York City Council.

To the Editor: Thanks to Mark Lilla for his thoughtful essay. I agree that the hyphenation rhetoric is divisive and had a shock of recognition in noting that Hillary Clinton rarely included white Americans in her lists of those to be included. So this strategy of outreach will be helpful for going forward.

But the hateful actions against otherness are alive, emboldened and harming people now. A friend who goes around to public schools presenting the stories of the Freedom Riders, Jackie Robinson, Emmett Till and others who have had to struggle for their civil rights reports that he has seen the white racist rhetoric spewing out of the mouths of elementary school students against their minority classmates.

We thought that we had moved beyond the times of ingrained bias. Trump politics has taken us back decades. We need to demand the safety and constitutional rights for our fellow minority citizens now, without pandering.

DEB BALDWIN

Chapel Hill, N.C.

To the Editor: In grammar school, I was taught that America is a melting pot. We were to mix our individual identities for the common good. To my mind, identity politics has created a Tower of Babel in which we are all talking at one another without understanding. Our American experiment is doomed to fail until we return to the idea that for all our differences we should be working toward the common good.

EUGENE VOCE

Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.