Review
“A fascinating account of the intellectual origins of identity politics. Mounk . . . a historian of ideas . . . gives a careful account of the work of thinkers such as Derrick Bell, Michel Foucault and Kimberlé Crenshaw, revealing the theory that underpins influential ideas such as critical race theory and intersectionality.” —Financial TimesBest Books of the Year
“A well-argued treatise about wokeness and cancel culture . . . Bold and timely, this book poses questions about identity politics that many on the left are too afraid to ask." —The EconomistBest Books of the Year
“Outstanding.” —David Brooks, The New York Times
“The most comprehensive and reasonable story of this shift that has yet been attempted . . . Mounk has told the story of the Great Awokening better than any other writer who has attempted to make sense of it.” —The Washington Post
“An intellectual tour de force.” —Bret Stephens, The New York Times
“America’s academic, cultural, and political institutions went insane beginning around 2014, and I’ve been trying to figure out why ever since. In The Identity Trap, Yascha Mounk explains how a few powerfully bad ideas, propelled through institutions by people with good intentions, are causing systemic dysfunction and dangerous polarization. This is among the most insightful and important books written in the last decade on American democracy and its current torments, because it also shows us a way out of the trap.” —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, and coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind
“Mounk was already one of the great commentators on the rise of dangerous populism; now, with this book, he becomes a great commentator on the rise of what he calls 'the identity synthesis', though others may know it as 'identity politics' or 'woke tosh', according to their preconceptions. Where did it come from? Where is it going? And is it a good or bad thing? Mounk addresses these questions calmly and intelligently, which is more than most have achieved.”
—Prospect Magazine Best Books of the Year
“Illiberalism seems to be flourishing on both the left and the right . . . At such a moment, it is prudent to be open to new alliances with anyone, on the right or left, who genuinely values freedom and democracy. The Atlantic’s Yascha Mounk clearly qualifies under that description, as he proves in his latest book, The Identity Trap. It’s the kind of work that might lead thoughtful conservatives to reflect on the potential rewards of a cross-spectrum ‘liberal alliance.’” —National Review
“Bold, timely and buttressed by data . . . The Identity Trap offers plausible remedies . . . The post-liberal right and post-liberal left are much closer to each other than many people realise. Both are intolerant; both prioritise the power of the state over individual liberty. They ‘see each other as mortal enemies’, but ‘feed on each other’, Mr Mounk warns. That is why ‘everyone who cares about the survival of free societies should vow to fight both.’” —The Economist
“After writing two books dealing with threats to liberal democracy from the new right, it’s to these ‘progressive’ forces and their intellectual champions that Yascha Mounk, a politics professor at Johns Hopkins University, now turns in The Identity Trap . . . Mounk argues—I think persuasively—that . . . even if most ordinary people—whatever the colour of their skin—probably still cling to MLK’s dream, a pessimism that was once confined to a small number of separatists is now far more general among opinion-formers . . . Better, Mounk says, to heed to the words of the late black gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who wrote in 1970 that simply belabouring the heads of the majority for their (or their forebears’) sins ‘can never produce anything politically creative. It will not improve the lot of the unemployed and the ill-housed. On the other hand it could well happen that the guilty party, in order to lighten his uncomfortable moral burden, will finally begin to rationalise his sins and affirm them as virtues. And by such a process, today’s ally can become tomorrow’s enemy.’ Look, and you can see that process happening all around.” —Financial Times
“An important book.” —The Atlantic
“Mounk’s painstaking and thoroughly researched account is a revelation.” —The Daily Telegraph
“A fascinating book on the origins, impact and risks of the ideology we might (very imperfectly) call woke. Great balance of deep intellectual analysis with accessible style; this is a thought-provoking book that never veers into the hysteria that usually accompanies both sides of this debate. Highly recommended.” —Charles Pignal, Lit with Charles
“In his new book, the German-born American political scientist authoritatively traces the evolution of the ‘identity synthesis’ . . . Mounk’s analysis is nuanced and balanced. His goal is not merely to critique the identity synthesis, but to explain how leftists came to embrace its dead-end fixation on identity; and to offer ideas about how they can be returned to the path of liberalism.” —Quillette
“Few have begun to explain the phenomenon, and in this, Mounk excels . . . Mounk’s painstaking and thoroughly researched account is a revelation.” —The Telegraph (UK)
“Barack Obama’s favourite political thinker . . . Having thoroughly skewered right-wing populism and its brash demagogues in popular books, Mounk’s next target may surprise his considerable fanbase. The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time explains how dangerous styles of thinking developed in and once largely conned to the academy have now gone mainstream—and why we should all be worried . . . As a darling of the political left, Mounk’s criticisms of America’s elite universities will probably hit harder than the anti-woke rants to which institutions have become accustomed. His constructive tone, however, may help higher education institutions to play their part more effectively in a defence of democracy to which he has dedicated himself.” —Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education Supplement
“In his indispensable book, Yascha Mounk proposes an alternative to the ceaseless combat between 'woke' and 'anti-woke' extremes—one that takes seriously the enduring malignant legacy of systemic discrimination yet correctly identifies that universal values, not group solidarity, offer the surest path to justice, fairness, and enduring social peace. The Identity Trap is necessary reading for understanding both the appeal and profound limits of identity based politics while offering a compelling alternative rooted in the highest ideals of liberal democracy.” —David French, New York Times columnist
“The Identity Trap is an eloquent plea for universal liberal values in an age of populism and partisanship—and one that sensible business executives ought to read with care.”—Adrian Wooldridge, Business Standard
“Yascha Mounk tackles one of the most consequential, controversial and—as he puts it—counterproductive contemporary debates with great seriousness as well as sensitivity. This book is brave, bold, erudite, and rich in detail. Monk is impressively thorough in his analysis of the theories and personalities, social developments, and demographic and technological changes that have brought us to an impasse in identity politics. This is a must read for anyone who wants to explore an alternative approach to framing public life and building coalitions to create a fair and equal society.” —Fiona Hill, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
“Yascha Mounk explains the intellectual roots of our current focus on identity, what’s wrong with it, and how we can get back to belief in a shared humanity in an erudite yet easy-to-read account.” —Francis Fukuyama, author of Liberalism and Its Discontents
“Yascha Mounk and I don’t agree on everything, inevitably, but I very much admire his aim to take seriously a set of ideas that have been subject to much more heat than light. The question of who speaks for the group is one that yields no easy answers. Social identities connect us in multiple and overlapping ways; they are not protected but betrayed when we turn them into silos with sentries. The Identity Trap brings vital context to some of the most fraught and divisive debates of our time.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University, and author of Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
“Why are so many people embracing simplistic notions of ‘identity,’ in the guise of social justice, to substitute for reasoning, empathy, and even fairness? The Identity Trap is a smart tutorial on how we got to this point and how we get back to elevating logic over performance art to function as a mature society.” —John McWhorter, Columbia University and the New York Times
“Yascha Mounk has written another powerful, timely book, seeking to understand the origins and impact of the ideas that rightly or wrongly constitute ‘identity politics’—where they come from, what effect they have, where they could lead. His book is both an excellent analysis and an eloquent plea for the recovery of shared values, the ideas that link us instead of dividing us.” —Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy
“A passionate book about how the things we have in common are greater than the things that divide us . . . A thoughtful deconstruction of identity politics well worth discussing.” —Kirkus
About the Author
Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Mounk received his BA in history from Trinity College Cambridge, and his PhD in government from Harvard University. He is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, the founder of the digital magazine Persuasion, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Great Experiment and The Identity Trap.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In the late summer of 2020, Kila Posey asked the principal of Mary Lin Elementary School, in the wealthy suburbs of Atlanta, whether she could request a specific teacher for her seven-year-old daughter. “No worries,”the principal responded at first. “Just send me the teacher’s name.” But when Posey emailed her request, the principal kept suggesting that a different teacher would be a better fit. Eventually, Posey, who is Black, demanded to know why her daughter couldn’t have her first choice. “Well,” the principal admitted, “that’s not the Black class.”
The story sounds depressingly familiar. It evokes the long and brutal history of segregation, conjuring up visions of white parents who are horrified at the prospect of their children having classmates who are Black. But there is a perverse twist: the principal, Sharyn Briscoe, is herself Black. As Posey told the Atlanta Black Star, she was left in “disbelief that I was having this conversation in 2020 with a person that looks just like me—a Black woman. It’s segregating classrooms. You cannot segregate classrooms. You can’t do it.”
The events at Mary Lin Elementary School, it turns out, are not the continuation of an old and familiar story; they are part of a new ideological trend. In a growing number of schools all across America, educators who believe themselves to be fighting for racial justice are separating children from each other on the basis of their skin color.
Some public schools have started segregating particular subjects. Evanston Township High School, in the suburbs of Chicago, now offers calculus classes reserved for students who “identify as Black.” Many more are embracing race-segregated“affinity groups.” A school district in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for example, recently hosted a “Healing Space for Asian and Asian American Students.” As an emailed invitation emphasized,“This is a safe space for our Asian/ Asian-American and Students of Color,*not* for students who identify only as White.”
The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education establish narrow limits on the extent to which state institutions can discriminate between citizens on the basis of their skin color. As a result, the adoption of racially segregated classrooms and safe spaces at public schools has inspired legal challenges and even a federal investigation. But what happened in Atlanta, Evanston, and Wellesley has long since become common practice in private schools, which are subject to less stringent restrictions.
At some of America’s most elite schools, from Boston to Los Angeles,teachers now routinely divide students into different groups based on their race or ethnicity. In many cases, such groups are effectively mandatory. In some, students are so young that their teachers need to tell them which group to join. At Gordon, a storied private school in Rhode Island, teachers start to divide children into affinity groups—which meet every week and are divided by race—in kindergarten. “A play-basedcurriculum that explicitly affirms racial identity,” wrote Julie Parsons, a longtime teacher at Gordon, which was recently honored for its efforts at diversity, equity, and inclusion by the National Association of Independent Schools, is especially important “for the youngest learners.”Dalton, a prestigious school on New York’s Upper East Side that educates the children of the city’s elite, has gone out of its way to explain the pedagogical goals that animate such practices. According to statements and outside resources hosted on Dalton’s website, anti racist institutions must help their students achieve the right racial identity. A conversation between experts convened by a prominent organization that has worked closely with the school and is fittingly called EmbraceRace points out that when students are young, “even a person of color or Black person might say:I don’t see myself as a racial being. I’m just human.” The task of a good education is to change that attitude: “We are racial beings.” And the first step toward that goal is to reject the “color-blindidea” that our commonalities are more important than our differences.
Of late, some schools have even started to encourage their white students to define themselves in racial terms. Bank Street School for Children,on New York’s Upper West Side, for example, is one of the most renowned early education institutions in the country. Proud to be at the vanguard of progressive pedagogy, it serves both as a K–8school and as a training college that educates hundreds of future teachers every year. Recently,Bank Street has started dividing its students into a “Kids of Color Affinity Group” and an (all-white)“Advocacy Group.” The goal of the white group, a slide from the school explains, is to “raise awareness of the prevalence of Whiteness and privilege,” encouraging students to “own”their “European ancestry.”
It is this new approach to pedagogy that inspired Sharyn Briscoe, the principal of Mary Lin Elementary School, to create a “Black class.” Briscoe grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, attending a predominantly white private school in which she often felt isolated. When she earned a degree in education at Spelman College, she imbibed a new set of ideas that was meant to save children from the fate she herself had suffered. As Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned education scholar and former president of Spelman, asks in a highly influential book, “If a young person has found a niche among a circle of White friends, is it really necessary to establish a Black peer group?” Answering in the affirmative, Tatum recommends that schools ensure that all students make friends within their own racial group “by separating the Black students” for at least some portion of every week.
Kila Posey strongly disagrees with this idea. An educator herself, she believes that “putting my daughters in a class with a whole bunch of people who look like them isn’t necessarily going to give them community.” Picking and choosing which classmates her two daughters should make friends with on the basis of their skin color, she told Briscoe in one of their first encounters, “is not your job.”
When I interviewed Posey about her multiyear battle with Atlanta’s school district, she spoke with great composure, recalling facts and figures with the precision of somebody who has become consumed by a righteous cause. Only when I asked her to describe what hopes she harbors for her daughters’ futures did her voice betray her emotions. “For my girls, the sky is the limit. They can do and be whatever they want,” she said with a suppressed tremor in her voice. After her daughters watched Kamala Harris’s inauguration as vice president of the United States, they grew determined to follow in her footsteps. But whatever they might ultimately choose to do, Posey insisted, “they’re going to be at the table. And they need to be able to get along with everybody.”
The profound disagreement between Kila Posey and Sharyn Briscoe is just one small skirmish in a much larger battle of ideas. In the place of universalism, parts of the American mainstream are quickly adopting a form of progressive separatism. Schools and universities, foundations and some corporations seem to believe that they should actively encourage people to conceive of themselves as “racial beings.” Increasingly, they are also applying the same framework to other forms of identity, encouraging people to think of their gender, their cultural origin, or their sexual orientation as their defining attribute. And of late, many institutions have taken yet another step: they have concluded that it is their duty to make how they treat people depend on the groups to which they belong—even when it comes to such existential decisions as whom to prioritize for lifesaving drugs.
