"When I think about politics, ethnicity and ethnic identity are never far from my mind. This is especially true in those contexts where ethnicity is a red line for economic, political, and social marginalization: where one’s ethnic identity either qualifies or disqualifies you for a job, housing, membership in a club, or – at least historically – from holding high elected office. That is, ethnic identity is not just about culture, language and/or religion, but it also becomes a vehicle for obtaining and maintaining power.
Social scientists take as given that these conditions obtain in the vast majority of developing countries, which for complex reasons tend to be more ethnically diverse and more prone to intrastate conflict than wealthier, more industrialized or post-industrial societies. Moreover, it is uncontroversial to argue in these circumstances that political competition revolves around ethnicity. But ethnic politics are highly relevant (and climbing with a bullet) in the United States – which is unique among developed, capitalist countries for its long history of domestic slavery and Jim Crow – and increasingly so in Europe, as the countries of the European Union grapple with a mass influx of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa and lingering resentment over the costs of addressing the fallout of the Great Recession...
According to the Ethnic Power Relations data, a cross-national dataset compiled by researchers at ETH Zurich and UCLA, the United States’ political system had been characterized by white ethnic dominance, a situation in which “members of the group hold dominant power in the executive but there is some limited inclusion of ‘token’ members of other groups who however do not have real influence on decision making”, from passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 until 2008, when the first non-white US president was elected.[2] With Obama’s election, whites were re-categorized as a “senior partner” in the government...
White national identity has been activated, but it can be rendered dormant or at least subservient to other sources of identity and self-identification. The election was certainly ethnically divisive and likely increased the temporary salience of ethnic identity (as elections do in other places). The question is whether President Trump will move away from the divisive, ethnically-charged rhetoric Candidate Trump used to win office...
the solution is for leaders within ethnic communities to police the behavior of the agitators among them. That means, my white friends who do not want to see white nationalism take hold in the United States: It is on us. We have to call it out. We have to marginalize these voices and push white nationalism back to the fringe. We cannot and should not expect others to do it for us."
This is the kind of scholarship we need
Related: Hope in a Loveless Place
FB: "Here, I outline six “truths” – some inconvenient, some helpful – regarding the comparative literature on ethnic politics and conflict and what it might suggest for both prospects for violence and for addressing the rising tide of white nationalist sentiment in the United States. Rather than focusing on why white nationalism and white resentment are on the rise, I take it as given and focus on what the ethnic politics literature has to say about its likely effects for US politics and ways in which its pernicious message might be marginalized."
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