In (mild) praise of essentialism

Essentialism in a social context refers to the practice of strongly identifying a person with a particular group. Often the definition of that group's identity is slightly ambiguous and the subject of truly nasty debate within the self-identified community. Is Barack Obama black enough? Too black (or not enough)? Who is a REAL conservative (P&P thinks it's the Tories), and who's just a RINO?

To outsiders, such debates are pedantic or silly at best and downright terrifying at worst. However, there's a deeper issue here that gets lost in our liberal (and I mean Lockean, P&P is very old school) norms of tolerance and liberty. The ability to define oneself as part of a group is absolutely fundamental to many people's happiness. If we can't define the boundaries of a group, does it really exist?

This point struck home for me when a friend declined a dinner invitation. He'd been joining us every month or so after he moved from a place with a very large Jewish community to semi-rural Indiana. There, without the social easy of a large group of that mixed Americana and Judaism fluidly, he had to chose whether to become "more" Jewish or just partake in Amaricana. His choice, and the reason he became the first person to decline one of my pies, was to strengthen the ties to his religious community. I can't begrudge him that, and in fact made a similar choice when my travels found me joining the Catholic minority in one city.

I think that it worthwhile sometimes to take a step back from the normative (classical) liberalism of modern life and consider ourselves as part of larger groups. The TEA Party is trying to do this for economically displaced middle class, primarily white (and thus lacking a strong alternative cultural identity) Americans who now realize that they are getting royally screwed by the system they supported most of their lives. As a social movement, it has a lot in common with other disadvantaged groups that have carved out space for themselves in the political landscape. Glenn Beck now makes millions as a sort of white Al Sharpton.

This is a good thing. When a group finds itself on the short end of changing political and economic conditions, its only hope is to unite and try fight for its interests collectively. The other option is individual repression, despair and even political violence by the voiceless. Americana as a culture is threatened, and while many parts of it are strongly anti-pie, a loud voice for those who are hurt by the changes in modern life is critical to the "security" slice of PMCIN.

So, has this out-of-power group figured out how to define itself? Not yet, and some of its elements are intentionally resisting that. But a definition is emerging (I think), and the sooner the better. Focused anger within the political space is much better than unfocused anger outside of it. As long as we don't abandon the best parts of our American classical liberalism, like the 14th Amendment, our political dialogue is much better for having groups honestly represent their interests collectively. The first step in dialogue is respect, and respecting each other's distinct identities is almost as important as respecting our mutual humanity.