What Happens when You Replace Shared Humanity with Ethnic Identity

From FEE.org (June 18):

Recently Daniel Lattier wrote about an elementary school in Edina, Minnesota, where public school children “are being trained to see the world through the lens of race.”

Robert Jones, writing in The New York Times, warns that our distinctly American identity is in danger of being lost.

Jones is not talking about the loss of ethnic identity. For Americans, unlike Europeans, identity does not “rely on ethnic kinship.” Rather, our American identity arose “by voluntary assent to commonly held political beliefs.” The “core political beliefs” to which Jones points are anchored in our shared humanity and are “enshrined in founding ‘sacred texts,’ like the Declaration of Independence.” 

What can go wrong as we move away from an American identity centered around common core beliefs and toward splintered ethnic and racial identities?

History provides powerful lessons about societies placing paramount importance on ethnic identities.

The Nazi Community

Valdemar and Nina Langlet, like their more famous Swedish counterpart Raoul Wallenberg, have been enshrined for saving Jews in Hungary during World War II. In 1946, Langlet published his book Reign of Terror, which described the terrible 1944-45 period in Hungary.

When Germany occupied Hungary, the Nazis mandated that all Jews wear a yellow star and few Jews dared to resist. Langlet explains why: he describes how “a wretched system of [Hungarian] informers... immediately began to flourish.” The zeal of the informants “even took the Germans by surprise.” The number of informers was so large “that [for Jews] it was a dangerous thing even to poke your nose outside your house without wearing the star.”

Langlet had witnessed Hungarian anti-Semitism in the years leading up to World War II. He was a language professor at Budapest University, and recounts recurring anti-Semitic demonstrations at the University. Protesting students demanded, among other things, strict enforcement of quotas for the maximum number of Jewish students attending the University.

Under German rules, individuals were considered Jewish even when their families had converted to Christianity generations ago. Hungarians apparently had been tracking families of converted Jews over the generations.

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As Americans, a distinctly American identity built on principles unites us. Yes, we have been imperfect as a nation, but our principles have served as a North Star to guide us towards correcting our wrongs.

Does Langlet’s account of informers in Hungary provide a cautionary tale? The informers in Hungary had tribal identity on their minds. For those informers, there was no idea of shared common humanity. Differences were what they saw.  [read more]

It doesn’t necessary have to be ethnic identity that the Left sees as more important than American identity. The Left could just as well see gender as more important than American identity. Actually, any group identity is more important than American identity to them since America is the bully—the oppressor--in the world. The Left doesn’t like stereotypes or profiling people but they are ones who are obsessed with classifying people. And if you don’t fit their image or model of a “true believer” or if they can’t classify you at all—you’re the enemy. Not just someone with different viewpoints—but the enemy. Hence, you must be destroyed. They are the ones who have a tribal mentality.

Without a cultural identity, a country will eventually descend to chaos.