Cultural Learnings: The age of the creative minority

The crucial questions become: How do people think about their minority group identity and how do they regard the relationships between minorities? Historically, there have been at least four different minority mind-sets: First, assimilation. The assimilationists feel constricted by their minority identity. They want to be seen as individuals, not as a member of some outsider category. They shed the traits that might identity themselves as Jews or Mexicans or what have you. Second, separatism. The separatists want to preserve the authenticity of their own culture. They send their kids to schools with their own kind, socialise mostly with their own kind. They derive meaning from having a strong cohesive identity and don’t want it watered down.

Third, combat. People who take this approach see life as essentially a struggle between oppressor and oppressed groups. Bigotry is so baked in that there’s no realistic hope of integration. The battle must be fought against the groups that despise us and whose values are alien to us. In fact, this battle gives life purpose. Fourth, integration without assimilation. People who take this approach cherish their group for the way it contributes to the national whole. E pluribus unum. Members of this group celebrate pluralistic identities and the fluid mixing of groups that each contribute to an American identity.

Our politics is so nasty now because many people find the third mind-set most compelling. Americans are a deeply religious people, especially when they think they are not being religious. And these days what I would call the religion of minoritarianism has seized many hearts. This is the belief that history is inevitably the heroic struggle by minorities to free themselves from the yoke of majority domination. It is the belief that sin resides in the social structures imposed by majorities and that virtue and the true consciousness reside with the oppressed groups. At a recent Faith Angle Forum in France, the British political scientist Matthew Goodwin defined wokeness as a belief system organised around “the sacralisation of racial, gender and sexual minorities.” I’d add that right-wing populism is organised around the sacralisation of the white working class and the belief that left-wing minority groups have now become the dominant oppressive majority.

Right and left warriors disagree completely about who the dominant majority is, but they agree that “we” are an oppressed minority, that those with power despise “us,” and that the war must be won. There’s some truth in their diagnoses. There really is a lot of oppression out there. But this mind-set is based on a dangerous falsehood — that the line between good and evil runs between groups, the good over here, the oppressive over there.

Once you accept the truth that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart, then you begin to see not just groups, but also the struggles of diverse individuals within groups. You begin to see that each person, embedded within the richness of a particular culture, is trying to tackle the common human problems — to live a life with dignity and meaning, to have some positive impact on the world.

Integration without assimilation is the only way forward. It is, as the prophet Jeremiah suggested, to transmit the richness of your own cultures while seeking the peace and prosperity of the city to which you have been carried.

It means socialising with diverse groups rather than resting in the one that feels most at home. It means recognising and embracing the fact that you contain multiple identities and cultures. You are sometimes not sure which one you ultimately belong to. But this is the most creative way to live.