Historically domination systems in the US, and in the western world in general, have resulted in numerous racial and ethnic groups being subject to discrimination, oppression, and violence, as experienced by many groups of immigrants; enslavement, as experienced by millions of captured Africans; and even zealously executed programs of extermination as experienced by Native Americans, European Jews, Armenians, and Russian peasants.
Over time, as new technologies and art forms made possible increasingly effective ways to share our human stories, our empathetic sensibility expanded. Today massive numbers of people are aware of the historic oppression that occurred, its many lingering effects, and the way society continues to bestow privilege to some at the expense of others. Ideally, our increased sensitivity to how our socio-economic system and culture has been, and in many ways remains, injurious should weaken the divide and conquer mechanism at the heart of the domination system. Instead, we are experiencing a period of intensive socio-political and cultural fragmentation.
Groups that have survived a history of violent oppression or attempted genocide often react to their ordeal by developing an ever-deeper connection to their traditional tribal identities. After surviving the holocaust, large numbers of Jewish people who had previously chosen mainstream assimilation reembraced their tribal identity in ways ranging from extremist Zionism to practicing highly Orthodox Judaism, to other, less extreme, Jewish tribal identification.
Having been violently torn away from their African roots, many American blacks have been reorienting themselves towards a renewed connection to African culture in a variety of ways including, wearing African fabrics like kente cloth, dashikis, and head wraps; embracing African music and dance; and in naming practices where since the 1960’s many black children have been given African, African oriented, or Muslim related names.
Among the descendants of Native Americans who struggled against genocide and cultural obliteration there is also a movement deeply committed to maintaining tribal identities including customs and language. These group’s resistance to the dominating culture’s hegemonic efforts to destroy their cultural, religious, ethnic and/or racial identities is completely understandable and admirable, however, in our modern world strong tribal identities pose numerous challenges.
Groups embracing their tribal identities often withdraw from participating in broad based political coalitions in favor of focusing on issues only as it effects their individual group — this is known as identity politics. The narrowing of political focus, characteristic of identity politics, makes any serious challenge to the underlying system of domination unlikely. For example, identity politics tends to splinter groups who might otherwise unify in large numbers around issues of class.
Tribalism and identity politics can be obstacles to gaining the unity and cooperation needed to successfully deal with our existential crises.
Tribal narratives often create an exaggerated sense of separation and distinctiveness, conveying that one’s own tribe is differentiated from the rest of humanity by numerous desirable characteristics such as being the bravest, the smartest, the best looking, the most righteous and devout, and the most deserving. Many groups teach that despite possessing such praiseworthy qualities, or sometimes precisely for having them, they have suffered grave injustice, subjugation, persecution, or other injury. Such identity narratives foment anger, indignation, and aggrievement, and sometimes have led to calamitous results.
Early indicators of the disastrous potential which tribalistic thinking can have in the modern world go back to the start of the 20th century. Throughout Europe and Asia in the late 19th and early 20th century several political movements built around nationalist identities recreated histories which frequently exaggerated a group’s homogeneity, and the supposed continuous oppression they suffered. These movements ultimately set the stage for what came to be the then deadliest war in human history — the First World War. That title stood only a mere 21 years until a renewed round of national identity movements resulted in the even more deadly Second World War.
Today, facing the possibility of thermonuclear devastation and/or catastrophic climate change, humanity may have crossed a threshold beyond which the divisiveness of strong tribal identities is far too dangerous. Human survival hinges on our willingness to recognize and embrace the commonality that unites us.