Mike Gonzalez’s new book, 'The Plot to Change America,' provides penetrating analysis of the inherent dangers of identity politics, as well as ways to fight its creeping influence. //

In her 1989 landmark decision in City of Richmond v. Croson, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor criticized identity politics by pointing out the behavior of black politicians who had become a majority of that city’s council seats. Richmond certainly had an ugly history of discrimination against blacks, but now had created 30 percent contracting quotas for minority businesses. O’Connor declared that strict judicial scrutiny was required whenever a political majority used race to disadvantage a political minority.

If that were not the law, she concluded: “The dream of a Nation of equal citizens where race is irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement would be lost in a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently immeasurable claims of past wrongs.” Although there were ongoing disputes about specific contracting policies, there were few public disagreements in that era about the fundamental principle that Americans of every race should have equal rights. After all, that is how the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is written and that principle is the framework of all subsequent civil rights law.

Mike Gonzalez’s timely new book, “The Plot to Change America,” describes how our aspiration of granting all persons equal rights has been submerged by a form of identity politics that transforms some citizens into political, legal, racial, and ethnic categories demanding proportional representation and sometimes reparations.

The Return of Tribalism //

it can be argued that identity politics is just the current name for what was historically thought of as tribalism.