Not all non-American societies are wracked by internal tribal conflict. Many are made up mostly or entirely of one ethnic group. Presumably Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, China, and Japan do not fit Tucker’s parochial picture of “elsewhere.” Tucker’s comments remind me of American immigrants whom I met as a kid who would tell me that everyone outside the United States was starving. One had to wonder how many inhabitants of the rest of the world these acquaintances of my parents had met.
It’s also ridiculous to claim that tribal identities had nothing to do with American politics before the current left came to monopolize our media and universities. I recall when party tickets for municipal officials in mayoral races in New York City were expected to include an Irishman, Italian and Jew. When the late Mayor Daley ruled over Chicago, he selected ward heelers on the basis of their ethnic identification with the Chicago neighborhoods to which they were assigned. Not only were the Poles, Italians, Jews, Irish, and Lithuanians given ethnically compatible liaisons with the mayor’s office. Black politicians in Chicago also got their start as ethnic representatives in the very expansive Daley-machine. Naturally the top posts went to Daley’s fellow-Irish but that’s the way American ethnic politics operated back then in the Windy City. Politics were much more tribal than, to use Tucker’s preferred state of mind, ”ideological.” But pardon my own preference: I didn’t mind the way Daley cut the municipal pie. It was sure better than having “ideological” warfare—or seeing the white working class shortchanged as in Hillary’s version of “inclusiveness.”
I’m also utterly puzzled by Tucker’s fear that we’re all becoming tribal. Does this apply to white Southerners who are watching Confederate monuments—celebrating the heroes under whom some of their ancestors fought—being torn down? Are these Southern “tribalists” receiving the same recognition as Black Lives Matter or do they enjoy the same respect as black politicians who say they’re offended by Confederate symbols? One might think, following Tucker’s logic, that in a society where all tribes are contending for power, Southern whites who valued ancestral symbols would be receiving the same encouragement as those on the other side. But of course this is not the case, because Tucker’s view of our present problem misses the point. Although tribalism has had serious historical consequences, it is not the same thing as multiculturalism. Tucker would do well to understand that the kind of tribalism permitted by multiculturalists is extremely selective and is not handed out to all groups in the same measure.
For years I’ve read and heard establishment Republican and neoconservative commentators warn that if we give in to the demands of black and Latino nationalists, we’d be opening the door to right-wing white tribalism. This has not happened to any significant degree; and where it has, the phenomenon has not resulted from following the multicultural ideology promoted by the left.
Clearly multiculturalists do not value all tribal identities equally. In fact they happily divide us into victimizers and victims. Presumably white Southern male heterosexual Christians are not intended to enjoy the same collective right to an historical identity as, say, a black lesbian or a Muslim gay activist.
