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Are identity politics a trap? A conversation with author and political scientist Yascha Mounk
Listen: Political scientist and author Yascha Mounk joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World Podcast to discuss his latest book, “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.” Mounk delves into the complicated dynamics of identity politics and challenges the conventional wisdom from the progressive left that focusing on identity and what makes us different from each other leads to a more equitable society. By highlighting our differences rather than shared values, Mounk argues, well-meaning liberals are exacerbating societal division and hindering progress toward greater equality. While acknowledging that our society is deeply imperfect and genuine injustices remain, Mounk unpacks the implications of identity politics and questions whether the current focus on identity truly serves the cause of inclusivity or social harmony.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 7, known as the “stop woke act,” in Florida, on April 22, 2022.
Ron DeSantis and the latest battle over Black history
As Black History Month begins today in the US, the country’s latest culture war battle is about … Black history.
On Wednesday, the College Board, a national nonprofit that sets educational standards for colleges, is set to release the framework for a new Advanced Placement course in African American history.
The course has been in the culture war crosshairs since Ron DeSantis, the popular conservative governor of Florida, last week nixed a pilot version of the curriculum from his state’s public high schools, saying it violates his 2022 “Stop WOKE ACT,” which aims to limit the teaching of progressive ideas such as “Critical Race Theory.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the US education system,AP programs are college-level courses for high school students.
If you’re unsure what Critical Race Theory is, it’s an academic approach that argues that racial hierarchies and discriminatory norms have shaped our social, legal, and economic systems, and that racism remains woven into those systems even in the absence of explicitly racist laws.
At issue in Florida are several sections of the AP course that draw on critical theory approaches to address criminal justice, the experiences of non-heterosexual Black people, and reparations for slavery.
DeSantis’ critics say he is censoring certain subjects for political reasons and that he is unfairly singling out African American studies for special scrutiny. A court has already partially blocked application of the Stop WOKE Act over free speech concerns, and Florida students backed by a prominent civil rights attorney have already threatened to sue DeSantis over the AP decision. On Tuesday, DeSantis doubled down, announcing that he now wants to prohibit state universities from spending money on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives, which aim to broaden the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the student body and staff.
DeSantis, one of America’s foremost conservative culture warriors, says he’s preventing he “indoctrination” of students with ideas that he and his supporters say foment social conflict rather than national unity. Florida’s existing African American history requirements, he points out, already include a focus on the legacies of slavery and racism.
The intrigue: What will the final version of the course look like? The College Board, which took several years to develop the course, has reportedly said it won’t make changes based specifically on Florida’s reaction. If that’s true, the culture war battle lines will be as crisply drawn as ever.
One thing is certain: The move to ban the course is good politics for DeSantis if he wants to inherit — or swipe — the mantle of GOP leadership from Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Arecent poll shows nearly 80% of Republicans oppose teaching “Critical Race Theory” and that 43% oppose teaching about racism at all.
Small wonder that DeSantis’ fellow Republican, Nikki Haley, who harbors higher office ambitions of her own, weighed in with a tersely tweetedswipe at CRT herself earlier this week.
What do you think? Is DeSantis protecting kids from indoctrination, or is he censoring legitimate academic viewpoints? Let us know here (**hides under desk**) – and if you include your name and location, we might publish your response.
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Critical race theory and Black voting rights
Did conservative backlash against critical race theory influence Republican-led US states to pass new voting laws restricting Black Americans' access to the ballot box?
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page thinks so, to a certain extent, he tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Anything that looks like Black history or that makes white children feel bad, he says, has been inaccurately labeled as critical race theory and presented as a danger, motivating a lot of voters to get rid of it — for instance through voter suppression.
For Page, it's ironic that some in the party of Abraham Lincoln are now fighting those old Civil War battles again as far as democracy is concerned.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Black voter suppression in 2022
The 1619 Project’s creator Nikole Hannah-Jones discusses its cultural impact
Today, we take a fresh look at US history—and the role Black people have played in it—with a woman who is reshaping that national conversation. When Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones published the “1619 Project” in 2019, not even she could have predicted its cultural impact. It’s hard to think of another piece of modern journalism that has garnered such praise while also sparking such intense outrage. Now, her new book, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, expands upon her initial work. She joins Ian Bremmer for an in-depth look at how she’s trying to reshape US history, and the backlash it has caused.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Counter narrative: Black Americans, the 1619 Project, and Nikole Hannah-Jones
Was modern America built on slavery?
At the start of the Revolutionary War, slaves made up 20 percent of the population in British North America. They later built iconic buildings of US democracy like the Capitol and the White House in Washington.
But what if slavery was more than just America’s original sin? What if the institution of slavery itself was foundational to modern America?
That's what Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones defends — in very simple terms — in the 1619 Project. This sprawling collection of essays, short stories, and poetry published in 2019 argues that American history begins not in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence but rather 157 years earlier, when the first slave ship arrived in the British colonies on the other side of the Atlantic.
The 1619 Project landed like a cultural atom bomb. And soon later, the formerly obscure academic field known as “critical race theory” or CRT took center stage at conservative rallies and school board meetings.
What's the relationship, if any, between the two? Ian Bremmer explains.
Counter narrative: Black Americans, the 1619 Project, and Nikole Hannah-Jones
According to the 1619 Project's’ Nikole Hannah-Jones, America was founded on liberty, equality, and…slavery. The institution of slavery, she argues, was the foundation upon which the country achieved its economic and political greatness. It’s a claim that set the cultural world on fire when the 1619 Project was published in the New York Times in 2019 and now, as she compiles and expands upon that project in a new book, controversy has erupted once again.
Why the 1619 Project triggered a US culture war?
America, the saying goes, was founded on liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. That's what makes the US "exceptional."
Not for Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who believes the institutional foundation upon which the US achieved its economic and political greatness is... slavery.
Almost three years ago, she published the 1619 Project, a landmark piece of modern journalism that's as loved on one end of the US political spectrum as hated on the other. And surely enough in today's divided America, it sparked a full-blown culture war.
Hannah-Jones admits some of the criticism was fair. In fact, she’s just published an extended version of the project in book form in part to improve the original. But she rejects those who’ve tried to disqualify her and the project altogether.
A lot of the backlash against her can be traced to many Americans never learning in school that slavery was not at all accidental. "We chose it,” she says, “and it led to our success in many ways."
Even Black people, she recalls from growing up, are "erased" from US history from the Civil War until the civil rights movement.
Most Americans, in her opinion, fail to see the problem because they "are deeply, deeply invested in this mythology of exceptionalism." And to believe in that, Hannah-Jones says that "then you have to downplay the role of slavery" in a nation that's been "plagued by racism and inequality from our beginning."
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Podcast: How we got here: Evaluating 1619 and US history with Nikole Hannah-Jones
Listen: When Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah Jones published the “1619 Project” in 2019, not even she could have predicted its cultural impact. It’s hard to think of another piece of modern journalism that has garnered such praise while also sparking such intense outrage. Now, her new book, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, expands upon her initial work. She joins Ian Bremmer for an in-depth look at how she’s trying to reshape US history, and the backlash it has caused.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Nikole Hannah-Jones pushes back against "disqualifying" 1619 ... ›
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