Steinbuch is apparently unaware of the fact that there exists a significant body of literature on the left that is devastatingly critical of official multiculturalism, identity politics, and diversity initiatives. In his 2017 book, "Northern Ireland and the Crisis of Anti-Racism," sociologist Chris Gilligan uses the term "multicultural racism" to attack official efforts on matters of diversity. "The multicultural view involves a conception of human beings in which one's ethnic or racial identity is considered to be core to one's sense of self, and to provide a common collective bond with others," he writes, noting that such multiculturalism, by reifying the validity of race, actually perpetuates the same division of humanity that racism does. Todd McGowan, in his 2020 book, "Universality and Identity Politics," echoes this critique of identity, writing, "Identity provides a political position that enables one never to leave the confines of what one already is." Like Gilligan, he observes that "the only way to ensure the establishment of a particular identity is through the subordination of every competing identity." He even proclaims rather straightforwardly, "Diversity is not a leftist project." Identity can never carry us to the point of shared humanity, according to philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, a gay man living in America, born of a British Christian mother and a father from the Ashanti region of Ghana, who has spent much of his career interrogating the complex nature of identity. At the end of his book, "The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity" (2018), he writes, "The cosmopolitan impulse that draws on our common humanity is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity." So to assert, as does Steinbuch, that concerns about "pigment and plumbing" constitute a standard feature of leftist discourse is in error. But does this mean, given how both right and left decry identity politics, that efforts at developing, in public institutions, a staff reflective of local demographics is to engage in what Gilligan called "multicultural racism"? Not necessarily. Our Founding Fathers intended that the U.S. Constitution produce not simply a system by which people might be ruled but, instead, produce a citizenry capable of ruling itself. This is why they were particularly concerned about public virtue. "To suppose any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without virtue in the people is a chimerical idea," wrote James Madison, while according to Benjamin Franklin, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom." In "Rights of Man" (1791), Thomas Paine emphasized that the people constitute the source of sovereignty in any legitimate form of government: "The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist." But self-government is not merely the practice of voting or holding office, for the government extends beyond legislative bodies. Taking part in the practice of self-government may also entail service in any number of public bodies, from the military and police to state universities and public schools and libraries. After all, such institutions were founded by the people and are funded by the people in order to serve the people. And the question has arisen throughout American history: Who are "the people," and to what extent might they be considered a self-governing people? The 14th Amendment extended citizenship to people once held in slavery and their descendants, while the 19th Amendment extended the franchise to women who were already considered citizens. However, the right to vote alone does not make a people self-governing, especially if they are excluded from participation in other forms of public service...Insisting that my interests be tailored exclusively to however I might identify myself, or be so identified by others, would limit my horizons--and also would ignore the fact that culture has never been static but has always been an evolving interchange of various influences. Arkansas novelist Donald Harington was heavily influenced by Russian-born Vladimir Nabokov, who was, in turn, a devotee of English playwright William Shakespeare. So it goes. Throughout our history, as citizenship and the franchise have been expanded, so too have the newly enfranchised expanded their own horizons of self-government. This is why, for example, women and African Americans have fought to join the military--and not only to join the military, but to undertake combat duty. In public institution after institution, marginalized peoples have fought to be included. Police forces. Universities. Libraries. If you are told that you are a full member of a self-governing people, but there is no one representing your community in an institution like the police or the military, you may well be forgiven for assuming the powers that be don't actually want you to be self-governing, but instead governed.
