Identity in Democracy

Amy Gutmann

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781400825523
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Written by one of America's leading political thinkers, this is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity politics.Amy Gutmann rises above the raging polemics that often characterize discussions of identity groups and offers a fair-minded assessment of the role they play in democracies. She addresses fundamental questions of timeless urgency while keeping in focus their relevance to contemporary debates: Do some identity groups undermine the greater democratic good and thus their own legitimacy in a democratic society? Even if so, how is a democracy to fairly distinguish between groups such as the KKK on the one hand and the NAACP on the other? Should democracies exempt members of some minorities from certain legitimate or widely accepted rules, such as Canada's allowing Sikh members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to wear turbans instead of Stetsons? Do voluntary groups like the Boy Scouts have a right to discriminate on grounds of sexual preference, gender, or race?
Identity-group politics, Gutmann shows, is not aberrant but inescapable in democracies because identity groups represent who people are, not only what they want--and who people are shapes what they demand from democratic politics. Rather than trying to abolish identity politics, Gutmann calls upon us to distinguish between those demands of identity groups that aid and those that impede justice. Her book does justice to identity groups, while recognizing that they cannot be counted upon to do likewise to others.
Clear, engaging, and forcefully argued, Amy Gutmann's Identity in Democracy provides the fractious world of multicultural and identity-group scholarship with a unifying work that will sustain it for years to come.

CHAPTER ONE

The Claims of Cultural Identity Groups

To abrogate tribal decisions, particularly in the delicate area of membership, for whatever ‘good’ reasons, is to destroy cultural identity under the guise of saving it.”

—Martinez v Romney, 402 F Supp 5, 19 (D NM 1975)

“The extension of constitutional rights to individual citizens is intended to intrude upon the authority of government.”

—Justice White’s dissent in Santa Clara Pueblo v Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 83 (1978)

The most common kind of identity group around which controversy stirs is the cultural identity group. When the term culture is loosely used, cultural identity subsumes the entire universe of identity groups, and every social marker around which people identify with one another is called cultural.¹ Culture, so considered, is the universal social glue that unites people into identity groups, and the category becomes so broad as to be rather useless for understanding differences among identity groups.²

Some political theorists of culture such as Avishai Margalit, Moshe Halbertal, Joseph Raz, and Will Kymlicka are much more careful in specifying what constitutes a cultural group. They consider a cultural identity group to be a group that represents a way of life that is (close to) “encompassing” or “comprehensive” (terms that are used inter-changeably). A culture, Margalit and Raz argue, provides the comprehensive context within which its members make choices.³ Culture also offers an “anchor for self-identification and the safety of effortless, secure belonging.”⁴

The groups identified as cultural in this sense, although various in their content, are united by distinctive features when compared to other groups. Tribes like the Pueblo, Navajo, Hopi, Inuit, Sami, and Maori, for example, are each distinctive cultures, yet they share the status of indigenous peoples, separated by their cultures from the larger societies of which they are a separate part. National minorities, like the Basques and Catalans, are another kind of cultural group whose internal differences are as striking as their formal similarity as national minorities.⁵ Still other cultural identity groups are defined by a specific religion (as are some indigenous cultures), so the cultural categories overlap. Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel and the Old Order Amish in the United States, two very different religious groups, are both often considered identity groups that represent fairly encompassing cultures.

In light of such great variation among cultural groups, what makes them an important category to consider for democratic politics is that all make far-ranging claims on democracy in the name of their cultural identity. The claims are understandably great once a person’s culture is considered “a constitutive part of who the person is.”⁶ The claims include rights of sovereignty for the group, exemptions from laws that disproportionately disadvantage the group’s members, aid for the group’s cultural institutions, and support for the group’s cultural survival. Rather than simply applaud or condemn cultural identity groups, we need to evaluate these kinds of claims in order to understand the ways in which they can both aid and impede democratic justice.

The most common ground invoked in defending claims of cultural identity groups is the idea that culture shapes individual identity in a comprehensive way. Members of minority cultures are therefore decisively disadvantaged if democratic politics is connected to a dominant culture that is alien and therefore alienating to them. How can democratic politics be so culturally biased rather than neutral? Democratic politics typically depends on some dominant culture that includes a common language (or languages), school curricula, occupations, ceremonies and holidays, and even architectural styles that are not culturally neutral. Members of minority cultures are therefore denied equal freedom and civic equality, the argument continues, when democratic governments fail to protect minority cultures while effectively protecting the dominant culture simply by virtue of politics as usual. By using a particular language, history, education, architecture, and a host of customs to carry on politics, a democratic government supports some cultures and not others. It cannot possibly support all cultures to the same extent and still act coherently or keep a society together. Cultural neutrality is not an option for a lot of governmental action and expression. In recognition of the lack of cultural neutrality and out of fairness to members of cultural minority groups, democracies and democratic citizens are taking more seriously than ever before the question that forms the focus of this chapter: What kind of political claims on behalf of cultural identity groups are justified in democracies, and why?

Before proceeding, we need to be as clear as possible about what theorists of culture mean by a culture. A culture, as Margalit and Raz put it, “defines or marks a variety of forms or styles of life, types of activity, occupation, pursuit, and relationship. With national groups we expect to find national cuisines, distinctive architectural styles, a common language, distinctive literary and artistic traditions, national music, customs, dress, ceremonies and holidays, etc.”⁷ The ideal type of a culture, so understood, is comprehensive, but no single characteristic—such as a common language, dress, holidays, or territorial concentration—is absolutely necessary for an actual culture to be considered as such. Theorists of culture assume a rough approximation rather than a perfect match of the actual to the ideal type: a culture constitutes and constrains the identities (and therefore the lives) of its members by providing them with a common language, history, institutions of socialization, range of occupations, lifestyles, distinctive literary and artistic traditions, architectural styles, music, dress, ceremonies and holidays, and customs that are shared by an intergenerational community that occupies a distinct territory.⁸ Actual cultures encompass the lives of their members in many of these ways but not necessarily all. That’s not a problem, write Margalit and Raz, “that’s life.”⁹ What turns out to be a problem, I will argue, is the extent to which some political claims of cultural identity groups for sovereignty and the like depend on their actually encompassing the identities of members and therefore limiting some people’s freedom and opportunity in inequitable ways.

CLAIMS OF CULTURAL RECOGNITION

The political question that arises once we recognize the non-neutrality of democratic governance is: What claims of cultural identity groups should be politically recognized, and why? To answer this question, theorists of culture begin by asking a fundamental question: What publicly important goods can cultural groups provide?

One good is a context for choice: Cultures provide the contexts within which individuals exercise their freedom and opportunity. Depending on whether a person was brought up as Pueblo, Navajo, Old Order Amish, Basque, Catalan, Scotch, Welsh, Ultra-Orthodox Israel Jew, secular Israeli, Inuit, Québécois, or Anglophone Canadian, her cultural options will differ. Both the nature and the range of her choices will vary with her cultural upbringing and context. Free individuals should be able to decide for themselves how they want to live their lives among the options that are open to them, but “the range of options can’t be chosen.”¹⁰ The range of options available to an individual—the context of choice—is said to be given by the comprehensive culture. Culture, so conceived, is therefore both comprehensive and the context for individual freedom of choice.

Because every person needs a context of choice, every person needs a culture. Freedom is possible because comprehensive cultures can give people a broad range of options of how to live their lives. The options are available within the culture, and therefore individuals do not need to range beyond a particular societal culture to live freely as long as the culture really does offer equal freedom to its members. What theorists of culture emphasize is that freedom is exercised within a culture. However, some theorists of culture, such as Kymlicka, are more attuned than others to the need for cultures to offer equal freedom to all members, not just to some.

Beyond providing the context of free choice, cultural groups also can provide their members with social security because of the givenness of culture. Cultural membership is “a matter of belonging, not of achievement.”¹¹ Merit has nothing to do with cultural membership: “To be a good Irishman . . . is an achievement,” as Margalit and Raz explain, “But to be an Irishman is not.”¹² This unearned quality of cultural membership turns out to be a highly valued fact of human life for many people. When competition for careers, honors, and status abounds within a culture, the good of secure belonging may become even more valuable because it is scarcer.¹³ Theorists of culture conclude that “it is in the interests of every person to be fully integrated in a cultural group.”¹⁴ Insecure selves are not the civic equals of secure selves. Moreover, if citizens are equally insecure, they are not well served by their societies.

Yet another social good that cultural identity can help secure is self-respect. Self-respect goes beyond security. It is the “sense that one’s plan of life is worth carrying out.” Without a sense of self-respect, activities and choices in life may have little or no point. Self-respect, so conceived, is a necessary condition for the meaningfulness of a person’s life activities. In the absence of self-respect, the choices that people make—their freedom—would be far less valuable. With self-respect, people’s lives matter that much more to them. To support self-respect among civic equals, democratic societies must also support the particular cultural contexts that orient people’s lives. Particular cultures constitute the context within which particular people can be self-respecting and exercise equal freedom, depending on their cultural upbringing.

The need to be reciprocally recognized fuels a democratic politics of cultural recognition.¹⁵ A politics of cultural recognition connects self-respect and cultural identity. Charles Taylor argues that free individuals “can flourish only to the extent that [they] are recognized. Each consciousness seeks recognition in another, and this is not a sign of a lack of virtue.”¹⁶

Why does the need for reciprocity require political recognition rather than toleration of all cultures that respect the freedom of individuals to pursue their own philosophies of life as long as they do no injustice to others?¹⁷ Reciprocity may not be limited to being recognized politically as an “abstract” free and equal person with a shared general capacity to choose a good life consistently with the demands of justice. Reciprocal respect may depend on public recognition of the value of some cultural particularities that are not universally valued, such as the particular language, history, and customs that help constitute the context of choice for people who identify with that culture.¹⁸

All modern democratic societies contain multiple cultures within them. This is a straightforward sense in which democratic societies can be called multicultural. Some cultural identity groups come closer to providing a comprehensive context of choice for their members than others. Since minority cultural groups in a democratic society must compete with the dominant culture to provide a context of choice for their members, they find themselves at a disadvantage. The context of choice for their members is not the one favored by governmental institutions and practices. The democratic state protects the dominant culture, whether intentionally or not, through the language it uses, the education it accredits, the history it honors, and the holidays and other customs that it keeps. The state and the dominant public culture that it supports, both indirectly and directly, cannot be culturally neutral in this sense. Government conducts its business, public schools teach, and the mass media broadcast in the dominant language and in conformity with a culturally distinctive calendar. Family law conforms to the dominant culture. The civic associations with the highest social status favor people who identify with the dominant culture. Distance from the dominant culture also carries with it economic and educational disadvantages through no fault of the individuals whose cultural upbringing differs from the dominant one.

This is the context in which minority cultural groups make claims upon democratic governments that most theorists of culture support in the name of equal freedom, opportunity, and civic equality. (Later we will also consider demands made in the name of survival of the culture itself, which some theorists of culture also support.) To ensure equal respect for persons, democratic governments are asked to exempt cultural minorities from laws that impose disproportionate burdens on their cultural identities. The claim of Canadian Sikhs to be exempt from wearing the traditional hat of the Canadian Mounted Police so that they may wear their traditional turban at work is an example of this kind of demand, rooted in a distinctive cultural identity. While the Canadian Mounted Police exempted the Sikhs so that they might wear their turbans, the United States Air Force refused to exempt American Orthodox Jewish men from their uniform policy so that they might wear their yarmulkes (and the United States Supreme Court upheld the military’s right to refuse).¹⁹

Other claims by minority cultural groups include asking for public support for their language alongside the dominant one in governmental institutions and schools, seeking state aid for their cultural institutions ranging from art museums to old age homes, seeking inclusion of their group’s history, art, and literature in the public school curricula, and a host of other claims to acknowledge the equal civic standing and inclusion of their cultural identity in the larger democratic society.²⁰ what all of these claims tend to share is a call by (or on behalf of ) cultural identity groups to be supported by the larger democracy not despite their cultural identity but on the basis of it.

Claims by members of cultural minorities for equal freedom and respect, taking into account rather than disregarding their cultural identities, need not be seen as threats to create culture wars. Some claims, as we shall see, can be justified by democratic principles. The claims still may be controversial, but controversy alone is no reason for minorities to shy away from making just claims or for democratic governments to pursue their promise of equal liberty and justice for all rather than for only those who identify with the dominant culture.

A CHALLENGING CASE

Many minorities that are commonly considered cultural, however, do not come close to fitting the ideal type of a comprehensive or encompassing culture. The Canadian Sikhs who sought exemption from wearing the official Mounties hat—and gained it through the defensible workings of democratic politics—integrate different cultures in their lives; they are far from a comprehensive cultural group. Theorists of culture differ in what groups count as cultural in the comprehensive sense. Indigenous peoples like the Pueblo in the United States, the Inuit in C...