Abstract
Without a movement toward a “rational middle,” one scholar believes the cultural fault lines exposed in the 2016 election will produce a repeat result in 2020.
Presently, one of the most important values conflicts in American society is between freedom of expression and diversity and inclusion. In one 2017 survey on freedom of speech and tolerance in America by the Cato Institute and YouGov.com, 59% of Americans agreed with the statement: “People should be allowed to express unpopular opinions in public, even those that are deeply offensive to other people.” Yet the same study revealed distinct differences along racial/ethnic, political affiliation, and gender lines. A majority of Whites (66%) agreed with the statement, while only 42% of African Americans and 41% of Latinx respondents agreed. Among Democrats, only 47% agreed, while 60% of Independents and 72% of Republicans agreed. Among males, 67% agreed versus 51% of females.
In another study, a 2018 Knight-Ridder and Gallup poll on free speech versus diversity and inclusion among college students, similar patterns emerged. Asked “If you had to choose, which do you think is most important?” and given a choice between protecting free speech rights or creating a diverse and inclusive society, 53% of all college students privileged a diverse and inclusive society, and 46% chose protecting free speech rights. Breaking down the responses by race, political affiliation, and gender changed things: 68% of Black students, 66% of Democrats, and 64% of college women favored a diverse and inclusive society, while 52% of Whites, 69% of Republicans, and 61% of men favored protecting free speech.
These value differences are, increasingly, cultural templates for action in the American political sphere. In the 2016 election, no major polls predicted a Trump victory. In the wake of his election, critics of the Clinton campaign stressed that it had focused far too much on the values of diversity and inclusion, values that underly the entire project of identity politics. This, critics charged, alienated large numbers of White voters, especially working-class Whites. These voters, given their lower socioeconomic status, most likely did not feel especially “privileged.” Instead, they were frustrated by their exclusion from the various categories of marginality produced by left-wing identity politics. Meanwhile, Trump’s political demagoguery zeroed in on such voters and undertook a strategy of painting majority groups as “victims” of left-wing identity politics. Trump proved himself a master of manipulation by amplifying subjectively real feelings of alienation, especially among the White working-class. They sided with the candidate they felt would “speak for them.” Mobilized in this way, their majority numbers ensured Trump’s victory.
The election had everything to do with differences in value preferences between freedom of expression, on the one hand, and diversity and inclusion, on the other. Those who mobilized along the values of diversity and inclusion did so in an affectively powerful public way. Those who favored freedom of expression, however, did not actively assert this value as the basis for their political choices. Rather, they were primed to see themselves as thwarted in their freedom of expression by “political correctness,”came to see Donald Trump as the “freedom of expression” candidate, and voted for him. This was a mostly silent process, in which people made political choices, but did not indicate either to pollsters or others in their social environments their preferences in the election. Ironically, this preference falsification, this self-censorship of voters’ preferences, was the very means by which their preferences for the value of freedom of expression could be realized in the political sphere. However imperfect, Donald Trump became a vessel in which they could deposit their frustrations.
All of these dynamics are still at play in American society. Indeed, the cultural fault lines have intensified. The 2020 election is likely to produce a repeat of the 2016 results.
One of the most regrettable consequences is the idea among many voters that Trump is the protector of freedom of expression in America. Clearly, the radical right relishes this idea, but it is much more diffused across the political spectrum, if not among left-liberal intellectuals, than among ordinary voters who feel stifled in their freedom of expression, see the source of that stifling coming from the left, and turn toward reactionary forces. This explains, to some extent, the increasing attraction of alt-right politics among young White men.
Clearly, what is necessary is a movement toward a rational middle. In a polarized context, public consciousness is pulled toward the extremes of each side of the cultural fault line. One path to a rational middle might involve a greater appreciation on the left, especially among those who favor identity politics agendas, of the classical liberal ideal of freedom of expression. The greatest exponent of this ideal was John Stuart Mill, whose sociological vision for a good society and human flourishing (most highly developed in On Liberty) is founded on the centrality of protecting and fostering maximal human expressivity.
My own experience tells me that Mill’s advocacy of the liberty of thought and expression is more or less rejected by left-wing intellectuals, sometimes in quite hostile ways. Freedom of expression is seen, actually and potentially, as oppressive to marginalized peoples, as denying them voice and limiting their emancipation. Some even argue that only the voices of the oppressed should be heard, that the voices of the privileged and powerful must be muted. That is, to free the repressed, we must repress. These are simplistic, reductionistic, and ideologically tendentious views that ignore the historical and sociological reality that freedom of expression is the foundational value that underlies all other rights claims.
