Tribal partisans and prejudice

A couple of weeks ago Slate published an article by Shankar Vedantam comparing racism with partisanship. Initially I rejected the idea but as I read I could see the parallels that the author was trying to draw. I still think that the level of hate and destruction that is associated with racism dwarves partisanship, but the comparison is valid.

People make assumptions about other people based on their “political tribe.” You are a Liberal/Conservative therefore you must be corrupt/racist. Even if a partisan is not that extreme in their assumptions, they adopt an instant negative attitude towards partisans of a different stripe (or colour?). I have seen it happen many times.

Mr. Vedantam points out that there is a real social element to partisanship that has nothing to do with your attitude towards public policy:

In recent years, a number of political scientists have argued that our party loyalties drive our views about issues, not the other way around. But if our views don't make us Democrats or Republicans, what does? Consider this thought experiment: I have two neighbors, Jack and Jill. Jill is an African-American woman and a yoga instructor. Jack is a white man and an evangelical Christian. I've told you nothing about Jack and Jill's views about abortion, government, guns, taxes, or foreign policy. Yet most of us would have no trouble guessing that Jill is a Democrat and Jack is a Republican. How do we know this? Because social identity—race, gender, religious affiliation, geographical location—play an outsize (and largely hidden) role in determining our partisan affiliations.

This paragraph reminded of an incident at a party my girlfriend and I attended. It was a party that was exclusive for conservative/libertarian bloggers, activists, and academics. At one point the host brought out snacks and my girlfriend declined because she doesn’t eat meat. Another guest asked her if it was for moral or health reasons. She said it was moral and he sneered at her.

In what polite society do you sneer at someone for something as harmless as being a vegetarian? Actually I don’t think he sneered because of the vegetarianism. I think he sneered because her being a vegetarian led him to make assumptions about her being “one of the bad guys.” That just about fits the definition of prejudice.

Making flawed and rude assumptions is not what concerns me the most about this form of tribal partisanship. The real concern is that people might close their mind to certain policy solutions because the idea supposedly belongs to another tribe.

In University I use to amuse myself by figuring out the political tribe of a stranger and then confusing him/her. For example, in a conversation with a socialist (it is not a slur) I first antagonized him by talking about the virtues of a flat tax. Then just as he was getting whiled up, I switched the topic to the evils of the drug war.

He stared at me in disbelieve and asked, “What are you? Left wing or right wing?”

At the time I laughed at the question but the older I get the less funny and the more disheartening that question seams to me. Too many people base their entire intellectual life on this false dichotomy of left versus right. Both the “left” and the “right” do not prescribe to a consistent set of policies. Far from being policy distinctions, “left” and “right” are in reality social distinctions. It is defined by who your friends are.

The tragedy of this is that it blinds people to solutions that would otherwise seem obvious. If you reject ideas solely because you don’t like who came up with it (or who supports it) then how can an honest debate exist? How are we going to find the correct course if you do not consider all the options?

The flip side of all this is that tribal partisanship is not nearly a prolific as Mr. Vedantam implies (to be fair he was writing about a different country). The vast majority of people do not self identify with political labels. If you ask random people on the street to pick five words to describe themselves I doubt that many would say left, right, conservative, or liberal. I suspect that Toronto Maple Leafs would come up more often (and if ever there was an argument against blind tribal loyalty it is the Leafs).

This means that most of the public are actually open minded about policy ideas. Most people do not have a set entrenched position on tax policy. At the end of the day we are still a society of non-partisans.