Readers know I do a monthly book roundup, where I write briefly about 4 or 5 books I’ve recently read. But every now and then, I find myself wanting to say more about a particular book. Polarized by Degrees by Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins is one of those.
For one, it’s timely. Most of us know there’s something wrong with U.S. politics, even at the level of everyday discussion. Things get heated and contentious. Many Americans – particularly members of marginalized groups – feel unwelcome in their own country. And we see rising levels of hate crimes, often with politicians openly egging them on.
This situation leads some of us to look for the source of the unrest. What divides us?
According to the chattering classes, especially pundits, identity forms the dividing force. We see this from both progressive and conservative ends, with the former blaming racism and/or toxic masculinity and the latter blaming the ‘woke mind virus’ or some such. It has gotten to the point where I use the term ‘identitarianism‘ to get at the assumption shared by both progressives and right-wingers that politics and/or political explanation reduce to identity.
After the dust settled from the 2024 election, people combed through the data to see how the vote broke down by demographic groups. And, of course, they brought their identitarian assumptions to the table. They wanted to know how race and gender drove the vote. Because what else could have done it?
And so they brought out the standard playbook of questions. Did Harris lose because ‘ugh, white women again!’? Did she lose because black men ‘abandoned’ her?
In Polarized by Degrees, Grossmann and Hopkins suggest something else matters more than identity.
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