Identity, Tolerance, and the Politics of Place

Respect for traditional Western institutions is at an all time low. Education, social media and the many variations of the “world wide web” have given individuals a sense of power as never before. People movement has brought a clash of cultures to pluralist societies; terrorism has made the marginalisation of minorities more explicit. Moral codes are being re-written. How to cope in a moral and civil sense is a concern for many. The Rev Peter Kurti is a research fellow with the Centre for Independent Studies and author of The Tyranny of Tolerance. On Wednesday 30 August 2017, at The Sydney Institute, Peter Kurti joined lawyer Louise Clegg to discuss identity politics, the issue of new age tolerance and the politics of place.

IDENTITY, TOLERANCE, AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE

PETER KURTI 

Thank you, Gerard and Anne, for your hospitality this evening, and for the invitation extended to Louise and me to address The Sydney Institute.

Almost every day we must strike a balance between cultural changes taking place in the broader society; evolving community norms; and laws that set new standards for public behaviour. Striking a balance between competing demands can be challenging – especially, but not only, for religious believers trying to follow precepts set down in sacred texts.

Into this mix of competing demands we need to add two prominent ideas that loom large: identity and tolerance. Identity because it is the basis on which claims are often asserted by one group against those of another group. And tolerance because it no longer means open-mindedness. Rather, it is has come to be deployed as a weapon of intolerance to enforce those claims.

I won’t present you with an algorithm for striking the balance between competing demands. Rather, I want to sketch some of the factors that have given rise to these tricky matters of identity and tolerance, and which make striking such a balance so complex. To that extent, my remarks are diagnostic rather than prognostic.

These factors – which I see as being in play for a long time to come – have shaped my thinking for some time now about a broad range of issues, and I have discussed them at much greater length in The Tyranny of Tolerance.

So, in the few minutes I have, I want to look at three things: Rights, Diversity, and Equality because these are three of the key “factors of complexity” dominating so much of public debate.

The first factor of complexity: Rights

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed in 1948, in the aftermath of World War II, it marked a new way of thinking about rights. The original purpose behind invoking natural rights – held regardless of social status – was to protect the individual from the arbitrary exercise of power by the state.

These rights were concerned with freedom. They allow for an individual to establish a sphere of personal sovereignty and autonomy. “Freedom rights” can be observed simply by doing nothing. During the turbulent decade of the 1970s, however, “human” – in contrast to “natural” – rights emerged as a potent political force.

This re-designation of “natural” rights as “human” rights effectively recast them as an entitlement to be claimed by the citizen against the state.  They addressed new categories of oppression, such as gender and sexual orientation, and they did not embrace political rights held in common with all citizens. Instead, “human” rights sought to describe the rights of people who self-identified according to one or more group identities over and against the majority as a means of validating identity.

This is the basis of what has come to be known as “identity politics” with its key underlying idea of oppression that is suffered by one social group at the hands of the dominant culture. It is also the basis on which duties are claimed by the group, and imposed on other individuals, without any reciprocity on the part of the rights-bearers. This marks a significant shift in the rhetoric of rights.

Freedom rights, therefore, have given way to claim rights which are asserted as a claim upon a non-specific benefit, such as education, health, a standard of living, or even compensation.  “Claim rights” are simply demands – asserted on the basis of a presumed duty – that someone else do something for someone who has an interest in the demand being met.

The result is that the liberal concept of the sovereign individual is in danger of being usurped; one who bears an “identity” is emerging in its place. This entails more than simply a shift in terminology; it represents a style of social engineering that poses a significant threat to liberty because it will entail an increase rather than a limitation of the power of the state. 

The second factor of complexity: Diversity

Diversity in Australian society has increased as the number of migrants to this country has increased. For the most part, Australians not only welcome these levels of immigration; they are proud of the benefits that cultural diversity brings to Australia and regard it as an important part of national identity.

One of the consequences of the tribalism promoted by the rise of identity politics, however, is that instead of regarding cultural and ethnic diversity as both natural and as something to be welcomed, it is increasingly being regarded as evidence of increased inequality.

In their search for evidence to support their claims about growing inequality, the identity warriors might even turn to findings of the Scanlon Foundation’s Mapping Social Cohesion reports. The report has been published annually since 2007 and is one of the most reliable indicators of how Australian social attitudes are evolving.

To take one example: in 2016, the survey tracked responses to the question, “To what extent do you have a sense of belonging in Australia?” for the period 2007-2016. It found those experiencing a “great” and “moderate” sense of belonging had declined to 91 per cent (down from 94-96 per cent between 2007-2012), and that the proportion experiencing belonging “to a great extent” had declined from a high point of 77 per cent in 2007 to 66 per cent in 2016.[1]

Although these slightly lower figures still represent a very high level of acceptance and inclusion, such findings can encourage those who are determined to treat the nation as a collection of separate ethnic groups. We are told, of course, that such groups are only able to coexist thanks to managed responses to diversity, and because of standards of tolerance embodied in statute and legally enforced by the state.

Diversity is not just a policy outcome: it has become a moral objective that must be pursued, promoted and enforced by advancing the interests of the group over those of the individual. In a liberal society, however, the rights of the individual and the rights of the group are not necessarily compatible. In this way, the pursuit of diversity can generate a conflict that threatens the liberty of every citizen.

The third factor of complexity: Equality

“Equality” has become one of the most fashionable of the new rights because it has become associated with the idea of disadvantage: anyone who bears any burden of incapacity is judged to be less “equal” in society.

Rights such as the right to equality are intended to address that disadvantage; but, in doing so, they threaten to trump any right they might conflict with, such as the fundamental rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. Although it commonly starts from the correct affirmation that all people are equal in inherent worth as human beings, the concept of equality quickly becomes more complex in its application.

We can think of equality as the principle that “people who are alike should be treated alike.” But the challenge in advancing an argument about equality is to identify how, precisely, people are “alike” for the purposes of the comparison. After all, no two people are alike in every single respect; but all people are alike in some respects. So, in what respects are two people to be considered alike in the comparison being made?

Then, once we have identified this similarity, we need to state how people who are alike should be treated. Well, if we agree that people who are alike should be treated alike, it seems that claims about “equality” add little to the argument.

I think this is one of the reasons the debate about same-sex marriage has been so fractious. Proponents of same-sex marriage base their argument on claims about a similarity between non-heterosexual and heterosexual couples. But many opponents of same-sex marriage hold that no such similarity exists: not only do they say non-heterosexual and heterosexual couples are not alike; they also say the normative claim they should be treated alike must be rejected.

Given that, it is hardly surprising that neither side can find much, if any, common ground around the troubling concept of equality.

Rights, equality, and the calculus of debt

Nonetheless, the ideal of equality retains a powerful hold on the imagination of many who equate – and confuse – equality with justice.

A supposed power imbalance deems the minority vulnerable and, in turn, generates the conviction that that minority is, in some way, owed something by the majority.

This is the calculus of debt offered by identity politics. It is based on the presumption of fault and victimhood, and wagers that the debt can only be repaid through a political scheme of compensation and affirmative action.

Conclusion

This conception that a majority group is in some unspecified way “indebted” to one or more minority groups is very powerful. It can – and does – seriously distort public debate about almost every significant contemporary issue – whether it’s same-sex marriage, constitutional recognition, or the removal of statues.

Rights, diversity, and equality are three significant factors which not only interact and complicate such debates; they have also helped to secure the hold that identity and tolerance have gained over us. These ideas have all helped to usher in the age of what might be called “minority fundamentalism” – to use a phrase first coined by John Howard to describe how a small group – let’s call them “insiders” – gains dominance over the larger group – and let’s call them “outsiders”.

It is an age considered to be concerned with progress.

In fact, it is an age of emerging tyranny – marked by intolerance, characterised by shame and stigma, and a determination to treat those who think differently – the “outsiders” – with contempt.

This is a good point for me to stop and hand over to Louise because she is going to develop some of these arguments with a much closer look at this phenomenon of insiders and outsiders, and to tie it more specifically to the politics of place.

[1] Markus, A., Mapping Social Cohesion: The Scanlon Foundation Surveys 2016 (Victoria: Monash University, 2016), 14.