Individualist citizenship logic hides group-based harm and privilege.

Evidence

The idea of a monocultural, secular state works to consolidate who is understood to be the ideal citizen. Since the ideal citizen is an individual without any sort of group-based identity, a non-citizen is someone who remains trapped within group-based identities. The terrible danger of the autonomous individual as citizen is the closing down of the possibility of acknowledging group-based harm, as well as group-based privilege. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 381 (#expands, via linked claim)

The idea of a monocultural, secular state works to consolidate who is understood to be the ideal citizen. Since the ideal citizen is an individual without any sort of group-based identity, a non-citizen is someone who remains trapped within group-based identities. The terrible danger of the autonomous individual as citizen is the closing down of the possibility of acknowledging group-based harm, as well as group-based privilege. If, as Lauren Berlant has shown, property, privacy, and individuality become ‘the only ground for the true practice of nationhood’ and the ideal citizen is unanchored in history and concrete social relations, then specific harms such as colonialism and racism cannot be acknowledged. Conversely, the specific entitlements enjoyed by colonizers (in this case, the right to be seen as normative citizens) become invisible. Reparations or strategies designed for specific groups come to seem like ‘catering to the unique sensitivity of a small group’ and not as part of an answer to a highly structured inequality. It is this logic that enables so many to easily dismiss Black-focused schools and affirmative action as encouraging narrow tribal identities rather than the redressing of contemporary and historical injustice. Why don’t we all just assimilate is the plaintive response to historical injustice increasingly heard whenever racial minorities press their claims for justice. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 381 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Unchecked individualism destroys individuality rather than protecting it — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 169; Openness advocacy assumes privileges that make self-disclosure safe only for some — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 620; Divine legitimization of group advantage removes accountability for causing harm. (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• The autonomous-individual ideal of citizenship structurally prevents acknowledging group-based harms. #expands (0.95) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 381
• The autonomous-citizen ideal renders group-based injustice and reparations invisible #expands (0.95) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 381
• Individualism becomes a defense of the status quo by delegitimizing group-based demands #expands (0.92)
• Acknowledging group privilege triggers collective rather than individual guilt #complicates (0.72) — Janet K. Swim and Deborah L. Miller, White Guilt, 25