Weakening national identity reduces minorities’ capacity to affirm belonging

Evidence

If ethnic conflict arises so much from immediate social conditions—displacement on one hand and blocked mobility on the other—what significance attaches to the larger contours of American nationalism? Have scholars been entirely misguided in their attention to beliefs? It would be rash to think so. No nation can be effective without a vision of what it wants to be. If part of our ethnic problem today is the absence of such a vision, surely part of the solution is its recovery. As the bonds of national loyalty loosen, their capacity to unite diminishes along with their capacity to exclude. One must wonder whether the eclipse of liberal nationalism since the 1960s has not deprived all of the nation’s minorities of a powerful means of affirming their belonging and their fraternity with one another. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 2074

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s question about what happens to in-group solidarity when the external enemy recedes — Higham argues inclusive nationalism itself, not threat, historically supplied the coherence, suggesting a non-enemy basis for unity. — connects to: Minority status is relative to national context; Nested cultural identities reinforce rather than displace loyalty to larger wholes — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 344; Full state embrace of one’s nationalist ideology forecloses minority accommodation. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 719 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Minority status is relative to national context #expands (0.75)
• Nested cultural identities reinforce rather than displace loyalty to larger wholes #qualifies (0.75) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 344