Identities, Politics, and Rights

Rights and Cultural Difference

Rights and Cultural Difference Martha Minow Political pundits and scholars alike call the end of this turbulent century a period of renewed tribalism. It would be hard to deny the salience of conflicts among ethnic and religious groups around the globe, including the fight between French- and English-speaking Canadians , the ethnic conflicts in eastern Europe, and the cross-tribal violence in South Africa. Patterns in the United States may not be entirely analogous, but many people describe the 1980s and 1990s in this country as a period of identity politics in both electoral and college settings.1 Other related developments include the surge in membership of fundamentalist brands of religion2 and land claims pursued by people asserting wrongful displacement by other groups, whether due to twentieth-century wars or sixteenth-century conquests. Each of these developments shares with the ethnic conflict claims of historic and genealogical group membership. What identity politics adds to the mix are claims of authority, harm, or interest by dint of memberships in groups that may cut across ethnic, religious, or traditional ties, such as status as female, gay or lesbian, or a person with a disability. Taken together, these trends threaten both the ideal and reality of "unity," whether pitched at the level of nation, society, or This chapter was prepared for the Amherst College conference, "Paradoxes of Rights," Nov. 6-8, 1992. 1. The debates between men and women, blacks and whites, and others over the appointment of Oarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court reveal how even the judiciary has been touched by identity politics. 2. See Martin Marty et aI., The Fundamentalism Project (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 347 IDENTITIES, POLITICS, AND RIGHTS even subcommunity.3 Recognizing the many, then, seems to threaten "the one." This formulation of the problem depends upon an unstated point of view. That is the point of view that treats unity as more important than recognition of diversity; that is a view that neglects how "the one" may threaten "the many." I will examine here how shifts in point of view affect evaluations of problems clustered under the phrase "the one and the many." I will also suggest that couching claims for the many in the language of rights should trouble those committed to the interests of the many more than those preoccupied with the demands of unity. I will begin, however, with a brief discussion of the problematic nature of "unity" as a goal. Unity as a Controversial Goal Iris Young, among others, has argued that appeals to unity in politics can be unrealistic, oppressive, and unresponsive to historic patterns of domination.4 One need not agree with this position in order to acknowledge that past campaigns for political or social unity endangered the autonomy and at times the very existence of individuals identified with one or another minority group. The fiction of marital unity according to legal writers such as William Blackstone merged separate people into one by submerging the wife into the legal identity of the husband;5 the banner of national unity similarly often stands for the victory of one group over others in defining the shape of national identity. Such calls to unity often reflect a dominant group's fears about other groups. A president of Amherst College voiced the concerns of many of his times and status when in 1899 he called upon teachers to protect the standards and aims of old New England's civilization against the rival standards of immigrant 3. See discussion in subsequent text regarding the diversity within each "culture ." See also Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 162-63 (each social movement asserting positive group identity has group differences within). 4. See Young, Justice, 179-81 (arguing against the appeal to the unity of a single harmonious polity because the goal is unrealistic, oppressive, and unresponsive to larger patterns of domination and oppression). 5. See Martha Minow, "'Forming Underneath Everything that Grows': Toward a History of Family Law," Wisconsin Law Review (1985): 828-30. RIGHTS AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCE 349 groupS.6 Progressive reformers at that time urged the "Americanization " of the immigrants, newly arrived from Europe. Assimilating these people into the mores and traditions of the white Anglo-Saxon middle class took on the status of a "national" mission.7 Perhaps paradoxically, those who pushed to retain the supremacy of Anglo-Saxon culture...