Exclusion Series: We Must Do Better and We Must Be Better: Weird Coalitions and Why They Form

By Noah Truesdale*

My favorite tweet of 2020 so far has been a discussion of the informal coalitions building at the protests in Portland. The tweet read “If we add Dads & Folks With Leaf-blowers to bike/wine moms, Riot Ribs, skate-or-die bloc, the portable dance party speakers, and Guy Who Endlessly Picks Up Trash, I think Portland’s insurrection might now just be ‘everyone who wants to hang in a park in the summer vs the cops”. I found the tweet provocative, not only because it was juxtaposed with video of peaceful protesters being tear gassed, but because it spoke to the weird coalitions rising up in the fight for social justice. I’ve been watching livestreams of the protests most nights now, and something has made me curious. What about this context is different? Why Portland? Why now? And how did this diverse group of individuals find itself willing to stand together and face tear gas, rubber bullets and possible arrest night after night?

This blog post looks at how inclusion and exclusion affect the emergence and success of social movements. While a lot of the language is specific to Portland, which is soon to see its 70^th day of continuous protest, the literature of social inclusion has applications for broader movements as well.

I fondly remember my first real taste of Portland-style protests. As a senior at Reed College, I was looking for anything to distract me from the initial experiments of my thesis, which weren’t yielding the statistical significance I was after. So, when Joey Gibson, leader of the infamous alt-right white supremacy group Patriot Prayer, decided to hold a demonstration at Salmon Street Springs, a favored spot for Portland activists of all sorts, I saw counter-protesting as a justifiable diversion from my work. With a group of classmates, I headed towards Southwest Portland and joined in on the action. The first hour or two in that Plaza were just what I was looking for: the sun was out, the weather nice, and I was surrounded by thousands of like-minded individuals showing up in the name of social justice. There was, of course, yelling and occasional conflict between counter-protestors and Patriot Prayer and the riot police protecting them, but altogether the day was a peaceful demonstration about inclusion. Our coalition was larger, stronger, more diverse, and our vision of Portland had no room for white supremacy and fringe right-wing politics.

But as the protesters grew in number, the message changed. Police became more liberal in their use of pepper-spray, batons and, eventually, tear gas. Protestors started pushing back. Eventually Patriot Prayer, apparently satisfied with the reaction they had provoked, moved across the Columbia River to hold a larger rally in Vancouver, Washington. Counter-protestors followed, as did Portland riot police, already agitated from the earlier demonstrations, and eager to reinforce the Vancouver police in cracking down on counter-protests. That early evening was peppered with clashes between counter-protestors and police, and any semblance of the day’s earlier message was replaced with explicit antagonism for the police and the white-supremacists we saw them as harboring.

Since then, Portland has been a hotbed for political protesting by both the left and the right.  I’ve been watching various livestreams of the recent George Floyd protests, particularly Portland, with an optimistic (and admittedly nostalgic) eye. And although a lot of what I witnessed firsthand in the 2017 protest is true of today’s — much is also different. My research lately has focused on inclusion and exclusion, and as the composition of the protestors forming outside of the Hatfield Courthouse in Portland has been sensationalized in the media, I’ve had an opportunity to make some observations on who, and why, people participate in social movements.

Research on social inclusion and exclusion begins with an intuitive premise: human beings have an innate tendency to sort other humans into groups. Some of these group labels are inescapable and inherited — gender, race, ethnicity, etc.— but many are situational or merit based, like professional status, education, or age.

The debate hasn’t been settled on why humans have an urge to include and exclude. Some argue that the behavior increased our ancestors’ evolutionary fitness, others say it relates to conceptions of the self, and others note that similar behavior in other species implies grouping can solve free-rider and common-pool resource problems. Regardless, what we do know is that our sorting procedure has resulted in a vast imbalance in power and resources among groups.

In most modern societies, culture, values, and history have arranged group membership hierarchically, with members of high-status groups receiving the lion share of goods, resources, and power over lower-status groups. However, most people are not exclusively members of high-status groups. The organization of society creates situations in which we belong to multiple groups of conflicting status simultaneously.  First-generation college students often report difficulties  reconciling their identity as students with other identities.  A recent paper discussed the difficulties and stress that men of color experience in high-status employment—some boundaries lose meaning and commonalities can be found, but there are still elements of identity that have to be carefully negotiated around to reconcile identity in a white dominated space.  That tension between membership in some high-status groups and some low-status groups can have implications for our perceptions of self-identity. The Social Identity Theory suggests that we tend to pick and choose the group memberships most favorable to us and broadcast that identity to the world, while avoiding association with less favorable social identities. After all, why would an individual prioritize their membership in a low-status group when they could lay claim to membership in a high-status group?

History shows us that when members of low-status groups have limited prospects for individual elevation and mobility, the reaction is collective. The Civil Rights Movement capitalized on shifting cultures and values to renegotiate power structures. Occupy Wall Street, with language centered around the collective “we” was seen by many as an opportunity for economic elevation of the 99% after the 2008 recession. More recently, Bernie Sanders’ populist platform was defined by his campaign slogan “Not Me, Us.” When our battles are insurmountable individually, we turn first and foremost to our group for help.

Today, for many protestors, there seem to be many individually insurmountable problems. Wealth inequality was growing even before COVID-19 restrictions led to massive spikes in unemployment and devastating economic conditions. Police killings of unarmed civilians have likewise ballooned in recent years. And while protestors in Michigan can rally against COVID-19 restrictions by storming government buildings armed with AR-15’s and issuing death threats towards state officials, peaceful gatherings across the country have largely been met with extreme police brutality and harassment. In a time where 30 million Americans don’t have enough to eat and 28 million are facing looming evictions, Congress has spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out large companies. For many, it feels like the dividing lines of “us” and “them” have been drawn unfavorably — and seemingly permanently — by forces outside of our control.

In a way, the combined forces of economic collapse, global pandemic, and ineffectual politics have blurred the established hierarchies of society. When unemployment rates have ballooned across all professional and education categories, membership in higher-status earned groups offers little security. When the elderly, children, and veterans — three of the more sacred groups in society — have been beaten and arrested by the police for peaceful protest, the value of those identities diminishes as well.

The importance of inflexible groups has likewise been challenged. White Americans have historically held comfortable relations with the police, and so when a horrifying video surfaces of a Black man struggling to breathe for nine minutes before dying while in police custody, unfortunately, for many Whites it could be easy to dismiss it or disengage. Sadly, it has taken a disruption of high-status group privilege for many to recognize that the language and values of Black Lives Matter overlap with their own. When a group of white moms (another of the most sacrosanct groups in American society) are pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, and shoved by heavily armored federal agents, the reaction is indignation. “They can’t treat us like that” creates a recognition that for Americans who haven’t enjoyed the same privilege, this treatment is the norm. Suddenly the old hierarchies of group status and privilege lose their meaning.

If federal soldiers are willing to assail your mom with crowd control munitions, what power or status do you really have? These lingering questions have had real impacts — a recent survey reported by the New York Times found that 45% of white protestors were on the streets because of federal responses to protests. Those are significant numbers and paint a picture of formerly privileged individuals recognizing that the previous arrangements of power in America have little meaning anymore. In the words of Frank Leon Roberts, an activist and professor at NYU, “History has been clear that the people who need to change before the dam breaks are people who have been beneficiaries of the existing systems.” When the benefits of the old system are abruptly inaccessible, it forces us to re-examine who shares our ambitions, our concerns, and our values.

A Social Identity Theory reading of the George Floyd protests helps clarify why this was the tipping point for so many white protestors. We present ourselves according to our most valuable and favorable group membership and in a time where pandemics, economic crises, and neglectful policy have suddenly relegated a class of privileged Americans into low-status groups, the only meaningful option for many is collective action.

In Austin, where I am currently living, the protests took a different form than the ones in Portland. The grievances were the same, but the response from police was not. They were marked by violence and antagonism on both sides, but the priority in Austin was listening to unheard voices and working to amplify them. We were there to demonstrate that we were enthusiastic and supportive members of new status arrangements. The intention was not conflict with the agents of high-status groups, but the bolstering and elevation of our side. Speeches in front of the Capitol building reminded us that we are more alike than we are different, and the backing track of an impromptu jazz band on a street corner and high-fives from the cars we were walking through re-affirmed that we were the majority. In these difficult times, we need each other more than ever. As the graffiti on a boarded-up store front we passed reminded us, for our collective action to succeed, for the new coalitions to mean anything, for social change to be lasting, “we must do better and we must be better.”

*Noah Truesdale, currently studying for a Master’s degree in political science at NYU, is a research intern with Nils Junge Consulting

Photo credit: Noah Truesdale

Exclusion Series: Can Social Exclusion Benefit a Group? The Native Lands question

By Noah Truesdale* and Nils Junge

We are constantly reminded of the boundaries which divide us – men from women, young from old, white from black. The growing response to the death of George Floyd, the increased partisan divide in our communities, and even the coronavirus all seem to highlight our differences, even as a movement to overcome them gathers pace. As social justice enters the mainstream, many are fighting to for the scales of society to balance more evenly. Inclusion is the word on the street.

However, there are instances in which exclusion is the moral option. Take the recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma, which has virtually reshaped the map of Oklahoma overnight.

Predicating a decision in a criminal justice case on the legitimacy of 19^th-Century treaties between Congress and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the Supreme Court ruled that the majority of land in the eastern part of Oklahoma must be restored as definitionally protected Native lands. The surprising 5-4 decision, penned by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, affirmed that over three million acres of land in Eastern Oklahoma be excluded from the state government’s jurisdiction and re-designated as a Native reservation. The opinion, which began with a blistering indictment of the United States legacy of mistreatment and violence against Native populations during the Trail of Tears  — when 60,000 Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw Native Americans were forced to leave their homelands by President Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy — is being widely celebrated by groups advocating for increased Native autonomy and power.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in McGirt is thus seen as a step in correcting a long history of forced assimilation, violence, and manipulation. The case addressed the question of the state’s power over autonomous groups.  However, more broadly, it raises interesting questions about when the exclusion of others — generally a negative stance from the liberal perspective — is morally justified.

What’s Included in Inclusion?

On the surface, inclusion seems universally preferable to exclusion. Who likes to be excluded? Studies have shown that being excluded harms one’s mental and physical health, as well as financial wellbeing. The concept of inclusion, or inclusiveness, conjures images of a society populated by diverse members, all respectfully engaging with, and supporting one another. Exclusion, on the other hand — as the recent George Floyd protests have reminded us — is associated with discrimination, social stigmatization, income disparity, poor health and education outcomes.

From a social justice perspective, inclusion should be the norm. Society is better when all its members are free and able to voice opinions, participate in democracy, and engage fully in society. Naturally, even in societies that grow more tolerant and inclusive, there will always be subgroups who enjoy greater privileges and power than others. That power may translate into normalizing the values, preferences, and cultural practices of the privileged at the expense of the marginalized. Because that normalization can have lasting and dramatic consequences on all others, there are circumstances in which ensuring marginalized groups have the ability to self-determine the limits of their inclusion and exclusion from broader society is to the benefit of all.

When talking about inclusion and exclusion in the social sphere it is important to note that the terms are context specific. For example, both geographic and temporal conditions have defined the who, how, when, and why people are in or out. The term social inclusion, coined by René Lenoir in 1974, originally referred to those on the margins of society — the physically and mentally disabled, the socially maladjusted, and the poor.

As sociology became a larger factor in policy analysis, other institutions found the term more useful than general anti-poverty language: In the 1990’s, social insurance was seen as a means of achieving social inclusion in the EU. Across the Atlantic Ocean, US policymakers used the term to frame discussions about wealth disparity. For programs and policymakers today, social inclusion is used to discuss the manner and opportunity by which marginalized and disadvantaged groups are able to meaningfully interact and take part in society. As students of inclusion and exclusion expand the concepts beyond just economic conditions, measures of social inclusion have come to incorporate access to services (utilities, health, education) and more abstract considerations like cultural, physical, and political participation. 

There are programs and policies today that are working towards a more inclusive society. The UN has dedicated task forces committed to achieving gender parity, international protections for ethnic minorities and refugees, increased political participation of disenfranchised groups, and many other boundaries of exclusion. Outside of formal institutions, many donor groups and activist organizations bring attention to disparities between privileged and excluded populations and seek to rectify them.

However, without requisite ethnographic considerations, programs and policies can be unintentionally pernicious. Even more troubling, in some instances programs which claim to foster social inclusion may actually mask sinister and insidious agendas.

A Question of Jurisdiction

On the surface, McGirt v. Oklahoma was a question of jurisdictional politics. Jimcy McGirt, a member of the Seminole Nation, was arrested, tried, and found guilty on several charges of sexual assault by the Oklahoma government. Citing the specific language of the Major Crimes Act, which dealt with jurisdiction over crimes committed on reservations, McGirt argued post-conviction that both his Native status, as well as the location of crimes, should have prevented the Oklahoma state government from trying his case. His guilt wasn’t a question for the Supreme Court to decide, but rather which criminal system was responsible for finding him guilty in the first place — Oklahoma’s or the federal government’s. Ultimately, for the Supreme Court to rule on which institution held jurisdictional power, the court needed to resolve a long-standing question of the legitimacy of Muscogee (Creek) Nation treaties with Congress.

As noted by both Gorsuch in his majority opinion and by lawyers for the state of Oklahoma, there has been a long history of attempts by the federal government to diminish both the size and nature of the Muscogee reservation. In fact, lawyers for Oklahoma went as far as to argue that since the state and federal government have rarely, if ever, acknowledged or honored the treaties and negotiations with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, those agreements shouldn’t be enforced. The language of that argument sets the tone for a conversation about forced inclusion and benevolent exclusion — how useful or beneficial is inclusion when it comes about because of betrayal by dominant in-groups?

Treaties in America

While the original 1830 treaty between Congress and the Muscogee Nation defined the size of the reserved land and guaranteed the tribe ownership in perpetuity, by 1866 Congress had already drafted an updated treaty which forcibly purchased Muscogee protected land for cents on the dollar. In the 1880’s, a time period known as the “allotment era,”  the Muscogee, like other tribes, suffered from the Dawes Act and other legislation which sought to weaken tribal sovereignty and foster a “class of assimilated, landowning agrarian Native Americans”  by requiring reservation land to be divided among members instead of being owned by the community at large. As requirements for ownership relaxed, much of the parceled land on Muscogee land found its way into non-native hands and what land remained for tribal groups was linked to requirements for assimilation. Land ownership was often contingent on speaking English and refusing to engage in traditional practices.  

The Muscogee are not alone in suffering broken treaties by the federal government. Most famous among broken promises, the Treaty of Fort Laramie cut reservation boundaries for Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota tribes when gold was discovered within tribal lands. (A consequence of this treaty, nearly a hundred years later, was the designation of Alcatraz Island as a National Park to prevent Native groups in California from capitalizing on the language of the treaty regarding deserted federal lands). There are numerous similar examples — as Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University puts it, “the rule of thumb is every treaty’s been broken.”  While the violation of treaties has been catastrophic for Native groups, the implementation and design of the treaty system in the first place was equally disastrous.

Inclusion or Assimilation?

As treaties, boundaries, the establishment of reservations and politicking mitigated actual bloodshed between the United States Army and tribal groups, Native populations found themselves facing a new threat from a modernizing and spreading Euro-American society — “death by red tape.” This had enormous repercussions:  nomadic groups, newly bound to specific land, lost a sense of heritage and mobility, agricultural groups had to change both the manner and type of food grown, traditional medicinal practices had to be updated to account for changes in flora availability, and conflict between newly relocated tribes and existing ones destabilized conditions in the West which led to bloodshed and conflict. As settlers moved past the Mississippi, Native Americans faced further challenges as Euro-American society switched between extreme manners of inclusion and exclusion.

The violation of established borders and boundaries, either by new settler populations or abrogation by Congress in the interest of those settlers, cut out agriculturally and economically beneficial land from Native groups, creating a forced dependence on American institutions and societies for resources, while further eroding already threatened cultural practices.

The growing Euro-American settler group supplanted a diverse set of values regarding gender, property, discipline, etc., with the values that they saw as successful, i.e. their own —  private property, self-directed occupations, divisions between women and men. Even those settlers acting in good faith “generally believed the only acceptable future was full assimilation into Anglo-American society as sedentary agriculturalists and Christians.”  For these settlers, measures of prosperity and success were predicated on practices and traditions often in conflict with existing Native cultures, and attempts at assimilation and forced inclusion inherently meant turmoil and tension.

At the federal level, assimilation was attempted through legislation. For Native Americans living in Euro-American cities, the Indian Offenses Act punished manifestations of tribal culture, like clothing and hairstyles, the open practice of religion, and other traditional customs.

While Native populations saw their culture and practices challenged through compromising and forced interaction with Euro-American societies, many among the newer generations were denied the opportunity to experience that culture in the first place. Native children were taken, in some cases voluntarily, but often through coercion or kidnapping, to brutal assimilating schools with curricula built around Euro-American values and practices. The intent of these schools was to, in effect, “Kill the Indian and save the Man”. Children had their hair cut, were taught the norms and customs of Euro-American society, were denied access to families for years, and many died from disease, abuse, and neglect. Upon returning home, an entire generation of Native Americans found themselves socially displaced. The Euro-American society which had forcibly assimilated these children did not truly accept them as equals, and assimilated children often found little refuge and comfort in returning to the communities from which they were pulled.

Indigenous sovereignty was destroyed intentionally and intergenerationally in the interest of a homogenized society. In fact, many of the difficulties facing tribal communities today can be directly attributed to the forced social inclusion programs of the 19th and 20th century.  

Benevolent Exclusion?

In the face of that history of neglect and reneging on treaty terms (or in many cases Congress never ratifying treaties that were agreed), the Court, in deciding McGirt v. Oklahoma did something that many find remarkable — it compelled the United States government to honor its promises and enforce agreements made to tribal groups in the 19^th-century. In effect, the decision instantly excluded the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from the influence of Oklahoma authority and restored some sovereign power. The decision did not confer absolute autonomy to the Muscogee Nation, as tribal spokesmen are reassuring citizens of eastern Oklahoma and critics of the decision, but it was a promising step in correcting a tragic, dehumanizing, and often deadly legacy of the United States flip-flopping on the inclusion or exclusion of Native Americans. 

The history of Native American interaction with the United States government is an example of how social exclusion can be benevolent. That is, a threatened, minority group can draw a boundary around itself to keep a threatening majority group out. The creeping and pervasive influence of Euro-American values, lifestyles, and culture both by intentionally malicious actors and passive forces has been devastating for tribes (even today, the increased urban mobilization of Native populations and consumption of Euro-American media is threatening cultural practices and language stability). But when excluded groups get to decide the terms of their inclusion and the limits of outside influences, there can be positive outcomes.

*Noah Truesdale, currently studying for a Master’s degree in political science at NYU, is a research intern with Nils Junge Consulting

Exclusion series: When exclusion is acceptable

Is excluding other people ever acceptable? It is, in fact. There are plenty of circumstances where no one bats an eye at being excluded, where no one feels aggrieved.

Have you ever been to a concert and felt aggrieved that you had to sit in the audience while the musicians had the privilege of being on stage, receiving adulation and getting paid for their work? Have you ever been to a football or baseball game and felt it was deeply unfair that you were a spectator and had not been allowed to play on the field? Did you feel it was unfair that they were getting paid millions every year to play while you had to pay to get in? I’m going to guess that the answer to the above questions, for most people, is “no.”

On the other hand, have you ever been excluded without understanding why? Perhaps you didn’t get invited to a party, were rejected by a college, or failed to make the short-list for a job.

More pernicious, have you ever been excluded for reasons that seemed irrational and unjust? It might have been on the basis of skin color, gender, beliefs or any number of other seemingly arbitrary characteristics that help humanity divide itself into tribes, leading to a good deal of enmity and grievance. For those who espouse a liberal social order, at least, this is screaming social injustice and a completely unacceptable form of exclusion.

The many forms of exclusion

Obviously, exclusion comes in many forms. I will posit that “acceptable exclusion” occurs when those excluded basically accept the premise – that the rationale is clear, fair and the determination is arrived at transparently. Its opposite, unacceptable exclusion fails to meet those standards, and is generally referred to as social exclusion.

We recognize and value the exclusiveness around sports and musical achievements, the basis of which is, generally speaking, meritocracy.  We don’t want our sports teams to be recruited on the basis of, say, skin color, or socio-economic background. We want selection of team members to be based on skill. Sports are also segregated by gender, and this is generally accepted as well. Genetic differences in strength between men and women create what would be an unfair playing field if they were to compete against each other.

There are many forms of broadly acceptable exclusion. They relate to various criteria, as the following selection of examples suggests:

• skill — while sports and music are the most obvious areas where exclusion is based on exclusivity, so are many jobs, since applicants must meet certain qualifications. With jobs, however, there is a lot more subjectivity around what is fair;
• affordability — if you aren’t talented enough to perform, you can still attend a sports event or concert, but most of the time attendance is also exclusive, to the extent that people have to pay to watch;
• dress — fancy restaurants with dress codes aim to maintain a sense of decorum and exclusivity, but even your average fast food chain requires customers to wear a shirt and shoes;
• age — adults are not allowed to attend elementary school;
• privacy — we lock our houses to keep strangers out;
• eligibility based on means — the poor who qualify for assistance.

Exclusion and social norms

Social norms determine what is acceptable and what isn’t. They are context specific. Differing social norms means that some form of exclusion are widely acceptable (as per the above examples), while other forms are not.

Social norms change over time, of course.  Up until the 1960s, in much of the United States it was deemed acceptable, by parts of the white citizenry, to exclude blacks from equal treatment, and they were excluded from schools, restaurants, swimming pools, water fountains, bathrooms, clubs, sports teams, and more.

Nowadays, in the U.S. and in many liberally-oriented countries, it is not only unacceptable but illegal to be excluded on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Preventing gay people from having the same right to marry as heterosexuals was yet another form of exclusion. In 1988, only 12 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage; three decades later over two thirds did, in the wake of its legalization.

This is not, however, a happy story about how society at home or around the world is becoming ever more inclusive. Here’s an extreme example of how exclusion affects people. Recently, a young Iranian woman, Sahar Khodayari, self-immolated after being sentenced to 24 years in prison for illegally attending a football match. She tried to sneak in to see her favorite team, Esteghlal, play, dressed as a man. The police discovered her true identity. Rather than go to jail, she protested her sentence by lighting herself on fire in front of the courthouse, bringing worldwide attention, and condemnation, to Iran’s policy of only allowing males to attend football (American soccer) games.

Economic exclusion

What about economic exclusion, sometimes known as poverty? Is it acceptable to be deprived of basic needs to live a dignified life? Is it fair? Here what is acceptable becomes tricky and less clear. 

One can argue that in our capitalist society, it is acceptable insofar as ability to pay for something is the price of access. If you can’t afford a nice house, a car, or nice clothing, that’s seen as an individual thing. But when large segments of society are not able to enjoy even basic services or standard conveniences of modern life, things become complicated. In industrial societies today, many young people struggle to afford decent housing or education. Many low-income households struggle to eat nutritional food, even if they are not deprived of calories. In general lacking access to the basics of life makes a lot of other things harder — like buying a suit to go to attend a job interview.

Exclusion and the state

In response to social pressure, governments often try to increase access to services — water, electricity, markets (via roads), or social payments. People who deem they have been unfairly denied certain basic needs will take to the streets. The Arab Spring is exhibit “A”. More recently, France was disrupted by the gilets jaunes (“yellow vests), the French movement that erupted in October 2018 in response to planned fuel tax hikes, and morphed into protests for economic justice. A lot of people felt that the system was rigged against them, that they were being kept out.

In the U.S., economic exclusion has become an ideological issue. To grossly oversimplify, among conservatives, it has historically been considered an individual matter. If you couldn’t climb up the economic ladder, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that was your fault. You weren’t working hard enough.

Liberals mostly consider the system to be at fault. It isn’t fair that you were born into poverty or suffered misfortune — such as catastrophic medical bills — and your station in life is not (just) about how hard you studied or worked. The massive effort and money middle class parents spend on ensuring their children get the best possible education and acquire the skills is testament to the costs involved in succeeding in today’s society.

The more that economic exclusion comes to be seen as unacceptable, the more pressure governments will be under to expand access to those at the bottom. That requires lifting the barriers to the on-ramps, and letting more and more people onto the highway to prosperity.

However, since such investments require careful planning and huge investments in infrastructure and human capital, we can expect many politicians to avoid the issue. Instead, they will focus on the cheaper and easier option of fomenting popular support by harping on threats to identity and cultural issues, the usual populist and nationalist tactics. Populism and nationalism work, in the short-term at least, because they foster a powerful sense of inclusion, often achieved by excluding and denigrating others.

Conservatism and exclusion

To answer the question I started with, yes, exclusion is socially acceptable when it is based on a clear rationale and transparency. But that may just be the liberal perspective. In many countries, social norms among conservatives relating to exclusion are increasingly discriminatory.

Thus, for the voters who put leaders in power — such as the U.S.’s Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jaime Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the UK’s Boris Johnson (elected by Tory party members, anyway), Israel’s Netanyahu — exclusion based on identity is now perfectly acceptable.  After all, among the party loyal, trashing the “other” creates a wonderful sense of belonging. Even better, to create a sense of happy security, is the putting up of walls and gates, or pulling up the drawbridge, à la Brexit.

What, if anything, can dilute this growing penchant for exclusion? Can broad-based economic growth contribute to leveling the playing field? Do we need new laws or policies? The fact that most economists are expecting a global recession to kick in in the not-too-distant future should be worrying.

If, in times of relative prosperity demonizing the other works so well, just wait until national economies hit the skids. That’s when we may see the cracks in society turn into unbridgeable cleavages.