Joe Biden promised to unite his country, but division is more likely

By prioritising some identity groups and excluding others, he can only sow further discord

It is fast becoming a political maxim that the more society talks about diversity, the less tolerant it becomes of difference. And the more our leaders talk about unity, the less they seem capable of bringing it about. In his inaugural speech last week, Joe Biden promised to unite his country. But read his words closely, and examine his first actions as president, and you will see confusion, contradiction and dogma that is likely to lead only to further division.

Of course, absolute unity is impossible to achieve in any political system. Autocratic regimes intimidate and bully their citizens into conformity with the ideologies of their leaders, and try to present an image of a united people to the outside world. But the whole point of liberal democracy is that it is supposed to tolerate difference and disagreement.

For liberal democracies are built on the premise that human values and interests are unavoidably and perpetually in conflict with one another. The solution to these conflicts is not to grant total victory to one side or another, but to accept a system of government and civil society that allows pluralism to flourish within a common culture and single legal framework.

Precisely how this works differs from country to country. But experience teaches us that we need free and fair elections and checks and balances to protect minorities from a tyranny of the majority. We need national and local institutions to help us to mediate our differences. We need a common culture and shared identity to allow us to recognise familiarity in strangers and trust one another. And we need a sense of solidarity that means we can come together in response to collective challenges, such as wars, recessions and disease.

Our tolerance for difference should allow us all to unite in the ways that are necessary for a common life, and our unity in this respect should allow us to remain committed to pluralism, tolerance and moderation. This is something Mr Biden seemed to acknowledge in his speech, when he said “disagreement must not lead to disunion”.

But the president soon ran into trouble. He was asking “every American to join me in this cause”, he said, “to fight the common foes we face”. But in listing these foes – “anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence” – he was partial. While he condemned the mob that attacked the Capitol building, there was no such condemnation for the Black Lives Matter riots last summer. While some felt anger and resentment that must be fought, others, he said, were simply demanding “justice for all”.

The foes that Biden did treat as common enemies for all Americans were “disease, joblessness, hopelessness”. But solutions to these problems have been conspicuous by their absence. The economic pain behind the feeling of hopelessness in many states and communities is still neglected. The pleasure with which Democrats refer to the prosperity of their voters, compared to those of the

Republicans, is telling for what was once the party of the working class.

And on cultural issues, Mr Biden’s was an invitation to unite, but on his terms only. Republican voters should “hear me out as we move forward”, he said. “If you still disagree, so be it. That’s democracy. That’s America.” This is a strange definition of democracy, but an even stranger way of trying to bring the country together.

Already, Mr Biden has signed an executive order liberalising immigration laws and paving the way for illegal immigrants to gain citizenship. He has signed another asserting that transgender students should be free to use changing rooms and participate in school sports in accordance with the gender they choose. He has promised to address “overlapping forms of discrimination”, and highlighted in particular the struggles of black transgender Americans.

And even with his programme of economic relief for firms affected by Covid, the president has promised that his “priority will be Black-, Latino-, Asian- and Native Americanowned small businesses [and] women-owned businesses”.

Calling for unity while prioritising some identity groups and excluding others might seem discordant, but militant identity politics is now central to the beliefs of the modern Left. In his inauguration speech, Biden made no reference to equality, but instead promised to address “growing inequity”.

The pursuit of equity is very different to the pursuit of equality. The equity now sought by the Left is between different identity groups, and in particular groups defined by race, sexuality and gender. The critical theories that lie behind this political fashion claim that privilege and power are determined by exploitative hierarchies kept in place by institutions and discourse that oppress disadvantaged groups.

Tackling specific acts of racial discrimination, or confronting longlasting racial disparities, is therefore insufficient for proponents of these arguments. As Mr Biden asserted in another executive order, the problem is “systemic racism”. The theory of systemic racism, or “structural racism”, as Sir Keir Starmer prefers to call it in Britain, alleges that minorities suffer cumulative and chronic disadvantage, and that this disadvantage is caused by society as a whole systematically discriminating against them and in favour of white people.

Inevitably, the policies that follow critical theories are discriminatory towards white people, men, heterosexuals or anybody else supposedly complicit in systemic discrimination. They ignore our individuality, defining us only in terms of our race, gender and sexuality. They ignore and play down the significance of class and geography. And they are unavoidably destructive to the traditions and institutions that sustain our shared identities and the feelings of trust and solidarity they make possible.

This is why the modern Left – in Britain as well as America – cannot hope to overcome division. They, as much as the nativist and populist Right they so despise, are often the very source of the discord. For blaming people on the basis of their own immutable characteristics for the misfortunes of others, for discriminating today to compensate for the discrimination of yesterday, for attacking the traditions and institutions that many hold dear, for policing thought, word and deed with such vindictiveness and zeal, the Left cannot be the unifiers they claim to be. And that will remain the case until they finally ditch their divisive dogma.