Political Tribes

by Amy Chua

  it does not appear: Oliver Stuenkel, “Why Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro Doesn’t Look Quite Finished Yet,” Americas Quarterly, April 10, 2017, http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/why-venezuelas-nicolas-maduro-doesnt-look-finished-quite-yet.

  “destroy[ing] Chávez’s good name”: Kenneth Rapoza, “In Venezuela, ‘Chavista’ Says Maduro Must Go,” Forbes, June 30, 2016.

  “constituent assembly” . . . widely viewed: Nicholas Casey and Ana Vanessa Herrero, “Venezuela’s New Assembly Members Share a Goal: Stifle Dissent,” New York Times, August 3, 2017; Associated Press, “The Latest: Regional Top Diplomats Reject Venezuela Assembly,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 8, 2017.

  “puppet” for Cuba: Naím, “Nicolas Maduro Doesn’t Really Control Venezuela.”

  Chapter Seven: Inequality and the Tribal Chasm in America

  “shifted sharply to Donald Trump”: David Leonhardt, “How Democrats Can Get Their Mojo Back,” New York Times, May 16, 2017.

  A City University of New York: Ruth Milkman et al., Changing the Subject: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City (New York: The Murphy Institute, CUNY, 2013), 9, 47, appendix C.

  “Our research shows”: Douglas Schoen, “Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd,” Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2011; see also Mattathias Schwartz, “Pre-Occupied,” New Yorker, November 28, 2011.

  Yet another poll: Sean Captain, “Infographic: Who Is Occupy Wall Street?,” Fast Company, November 2, 2011, http://www.fastcompany.com/1792056/infographic-who-occupy-wall-street.

  more racial and ethnic: Milkman et al., Changing the Subject, 10, fig. 1; Ruth Milkman, “Revolt of the College-Educated Millennials,” Contexts 11, no. 2 (2012): 13.

  there is consensus: Milkman et al., Changing the Subject, 10, fig. 1; Milkman, “Revolt of the College-Educated Millennials,” 13.

  “had previously participated in”: Milkman et al., Changing the Subject, 15.

  “[Occupy Wall Street] was not”: Ibid., 2.

  The Other 98%: “Join the Other 98%,” Other 98%, accessed January 10, 2016, https://other98.com/mission/join (screenshot on file with author).

  The team of six: “The Team,” Other 98%, accessed July 11, 2015, http://other98.com/about-us/the-team (screenshot on file with author).

  Micah White, a “failure”: “Protest is Broken,” Interview with Micah White by Folha de São Paulo, May 26, 2015, accessed August 13, 2017, https://www.micahmwhite.com/protest-is-broken.

  many attribute to Occupy: Michael Levitin, “The Triumph of Occupy Wall Street,” Atlantic, June 10, 2015.

  “more a meme than a movement”: George Packer, “‘By the People’ and ‘Wages of Rebellion,’” New York Times, June 29, 2015, Sunday Book Review.

  The most common: See, e.g., Andy Ostroy, “The Failure of Occupy Wall Street,” Huffington Post, July 31, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-ostroy/the-failure-of-occupy-wal_b_1558787.html.

  authentic and potent: Bernd Simon and Bert Klandermans, “Politicized Collective Identity: A Social Psychological Analysis,” American Psychologist 56 (2001): 320, 324–25; Martijn Van Zomeren et al., “Toward an Integrative Social Identity Model of Collective Action: A Quantitative Research Synthesis of Three Socio-Psychological Perspectives,” Psychological Bulletin 134 (2008): 524, 526.

  “Social media has”: “Protest is Broken.”

  “You have generations”: Milkman et al., Changing the Subject, 13.

  “We kick the ass”: Robert Hughes, Walker Finds a Way: Running Into the Adult World with Autism (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016), 79.

  But Occupy gave this sense of belonging: See Michael Kazin, “The End of Outrage?,” Slate, February 17, 2015, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/inequality_and_american_protest_history_why_are_no_movements_rising_up_against.html; Alex Evans, “What Can G7’s Dwindling Anti-Poverty Protesters Learn from Climate Activists?,” Guardian, June 6, 2015; cf. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, “Why More Africans Don’t Use Human Rights Language,” Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 1999 (noting that the human rights world “appears almost by design to exclude the participation of the people whose welfare it purports to advance”).

  “Many lower class”: Essay by Joe Chatham, 2016 (on file with author).

  “The White Savior”: Teju Cole, “The White-Savior Industrial Complex,” Atlantic, March 21, 2012.

  America’s poor are: See David Callahan and J. Mijin Cha, “Stacked Deck: How the Dominance of Politics by the Affluent & Business Undermines Economic Mobility in America,” Demos, 2013, http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Demos-Stacked-Deck.pdf; K. L. Schlozman et al., “Civic Participation and the Equality Problem,” in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, ed. Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 1999), 431, 433–34.

  less likely to work on political: Schlozman et al., “Civic Participation and the Equality Problem,” 433–34.

  contact elected officials: “The Politics of Financial Insecurity,” Pew Research Center, January 8, 2015, http://www.people-press.org/2015/01/08/the-politics-of-financial-insecurity-a-democratic-tilt-undercut-by-low-participation.

  or vote. In part: Callahan and Cha, “Stacked Deck,” 11.

  less likely to join: Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015): 207–10, 225.

  church attendance among: Ibid., 225; Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Crown, 2012), 200–208; see also J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), 93.

  “we have witnessed”: Putnam, Our Kids, 206.

  The ranks of America’s police: Harlan Hahn, “A Profile of Urban Police,” Law & Contemporary Problems 36 (1971): 449; Jerry R. Sparger and David J. Giacopassi, “Police Resentment of the Upper Class,” Criminal Justice Review 11 (1986): 25.

  armed forces: Amy Lutz, “Who Joins the Military?: A Look at Race, Class, and Immigration Status,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 36, no. 2 (2008): 167–88.

  famous for group loyalty: William K. Muir Jr., Police: Streetcorner Politicians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 29–31; Stephen M. Passamaneck, Police Ethics and the Jewish Tradition (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 2003), 20–21; John Mueller, The Remnants of War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 12; Johan M. G. Van der Dennen, “Combat Motivation,” Journal of Social Justice 17 (2005): 81–82.

  single greatest threat: Maxwell Barna, “Move Over Jihadists—Sovereign Citizens Seen as America’s Top Terrorist Threat,” Vice, August 15, 2014, https://news.vice.com/article/move-over-jihadists-sovereign-citizens-seen-as-americas-top-terrorist-threat. Many thanks to Spencer Todd for bringing sovereign citizens to my attention and for his contributions to this section.

  bizarre antigovernment group: Anti-Defamation League, The Lawless Ones: The Resurgence of the Sovereign Citizen Movement (ADL Special Report, 2012), http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/combating-hate/Lawless-Ones-2012-Edition-WEB-final.pdf; Southern Poverty Law Center, “Sovereign Citizens Movement,” http://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/sovereign-citizens-movement.

  economic dislocation: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Sovereign Citizens Movement”; Mark Potok, “The ‘Patriot’ Movement Explodes,” Intelligence Report, no. 145 (Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2012).

  Gavin Long, who shot: Ryan Lenz, “Gunman Who Killed Three Police Officers in Baton Rouge Member of Black Antigovernment ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Group,” Southern Poverty Law Center, July 18, 2016, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/07/18/gunman-who-killed-three-police-officers-baton-rouge-member-black-antigovernment-sovereign.

  central beliefs include: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Sovereign Citizens Movement”; Anti-Defamation League
, The Lawless Ones; Leslie R. Masterson, “‘Sovereign Citizens’: Fringe in the Courtroom,” American Bankruptcy Institute Journal 30 (2011): 66; J. J. MacNab, “Context Matters: The Cliven Bundy Standoff—Part 3,” Forbes, May 6, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjmacnab/2014/05/06/context-matters-the-cliven-bundy-standoff-part-3.

  “paper terrorism” . . . “the nonsensical”: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Sovereign Citizens Movement.”

  Richard Posner . . . “but had no governmental authority”: Joe Patrice, “Judge Posner Lights into Pro Se ‘Sovereign Citizen,’” Above the Law, February 23, 2015, http://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/judge-posner-lights-into-pro-se-sovereign-citizen.

  Like America’s Founding Fathers: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Sovereign Citizens Movement.”

  The Washitaw Nation: Lenz, “Gunman Who Killed Three Police Officers.”

  “sovereigns believe that”: Southern Poverty Law Center, “Sovereign Citizens Movement.”

  twenty-seven thousand street gangs: Arlen Egley and Christina E. O’Donnell, Highlights of the 2007 National Youth Gang Survey (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Preventions, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, April 2007); see also Irving A. Spergel, The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9–16, 26–33; James Diego Vigil, Steve C. Yun, and Jesse Cheng, “A Shortcut to the American Dream? Vietnamese Youth Gangs in Little Saigon,” in Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity and Ethnicity, ed. Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou (New York: Routledge, 2004), 207, 211, 215–17.

  have a racial or ethnic: Dana Peterson, Inger-Lise Lien, and Frank van Gemert, “Concluding Remarks: The Roles of Migration and Ethnicity in Street Gang Formation, Involvement and Response,” in Street Gangs, Migration and Ethnicity, ed. Frank van Gemert, Dana Peterson, and Inger-Lise Lien (Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2008), 262.

  famously violent Mara Salvatrucha: Matthew DeLuca, “Central American Gang MS-13 Cuts Swath of Murder and Mayhem Across Long Island,” Daily Beast, June 3, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/03/central-american-gang-ms-13-cuts-swath-of-murder-and-mayhem-across-long-island.html.

  All About Cash, Cash Ave: Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Gang Intelligence Center, National Gang Threat Assessment: Emerging Trends (2011), 58, 64, 65, http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment; see also Claudia Durst Johnson, Youth Gangs in Literature (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 5.

  Most active gang members: See John Johnson, “The Violence: Fear Stalks the Hallways as Shootings Touch Lives,” Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1993; Mary M. Jensen, Introduction to Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall, 2004), 134; Cecilia M. Harper, “How Do I Divorce My Gang?: Modifying the Defense of Withdrawal for a Gang-Related Conspiracy,” Valparaiso University Law Review 50, no. 3 (2016): 774; Tom Branson, “Gang Members on Path of ‘Assumed Destiny’—Dying by Age 20,” Northwest Indiana Times, February 5, 2014, http://www.nwitimes.com/news/gang-members-on-path-of-assumeddestiny-dying-by-age/article_a9110339-5381-56dc-af4c-8d1224a162a9.html.

  “with few skills”: Orlando Patterson, “The Real Problem with America’s Inner Cities,” New York Times, May 9, 2015.

  status, a strong tribe: Andrew J. Diamond, Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908–1969 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 33, 198; Patterson, “The Real Problem with America’s Inner Cities”; see also João H. Costa Vargas, Catching Hell in the City of Angels: Life and Meanings of Blackness in South Central Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 181–82; Curtis W. Branch, ed., Adolescent Gangs: Old Issues, New Approaches (Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel, 1999), 10, 178; Eric C. Schneider, Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 98, 179.

  San Francisco’s Mission District: “Santa Muerte in the Mission San Fco California,” http://www.santamuerte.org/santuarios/usa/3036-santa-muerte-in-the-mission-san-fco-california.html. For a fascinating, in-depth study of Santa Muerte and her devotees, see R. Andrew Chesnut, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

  Melrose Avenue in: “Templo Santa Muerte Los Angeles, CA,” http://www.santamuerte.org/santuarios/usa/3034-templo-santa-muerte-los-angeles-ca.html.

  New Orleans . . . black, white, or red robes: Henrick Caroliszyn, “Santa Muerte in New Orleans,” http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/santa-muerte-in-new-orleans/Content?oid=2690150.

  started in Mexico: R. Andrew Chesnut, “Saint Without Borders: Santa Muerte Goes Global,” June 5, 2014, http://skeletonsaint.com/2014/06/05/saint-without-borders-santa-muerte-goes-global.

  “the fastest growing”: Carmen Sesin, “Growing Devotion to Santa Muerte in U.S. and Abroad,” NBC News, December 29, 2014, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/growing-devotion-santa-muerte-u-s-abroad-n275856; Rick Paulas, “Our Lady of the Holy Death Is the World’s Fastest Growing Religious Movement,” Vice, November 13, 2014, https://www.vice.com/read/our-lady-of-the-holy-death-is-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-movement-456.

  “Mexico’s saint of delinquents”: Erin Lee, “La Santa Muerte: Mexico’s Saint of Delinquents and Outcasts,” Vice, November 1, 2014, http://www.vice.com/read/la-santa-muerte-is-a-saint-for-mexicos-delinquents-and-outcasts.

  LGBT . . . transgender sex workers: Lois Ann Lorentzen et al., ed., Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana: Politics, Identity, and Faith in New Migrant Communities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 30–31.

  “She’s the saint”: Caroliszyn, “Santa Muerte in New Orleans.”

  “[Y]ou can ask” . . . Heisenberg: Jake Flanagin, “The Rise of the Narco-Saints: A New Religious Trend in Mexico,” Atlantic, September 2014; see Paulas, “Our Lady of the Holy Death Is the World’s Fastest Growing Religious Movement.”

  has been “meteoric” . . . Bony Lady: Chesnut, “Saint Without Borders: Santa Muerte Goes Global.”

  10 to 12 million devotees: Caroliszyn, “Santa Muerte in New Orleans.”

  cigars, shots of rum: “Templo Santa Muerte Los Angeles, CA.”

  presence in Miami: Sesin, “Growing Devotion to Santa Muerte in U.S. and Abroad.”

  movement works to raise: John Nova Lomax, “Santa Muerte: Patron Saint of the Drug War,” Houston Press, September 12, 2012, http://www.houstonpress.com/news/santa-muerte-patron-saint-of-the-drug-war-6595544.

  legendary bandit Jesús Malverde: Morgan Smith, “La Santa Muerte and Jesús Malverde: Narco Saints?,” New Mexico Mercury, November 7, 2013; Sam Quinones, “Jesus Malverde,” Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/business/malverde.html; Sam Quinones, True Tales from Another Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 225–32.

  Sinaloa drug cartel . . . “El Chapo”: Monte Reel, “Underworld: How the Sinaloa Drug Cartel Digs Its Tunnels,” New Yorker, August 3, 2015.

  “Thank you Malverde”: Quinones, “Jesus Malverde.”

  “Most Mexican-Americans today”: Essay by Nicolas Molina, February 3, 2015 (on file with author).

  with more than 10,000: Hartford Institute for Religious Research, “Database of Megachurches in the U.S.,” http://hirr.hartsem.edu/cgi-bin/mega/db.pl?db=default&uid=default&view_records=1&ID=*&sb=3&so=descend.

  almost half . . . 8,500 members: Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 181–82.

  7 million viewers weekly: Cathleen Falsani, “The Prosperity Gospel,” Washington Post, December 20, 2009.

  Creflo Dollar preaches: Abby Ohlheiser, “Pastor Creflo Dollar Might Get His $65 Million Private Jet After All,” Washington Post, June 3, 2015.

  televangelist Mark Burns: Rob Barnett, “Easley Pastor to Address Republi
can National Convention,” Florida Today, July 14, 2015.

  “There is no”: Elizabeth Dias, “Donald Trump’s Prosperity Preachers,” Time, April 14, 2016, http://time.com/donald-trump-prosperity-preachers.

  “As soon as Jesus”: Bowler, Blessed, 96.

  who owns two Rolls-Royces: Olivia Nuzzi, “Jesus Wants Me to Have This Jet,” Daily Beast, March 14, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/jesus-wants-me-to-have-this-jet.

  “anointing to prosper”: Bowler, Blessed, 96 (italics added).

  wore designer clothes: Ibid., 96; John Avanzini, “Believers Voice of Victory,” Trinity Broadcasting Network, January 20, 1991.

  “[A]ccording to Deuteronomy”: Bowler, Blessed, 96.

  “surrounded Adam and Eve”: Ibid., 97.

  “He took your place”: Ibid., 95.

  “Faith requires action”: Ibid., 127–28.

  has many detractors: Falsani, “The Prosperity Gospel”; Pastor Rick Henderson, “The False Promise of the Prosperity Gospel: Why I Called Out Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer,” Huffington Post, August 21, 2013; Hanna Rosin, “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?,” Atlantic, December 2009.

  enormous appeal for have-nots: Bowler, Blessed, 233–34; Rosin, “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?”

  popular with disadvantaged minorities: Bowler, Blessed, 6, 111–13, 119, 161; Milmon F. Harrison, Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 148–52; Emily Raboteau, “My Search for Creflo Dollar,” Salon, January 6, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/01/06/my_search_for_creflo_dollar (“most of them poor and working-class blacks”); Rosin, “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?”

  “lift believers’ chins”: Bowler, Blessed, 232.

  not “victims” but “victors”: Rosin, “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?”

  even the poor control: Raboteau, “My Search for Creflo Dollar.”

  75 million fans: Lawrence W. Hugenberg and Barbara S. Hugenberg, “If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin’: NASCAR, American Values, and Fandom,” Journal of Popular Culture 41, no. 4 (2008): 635.