Author: Michael LaBossiere

The concept of tribalism is often used to explain American politics but is also wielded as a weapon. An expert might claim that tribalism is causing unwillingness to compromise, while a partisan might deride the tribalism of the other tribe. While this essay is not intended to explore the complexities of a rigorous definition of the concept, I will endeavor to discuss the matter in a neutral and rational way.

Tribalism is characterized by loyalty to the tribe. This differs from loyalty to principles or values. After all, a person who is loyal to a tribe because it is their tribe will remain loyal even when the values of the tribe change. In contrast, a person dedicated to values that a tribe just also happens to have at a certain time will leave that tribe if these values are abandoned. American tribalism involves value fluidity: as the tribe changes values, tribalists shift their values. For example, Republicans once endorsed free trade and opposed tariffs. They also professed to dislike deficits and spending. Trump, however, shifted these values and now the Republican tribe embraces tariffs, deficits and big government spending. Such is the power of tribalism that it trumps professed values.

It might be contended that tribes need values and principles to define them, hence this claim of fluidity is an exaggeration. However, the ease with which tribes shift values shows that it is real. People even develop myths that the values they profess now have always been the values of their tribe.

Tribalism has its origin in biology as humans are social animals and tribalism is the human equivalent of pack loyalty. Animals generally lack abstract principles or values, and this is one reason why tribalism trumps values—it is grounded in unthinking instinct. Tribalism is also fueled by cognitive biases. The most important is in-group bias, which is the tendency of people to see members of their own group as better than the members of other groups. This bias makes it easy for people to attribute positive qualities to members of their own tribe while easily assigning negative traits to those of other tribes. This probably also helps support value fluidity: whatever changes occur in the values professed by the tribe will still be seen as better than the values of other tribes. As might be expected, fallacious reasoning also plays a role in tribalism.

There is a fallacy, often called the “group think fallacy”, in which it is inferred that a claim is true (or something is good) because members of one’s group believe the claim (or hold to the values). This is obviously fallacious but has considerable psychological appeal. This also helps fuel value fluidity, since beliefs and values are not based on objective assessment, but by reference to the group. As would be expected, tribalism creates numerous problems.

One problem is that tribalism makes the professed values of the tribe meaningless. This is because loyalty is to the tribe rather than to the professed values. This does raise some interesting philosophical questions about the basis of tribal identity. It also creates a ship of Theseus style problem about whether there is a point at which a tribe has changed its professed values so much that it is no longer the same tribe. There are also some other interesting metaphysical problems about identity here as well in terms of what makes a tribe the same tribe across time and value changes.

A second problem is that tribalism encourages irrational behavior. They can often act contrary to what seem to be their own interests and against the general welfare because of the dictates of their tribal leaders. On the positive side, tribal leaders could issue commands that do coincide with the interests of the tribal members and the general welfare. However, this would be a matter of luck.

A third problem is that tribalism makes it easy for authoritarians to gain ready-made followers who happily serve them, no matter how terrible they are. Because of these problems, it would seem best to find ways to counter tribalism.

One obvious solution is improving critical thinking, so that people can recognize the defects behind and of tribalism. However, mere logic is obviously enough—people also need training in goodness and commitment to virtue, as per Aristotle. But tribalism provides its members with a defense against critical thinking and training in the virtues.

The Declaration of Independence asserts a variation of Locke’s political philosophy, claiming that all men are created equal and have  the natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Locke said there is a right to property rather than a right to the pursuit of happiness.  As one of my political science professors noted, the founders had most of the property and did not want other people to get ideas.

If this document is taken seriously as a statement of American political philosophy and values, it commits all Americans to the equality of people and to these three basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While the notion of equality and the specifics of these rights are subject to debate and disagreement, their interpretation cannot stray too far, or they become meaningless or absurd. For example, when South Carolina seceded from the Union the authors appealed to the principle of liberty as a justification for maintaining slavery. Asserting that the natural right of liberty justifies rebellion to maintain the violation of the natural right of liberty is clearly an absurd position, but no more absurd than positions taken on rights today.

While slavery is currently illegal (with a few exceptions) there are still violations of the principle of equality and these natural rights. As might be suspected, minorities are often the targets of such violations.  Skeptics often say they see no evidence of systematic violations in their own experiences and then claim is no such thing. If examples are offered, the response is usually that these examples are anecdotal evidence or that the alleged violations are not real violations, but consequences brought about by the individuals in question. That is, that they must have done something wrong that justified what was done to them.

These replies do have some appeal. After all, an appeal to anecdotal evidence to establish a general claim would be a fallacy.  There can also be cases in which apparent violations are instead self-inflicted harm. Responding to the charge of anecdotal evidence requires the presenting of statistical data in support of the claim that such violations exist. Responding to the assertion that the apparent violations are the fault of the alleged victims requires showing that the harms are inflicted rather than self-inflicted.

The statistical evidence for inequality is overwhelming, with blacks and Hispanics in the United States consistently being worse off than white Americans. The disparity begins at birth,  as infant mortality for blacks is more than double that of whites. It ends, one assumes, at death. While the life expectancy of Americans has been declining, black Americans have a lower average life expectancy than white Americans. It should be noted that “deaths of despair” have increased among middle-aged whites as they have been facing conditions routinely endured by blacks and Hispanics (notably a shortage of steady, well-paying jobs). While this might be seen as evidence against the existence of racism (that social ills are increasingly killing whites, too) it serves more to highlight the impact of economic disparity that has always been present. That class disparity is “equalizing” the harms of racism is obviously not a good thing.

Between birth and death, blacks and Hispanics are far more likely to grow up in poverty, less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to be enrolled in college, more likely to earn less money, more likely to lack insurance, and far less likely to own rather than rent. This is not to deny that there are whites who are in dire straits nor is it to ignore anecdotes about the misfortunes of whites. However, this is a matter of statistics and in general blacks and Hispanics are worse-off than whites. While this establishes the statistical evidence, there remains the question of causation.

The racist explanation is that whites are generally superior to blacks and Hispanics and hence do better at life. This view of racial superiority and inferiority is, by definition, racist. However, being morally repugnant does not make something false. Being untrue makes it false.

If there were different races with different abilities, this would show up in genetic testing. However, the scientific evidence is that there is no biological foundation to the categories of race. It could be argued that the differences are undetectable by current science or, perhaps, that they are metaphysical in nature. The obvious problem with such claims is that they are based on a fallacious  appeal to ignorance and the burden of proof rests on those who claim they know there is a difference. As such, the biological superiority argument fails.

Another stock explanation is cultural: white culture is superior to black and Hispanic culture, so whites do better. This avoids the appeal to biological race and instead attributes negative traits (like laziness or criminality) to the cultures. One point of concern with this approach is defining cultures. After all, Americans share a broad culture and those who embrace the allegedly successful culture should tend to succeed at the same rate as whites. After all, anyone can adopt a culture (or appropriate it) and thus succeed. If it were that simple, presumably inequality would have ended long ago. Even if the cultural hypothesis is accepted, there arises the question as to why such cultures exist and have the alleged traits.

Given the historical facts of slavery and racism, the most plausible explanation is that blacks and Hispanics inherit many of the residual the harms of the past centuries while the white population, in general, inherits the benefits. While there are some remarkable rags-to-riches stories,  the United States has low economic mobility and even this has been on the decline. As such, it is no wonder that people whose ancestors were slaves in the United States would still be doing worse than those who owned slaves. After all, wealth provides an enduring advantage, and poverty provides an enduring disadvantage.

Some make the argument that since slavery ended over a century ago, its effects cannot possibly be felt. While this is an absurd claim (think of the old money families who owe their wealth to things that happened long ago), one need not rely on an appeal to the impact of the past. One can simply run through examples of and data about contemporary racism.

Those that disagree with this claim will, of course, endeavor to claim that the examples are isolated incidents and that the statistics are either in error or lies. The challenge is, of course, to respond to the data with opposing data of equal or greater credibility. The other main alternative, as noted above, is to persist in arguing that while the harms are real, they are self-inflicted. While people are sometimes their own worst enemy, the evidence is solid that many of the harms of inequality are inflicted. These, in turn, impact the liberty and life of those affected—which runs against the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. But these sorts of fact-based arguments are generally ineffective as such beliefs are based on values rather than logic. That is, it is not that racists are racists because they have false factual beliefs about statistical data. They are racists because of their values.

Plato argued philosophers should be kings, based on the idea that ruling was best done by those with knowledge. While having a philosophy professor running the show might not be the best idea, it makes sense to think intelligence is an important trait for good leaders. After all, good leadership requires making good decisions and intelligence can help here.

As might be expected, there is evidence for this view: there is a strong correlation between perceived leadership effectiveness and intelligence. Interestingly, there is positive correlation up until the leader’s IQ is 120. Above that and the leader is perceived as less effective. There are, of course, questions about IQ as a measure of intelligence, but let us set that aside for this discussion.

It is tempting to embrace the stereotype of the bumbling and ineffective intellectual and think that these higher IQ leaders are bad at leading because of their intelligence. To use a fictional example, consider the Star Trek episode “The Galileo 7.” In this episode, Spock and several crewmembers from the Enterprise crash on a planet and are beset by hostile natives. In the course of the episode, Spock uses his logic and intelligence to make decisions—but fails as a leader until he takes a desperate gamble to save everyone. The same, one might argue, can happen in the real world: a leader whose intelligence leads them astray when they try to lead. To use a real-world example, Jimmy Carter was often characterized in this manner. He was an intelligent (and compassionate) person, but many claimed he was a poor leader because he overthought things.

While this explanation has some appeal, especially in a political and social climate that is savagely anti-intellectual and anti-expert, it does not hold up to scrutiny. While there are intelligent leaders who are bad at leading, high IQ leaders are generally perceived as performing worse than their actual performance. As such, the problem is more one of perception of leadership than leadership.

It could be objected that this perception problem is a problem of leadership because a good leader would ensure that their leadership was properly perceived. On the one hand, this objection does have appeal because a key part of leadership is getting people to follow and shaping perceptions is important. On the other hand, it could be argued that the fault lies in the followers and the responsibility of learning how to perceive reality accurately lies with them.

In many ways, this challenge is like that faced by educators. A very intelligent teacher presenting difficult material to students who do not understand might be perceived as a bad teacher because of the students’ own ignorance. In contrast, a less intelligent teacher presenting simple material might be seen as a very good teacher (especially if the students get good grades). In the education scenario, one could blame the students as they should put in more effort to understand and in doing so would realize that the teacher knows their stuff. Of course, one could also blame the teacher: their job is not to show off their intelligence before uncaring students, but to teach them. As such, a good teacher must develop the skills needed to win the attention of students and the ability to guide them from ignorance to knowledge. In the history of education, the pendulum of perceived responsibility tends to swing between these two points depending on the dominant educational theory (and politics) of the day.

One approach is to take the middle-ground and argue that both intelligent leaders and their followers need to improve. That is, the followers should learn to assess leadership better and the high IQ leaders need to develop ways to connect to their followers and present themselves in a way that is not perceived as ineffective. This might, perhaps, involve dumbing things down. Or, more charitably, improving their explanations.

Another approach is to put more of a burden on leaders or on the followers, which harkens back to the education analogy—the tendency is towards the extremes rather than the middle ground. This leads to interesting questions about the responsibilities of leaders and followers. Since the leader is in the position of authority and more should be expected of them, the leader is responsible for ensuring that the followers perceive their leadership effectiveness accurately. But, going back to the teaching analogy, it is unfair to put all the burden on a teacher for making students learn and likewise for leaders. As such, the middle-ground approach is perhaps the fairest: high IQ leaders, like high IQ teachers, need to ensure that they are understood. But, followers, like students, must also assume responsibility to try to understand.