Political scientist Yascha Mounk begins his fifth book with a story about an elementary school in Atlanta that, in 2020, began segregating classes by race on supposedly progressive grounds. “This story sounds depressingly familiar,” he writes, while in fact it sounds very unfamiliar, and made headlines across the world as a result. It is still a matter of open investigation, so it is impossible to know what exactly was going on. Nonetheless he pulls Mary Lin Elementary into a constellation that includes schools and universities that have healing spaces, affinity and advocacy groups – some of them just sound like workshops – based on race, and concludes: “In place of universalism, parts of the American mainstream are quickly adopting a form of progressive separatism.”
It’s a terrific introduction in the sense that it distils Mounk’s intellectual methodology: accusation slides effortlessly into fact; events are yoked together on the atmospherics, described in shorthand, as if the phrases “safe space” and “white privilege” are all you need to know to understand what went on. And if you don’t, by the end, have a clue what happened, whether a black school principal really did segregate seven-year-olds into black classes and white classes or what her rationale was if so, no matter: you’re just in an identity trap. We all are, because of Michel Foucault, and the author can lead you out.
