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What is cultural identity and why is it so important?

We're grappling with that question in the United States, and the implications of our national culture wars are being felt in every sector -- from politics to labor to entertainment.

The latest example of this intensifying strife came after the publication of "White Rural Rage," a book taking aim at white rural voters, who the authors call a threat to democracy itself. The writers say white rural citizens feel irrational anger at immigrants, progressives and minorities, and say that conservative politicians weaponize that hatred to fuel electoral gains. They argue that despite Democratic policies intended to help rural communities, rural anger fuels a rise in authoritarianism and sympathy for politicians like Donald Trump who show authoritarian leanings.

But in a powerful counterargument published in Politico by a political scientist whose findings were used in the book -- or misused, as he says -- Nicholas Jacobs points out the inconvenient fact that even female and nonwhite male rural voters are turning to the GOP in greater numbers. If bigotry -- racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia -- were the sole, or even the main, driver of the Republican Party's increasing hold on rural America, why are the oppressed siding with their oppressors?

The answer, Jacobs argues, is in culture.

Jacobs lays out, quite convincingly, that the reductionist attitude among progressive and Democratic elites that mislabels all rural outrage as bigotry makes liberals unable or unwilling to see that rural American culture is more geographic than demographic. It is their rural identity that informs their political choices, not their racial, sexual or gender identity.

It's GOP understanding of that rural culture -- not an appeal to bigotry -- that has done the heavy lifting in winning over voters. The GOP understands rural Americans' tendency to see themselves as independent, self-reliant and, most importantly, abandoned by an out-of-touch political class that is increasingly corrupt and entrenched.

"On immigration, [changes to Democratic viewpoints on rural America] would mean accepting the fact that, in some communities, particularly those with financial challenges, concerns about the social burden of immigration is not always an expression of hate," Jacobs writes. "It would look at a data point on distrust in media and seek out a reason -- perhaps a self-critical one -- for why rural people are the most likely to feel like news does not portray their communities accurately."

In the stories liberals tell themselves about the way our country works, Democrats are the superheroes fighting for Black people, for women, for transgender and gay people while the GOP merely uses hatred as jet fuel. What rural voters have seen, though, is that governmental intervention (from either side) has done little over the years to raise anyone in this country out of desperate straits, to make schools better or to improve anyone's physical or financial health.

Whether they vote Republican or Democrat in the presidential elections, rural residents' lives remain the same.

Meanwhile, over the years, the GOP has been busy learning rural American culture, at its root, a fierce desire for freedom from manipulation at the hands of Congress and educators and Hollywood. Like anyone else, rural Americans believe in their choices, and they resent being told that the only reason they don't vote Democratic is that they're too stupid to do so. There's outrage, yes, but it's at the continued insistence from liberals that rural people are ignoramuses who don't understand the value of Democratic policies and who are too stupid to even realize how bigoted they are.

As it turns out, "Let politicians make all the decisions, you racist jerks," is a message doomed to fail.

To succeed, liberals must come to terms with the fact that rural culture cannot be changed by pressure from outside forces. They must see that prejudice co-exists with rural (and small-town and religious) culture but does not define it.

Most importantly, Democrats must display an honest respect for rural Americans' desire for independence.

We, as liberals, can get there. We can arrive at that respect, if we travel the road we've made for ourselves. We are liberals becauseof our respect for diversity -- of beliefs, lifestyles, experiences.

Awaiting us now is only our desire to travel that road to reach our enemies.

When we respect their differences, then they become our compatriots. And then we may find that they were never enemies at all, merely friends who spoke a different language.

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Georgia Garvey: The ultimate culture clash at the root of rural rage - Northern Virginia Daily

Its harder here in this very secular society, with this trajectory that is quite strong in terms of increased acceptance of it, he says.

Most of the public opinion is quite happy with the status quo, according to Anthony Wells, director of YouGov's political and social opinion polling, who has studied domestic public opinion.There isnt any clear drive to restrict abortion rights in the U.K., and the topic has largely not become politicized, he argues.

Brits appear to be more accepting of abortion than their U.S. counterparts, polling suggests.

A report by Duffys Policy Institute last year found 47 percent of those who took part in a world values survey believed the procedure justified behind only Sweden, Norway and France, and well ahead of the United States where the figure was just 30 percent.

And polling by YouGov last year, in the wake of Fosters high profile imprisonment, found that by a margin of 52 percent to 21 percent people believed women who have abortions outside of the rules should not face criminal prosecution.

Labour MP Stella Creasy, however, tells POLITICO that pro-choice MPs should take heed from the U.S. and warns they cannot be complacent as activists looking to increase restrictions on abortion step up their "behind-closed-doors" organizing in the U.K.

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On abortion culture wars, Britain takes a different path - POLITICO Europe

The latest battle in the culture wars cleaving American society centers around diversity programs on university campuses, now restricted or banned in a growing number of U.S. states.

The debate pits those on the left, who advocate for boosting minority students victimized by deep-rooted inequality, and those on the right who say people should be judged on individual merit, not skin color.

"The idea of present discrimination being the remedy for past discrimination... is inherently wrong," said Jordan Pace, a Republican member of the House of Representatives in the state of South Carolina.

"We don't like the idea of judging people based on immutable characteristics, whether it be gender or race or height or whatever," he said, calling the United States a "hyper-meritocratic society."

Often known as "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs, many American universities had given special consideration to minority students -- particularly those who are Black, Hispanic and Native American -- as they sought to correct long-standing inequalities.

Last June, the country's conservative-majority Supreme Court put an end to affirmative action in university admissions, reversing one of the major gains of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Now, Pace is urging his state to follow the lead of Florida and about a dozen other states that have scrapped campus DEI programs.

"The primary target group across the country... are Black people," said Ricky Jones, professor of pan-African studies at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

Carlie Reeves, 19, was the first person in her family to attend college and when she arrived at the University of Louisville, it was "very obvious that my professors didn't really think I belonged. Didn't really see me as intelligent."

DEI leaders on campus "spoke life into me and told me... you have the merit."

Many minority students are at the school "100 percent because of DEI," she said, raising as an example Black students who benefitted from race-based scholarships.

But on March 15, Kentucky lawmakers advanced a proposal to restrict such programs, spurring Reeves to co-organize a protest on campus.

"It just felt like my duty to inform the students, 'Hey y'all, these people are trying to literally get rid of us from campus... we have to do something," she said.

Kentucky is following other conservative states, including Texas, Alabama and Idaho.

At the beginning of March, the University of Florida ended DEI programs and related jobs, part of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis's offensive against what he calls "woke ideology."

"I'm extremely worried," said Stephanie Anne Shelton, a professor and director of diversity at University of Alabama's College of Education.

While provisions in the state's new law allow her to teach certain diversity awareness courses to future educators, she is concerned about "the degree to which concepts like academic freedom remain in place."

In Alabama it is now prohibited to "compel a student... to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to a divisive concept" -- specifying that includes making an individual feel the need "to apologize on the basis of his or her race."

Failure to comply can result in dismissal, the law notes.

Republicans routinely rail against "critical race theory," an academic approach to studying ways in which racism infuses US legal systems and institutions in often subtle ways.

Republican White House candidate Donald Trump has called for making reforms on a federal level.

"On Day One I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content, onto our children," he told a rally in Ohio.

Jones, the Louisville professor, said the new laws are "a rolling back of the racial clock locally, statewide and nationally."

Going forward, Black scholars will avoid states like Florida and Texas, he said, predicting "a very, very dangerous forgetting that will happen here."

More:
Diversity programs vanishing from U.S. campuses amid culture wars - Japan Today

New York City has never been immune to heated education fights, but in recent months those fights have taken on a new level of vitriol and aggression, and expanded to focus on a broader menu of divisive issues.

The battles reflect the nations growing political divide even in this deep blue city, as parents layer old debates how issues of race and discrimination are taught in schools, for example over newer ones, such as the role of transgender students in sports and how schools should address the Israel-Hamas war.

Parents have shouted over each other, called each other bigots and made formal complaints about behavior at meetings traditionally focused on issues like school improvements and student achievement. Some parents have filed police reports against each other for harassment. One woman said she was mailed a parcel with feces inside.

The battlegrounds have also multiplied, from a few notoriously quarrelsome parent councils to traditionally peaceful spots around the city.

In other districts around the country, changes in school board policy can transform what happens in classrooms. In New York City, the parent councils where many of the fights are occurring and which represent the public school systems 32 districts have little power, because the mayor controls the schools.

But the new battles, about issues that dont always break cleanly along party lines, have created a challenge for an administration trying to manage what is perhaps the nations most diverse school district.

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How NYC Schools Became a Battlefront in the Culture Wars - The New York Times

Rainbow over Cheesebox Butte Highway 95, photo by Stephen Trimble

Author: Stephen Trimble

Three presidents have signed Bears Ears proclamations. Barack Obama established Bears Ears National Monument in 2016, but supporters were devastated when Donald Trump eviscerated the monument the following year, reducing its area by 85%. In 2021, President Joe Biden restored the original boundaries and then some.

Whats clear is that Bears Ears remains reviled by Republican officials and cherished by Indigenous tribes and conservationists.

The monument, 1.36 million acres in southeast Utah, lies within San Juan County. The Navajo Nation covers 25% of the county, and Native people account for more than half of the 14,200-person population. Just 8% of the county is private land while another 5% is state trust land.

The rest 62% of the county is federal land owned by the people of the United States and administered by the Departments of Agriculture and Interior. This immense commons testifies to the sublime difficulty of the place beautiful enough to warrant preservation as national parks, monuments and forests. But its also arid enough to attract only a few 19th-century settlers to what had been Indigenous homeland for millennia.

I think its fair to say that San Juan Countys white residents never envisioned challenges to their political power. But in 2009, the feds came down hard on generations of casual pothunting by local white families. Then, after a century of oppressing their Indigenous neighbors, lawsuits strengthened Native voting rights. The county commission became majority Navajo from 2018 to 2022.

Native influence keeps expanding. The five tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition first envisioned a national monument and became co-stewards for these 1.36 million acres. They have a champion in Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, but such historic changes make the dominant culture uneasy.

In February, Utah Governor Spencer Cox dramatically withdrew from a Bears Ears land exchange poised for completion. This swap of state trust lands for Bureau of Land Management lands would hugely benefit the state. Details were already negotiated; each side compromised; the stakeholders were largely content.

But in 2024, Utah politics are stark, compounded by distrust and disinformation.

At statehood in 1896, Utah received four sections per township to support public schools and universities. The Utah Trust Lands Administration manages these scattered lands blue squares on ownership maps but blocking up these blue squares into manageable parcels means trading land with federal agencies.

Such trades arent rare and can be grand in scale. A 1998 negotiation between Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Utah Governor Mike Leavitt traded Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monuments 176,000 acres of school sections for BLM land elsewhere along with a hefty $50 million payment to Utah from the U.S. Treasury. Utah Trust Lands still brags about the dealon its website.

But the old guard is up in arms about the draft Bears Ears Resource Management Plan releasedfor public commenton March 8. The BLMs preferred alternative emphasizes traditional Indigenous knowledge and land health.

Any such gestures toward conservation elicit local outrage about the feds destroying the pioneer way of life. The subtext: the people long in charge dont want to lose power.

Denouncing federal overreach is always a sure win for Utah politicians. In this years Republican primary, San Juan County-based legislator Phil Lyman is challenging the incumbent governor with fierce anti-public lands rhetoric. Governor Cox will need to protect his right flank.

Meanwhile, school trust lands within Bears Ears remain at risk. The tallest structure in Utah,a 460-foot telecom towerwith blinking red lights, could rise on state land in the heart of the monument. Its been approved by county planners, and the Trust Lands Administration could add poison pills on other lands proposed for exchange.

The elected leaders of Utah have decided that the monuments integrity and the needs of the states children matter less than political gamesmanship.

The five tribes of Bears Earsknow better: It is our obligation to our ancestorsand to the American people, to protect Bears Ears. Their big hearts will win in the end.

Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Utah and will publish the 35th-anniversary edition of his bookThe Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basinnext winter.

Corrections: The 4th paragraph has been changed to reflect the monument is 1.36 million acres. Previously it read 5 million acres. The 7th paragraph read 1.3 million acres and that has been updated as well to 1.36 million acres.

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Culture Wars and an Embattled Utah Monument Sierra Nevada Ally - The Sierra Nevada Ally