i’m less interested in his career trajectory than in what he destroys along its path. he’s already destroyed my alma mater (New College of Florida). i’m not sure how much of the destruction of US higher ed can be attributed directly to him. 1/

DiAngelo was a kind of excess and grift and he is that too. but DiAngelo wasn’t an effective agent of destruction and perhaps fascist reconstruction in the way Rufo has been. this take strikes me as a bit too sanguine. /fin

Of course you have to pay attention to the affiliative and ascriptive identities of the people you govern. Managing such identities is the hardest part of state construction and maintenance. 1/

The question is *how* you must pay attention, whether it is wise tgat certain understandings of what those identities are be somehow reified as real and granted rights claims by outside parties that then must constrain the state in how it conceives of and shapes its public. /fin

Yes, we’ve discussed this before. It’s a great description of a desirable *end state*. Successful states need the identity groups that they comprise to have a stake in, be represented and enfranchised, in the national project. 1/

But group-rights claims hinder the *means* to that end. 2/

What affiliative or ascriptive groups exist in a state, however strongly identified they are, how segregated and distinct they are, are not predetermined but things that must be continually shaped by the project of state building and maintenance. 3/

Singapore simultaneously insists on maintaining the identities of three major subgroups (chinese, malay, indian) while it refuses them certain associational rights but controlling the racial distribution of housing. 1/

It both strengthens and weakens subgroup affiliations, strengthening particular identities that it has made legible to itself and recognized, enfranchised, in the manner Wimmer suggests, implicitly perhaps weakening other or more specialized identities that might emerge under other policy. 2/

Its housing policy and language policy (it encourages “native tongues” but insists on English as the lingua franca in commerce and law) shapes the degree and character of identity, the balance of local identity with identity with the broader state. 3/

All of this is legitimate, even laudable, in my view, even though some might dislike the state’s restriction of association in the formation of communities of coresidence. 4/

(Early Singapore had terrible racial conflict. Modern Singapore’s founding moment is an instance of ethnic cleansing, Malaysia choosing to shed a Chinese ethnic enclave.) /fin

as i’ve asserted and you resist in normative grounds (fine) but you cannot resist on practical grounds, the ability in practice to have rights derives from states. states enforce rights, or else only might makes right. 1/

the existence of and desirability of states, however, does not depend on any particular bundle of rights that states choose to enforce. 2/

liberal states protecting a broad range of expressive and associational rights are desirable in my view, but the case for states is not only for so advanced and delicate a flower. 3/

a right to “free association” may or may not be protected, and the meaning of such a right may or may not extend to choosing where and with whom to live (can ethnic enclaves emerge?), choosing in what language our children are educated, etc. 4/

again, imposing a priori as “universal rights” particular answers to these questions constrains the sphere of action for state integration and maintenance in ways that render extermination or expulsion more likely than if states had greater internal scope to work towards peaceful integration. /fin