A WHITE MAN WALKS INTO A BAR. PERHAPS HE’S wearing a “Make America great again” cap or a Red Sox T-shirt or a crucifix. Maybe he has a tattoo sleeve or a nose ring or a yarmulke. Whatever the signifiers, you consciously, or subconsciously, have decided he is one of Us or one of Them.
According to researchers humans are hard-wired for tribalism. Labeling is biological. Minorities have put up with it since America’s founding, of course, but, as Irshad Manji argues in her new book, Don’t Label Me (St. Martin’s), the “loathed white guy” isn’t the only one stuffing others into boxes now. Everyone is at it, even those who, like Manji, champion diversity. “Well before Trump,” says the author, “so-called progressives were labeling swaths of Americans as racists…