Identity Politics: the Mixed-race American Indian Experience

American medicine and the politics of race.

Straw men play a major role in the debate over racial disparity in American medicine. Most have been deployed by the disparities-denying right, but progressives intent on "outing" racism have sent forth their share. This essay flushes out the straw men while attempting to understand the competing moral premises that drive the politics of health care disparity. At bottom, arguments about the sco...

The Politics of Identity after Identity Politics

During the presidential election of 2008, policy commentators and cultural critics alike had their hands full. The primary race between Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin’s subsequent entry as the vice presidential candidate transformed identity and political discourse in ways we are still trying to comprehend. The primary race caught the Democratic Party and its ―b...

Politics and Bureaucracy in Urban Governance: The Indian Experience

The Politics of Identity

Reorienting the Race Politics Debate

Is race politics about racism, ideology, or group conflict? After decades, this debate seems scarcely closer to resolution, despite the enormous theoretical, empirical, and normative issues at stake. I argue that a misguided approach to interpreting public opinion has stymied the debate. All three theories implicitly try to read a person’s motives for supporting or opposing proposals off of the...