The notion of identity politics associated with the spirit of political correctness is also associated with the spirit of so-called multiculturalism. However, multiculturalists tend to be against so-called patriarchy, which they characteristically associated primarily with Western culture. As a result, multiculturalists tend to be anti-Western culture, broadly speaking -- not just critical, but hyper-critical and tending to be extremely judgmental.
For example, the Reverend Jesse Jackson exemplified the anti-Western culture spirit of many multiculturalists when he chanted at Stanford University, "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Western Civ has got to go!"
In the 2016 presidential campaign, we were told repeatedly that many Trump supporters were non-college-educated white men. Now, if we think in terms of white identity politics, we might say that many of Trump's white supporters are experiencing an identity crisis involving their cultural identity and heritage, with respect to our American cultural heritage and our Western cultural heritage as well.
Collectively, we Americans are living through a cultural identity crisis that emerged in the 1960s with the black civil rights movement and the so-called "second wave" feminist movement, both of which were intertwined with the anti-war movement against the Vietnam War.
Oddly enough, early in the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama un-self-consciously, but correctly in my estimate, described the great divide among politicians in DC as going back to the 1960s. But then he claimed that he would be the politician who somehow would heal the great divide. As I say, he made that claim un-self-consciously, apparently without being aware that as an African-American, he symbolized the 1960s black civil rights movement not only in the eyes of his Republican opponents, but also in the eyes of his Democratic supporters. In any event, the Republican obstructionism that President Obama faced meant that he made little headway in healing the great divide among politicians in DC.
But the great divide that he correctly identified in the 2004 presidential campaign is the great divide in American culture to this day.
No doubt Hillary as the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential candidate symbolized the "second wave" feminist movement that emerged in the late 1960s not only in the eyes of her Republican detractors, but also in the eyes of many of her Democratic supporters.
The fact that Trump through his deliberate strategy of assaulting the spirit of political correctness was able to successfully turn certain previously blue battleground states red shows that the great divide in American culture is still with us to this day.
In David Riesman's terminology about the three classic American character types (outer-directed, inner-directed, and other-directed), many contemporary white Americans today tend to be inner-directed persons, including many rural white Protestants who voted for Trump.
By contrast, many contemporary white American multiculturalists today who express the spirit of political correctness tend to represent a sub-optimal form of being other-directed persons.
As for the Reverend Jesse Jackson, he tends to represent a residual form of outer-directedness (which is also known as tradition-directed). No doubt residual forms of outer-directedness can be found in contemporary American culture today, not only among non-college-educated blacks but also among other non-college-educated Americans.
Arguably our American political and economic liberalism involve idealizing the inner-directed type person.
But the great divide in American culture that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s involves not idealizing the inner-directed type, on the one hand, and, on the other, evolving toward an optimal other-directed orientation in life. But of course the optimal form of other-directedness is still a work in progress -- it is still under construction, still emerging, still evolving.
Now, no doubt each of us needs to work out a socially acceptable sense of personal psychological boundaries in order to work out and establish our sense of personal identity. But our sense of personal identity typically also includes a certain measure of identifying as a member of a certain collective and corporate group.
But our identifying as a member of a certain collective and corporate group such as a specific American Protestant religious group can be threatened by certain Supreme Court decisions that rule out long-standing practices or customs that were previously established and recognized in the legal system. When such decisions are felt as existential threats to individual person's religious identity, those individual persons who feel thus threatened tend to see themselves as needing to work to re-establish their previous boundaries to whatever extent that this may be possible for them to do.
Up to, say, the election of Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts in 1960, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), and former Protestants, tended to be over-represented in the prestige culture in American culture. As a result, all white Protestants could feel like they were part of the dominant in-group.
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