Written by Deborah Levine, Editor of the American Diversity Report

Columnist David Brooks’ new twist on what used to be called America's 'balkanization' in his New York Times article,“Demography is King” can better understood as our 'tribalization.’ Regional preferences, current events and heavy political advertising, according to Brooks, do not affect the electorate as much as the identity of a community and the resonance of a leader to that community. Brooks’ theory is that the current cultural divide is largely around education. Education dominates family habits, class preferences, housing patterns, health habits and consumer trends. Add the educational factor to cultural and ethnic groups and you get a tribal map that Brooks describes as “infinitely complex . . . millions of subtle signals from body language, word choice, facial expressions, policy positions and biographical details.”

This description of diversity in America today can be daunting and overwhelming. One can understand Brooks’ claims that the appeal of candidates to the educated ‘elite’ or the working class ‘stiff’ is enmeshed in the complexity and virtually impossible to overcome. The tremendous amount of time and money spent trying to penetrate tribal cultures, unsuccessfully is testimony of how we have become a map of various culture-states with world views that can be wildly disparate while being perceived as wholly American.

I have had civic leaders tell me they don’t believe in diversity because it is too messy, vague, complex and unintelligible. My response is to acknowledge that this is all true. Yet, we cannot turn aside from this reality. America is a reflection of a global reality that will continue to intensify and must be confronted as part of our geopolitical future. Education can account for much of the segmentation. However, global tribalism is also the consequences of a diverse world struggling over diminishing resources, energy and food combined with the ability of today’s technology to reinforce passions ignited by a sense of desperation. Today’s leaders will need to tolerate the messy, vague, complex and unintelligible. They will need to navigate a world that is less inclined to ‘unite’ than to ‘negotiate’ and where negotiations are all about hard choices where some tribes lose. The ‘win-win’ situation is increasingly difficult to achieve and may already be a piece of nostalgia.

Is there an ‘upside’ to tribalization? As messy as our diverse ‘tribes’ may be, they are also passionate, enthusiastic, creative and compelling. They produce leaders who are willing to take risks, to challenge what has gone before, to inspire others to do the same. If we can harness this energy without insisting on homogenizing it, we have the potential to meet our challenging global future. In many ways, this is what the presidential campaign is all about. And that’s why it so noisy, contentious and difficult as well as provocative, revealing and energizing. It is up to the tribes to participate and negotiate a path going forward and to the candidates – this is just the beginning.