Chapter 23 — Exercises
These exercises ask you to engage seriously with the empirical and normative content of identity in American politics. Two ground rules drawn from the Balance Guide: (1) when an exercise asks you to steel-man a position you don't hold, you must present the strongest version of it, the way its smartest adherents present it; and (2) when the empirical record is clear, follow the data — don't substitute your political preferences for it.
Exercise 23.1 — Your district by four identity axes
Locate publicly available demographic data for your congressional district (Census ACS via census.gov; Almanac of American Politics via your library; or DistrictBuilder.org for visualization). Fill in a four-column profile of your district along these axes:
- Race and ethnicity — top three groups by share, plus aggregate racial diversity index.
- Religion — best available estimate of evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant, Black Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu/Sikh/Buddhist, "religiously unaffiliated" share. (PRRI's American Values Atlas at ava.prri.org gives state-level data; precinct-level data is harder to find but local journalism often provides estimates.)
- Education — share with bachelor's degree or higher; share with high school degree only.
- Density and geography — population density per square mile; urban/suburban/rural classification (the Census Bureau provides standard definitions).
Then look up your district's 2024 presidential vote share and 2024 House race outcome. Write 600–800 words analyzing how the four identity axes correlate with the partisan outcome in your district. Where does the basic identity-politics framework predict your district well? Where does it fall short? What single fact about your district most surprised you?
Exercise 23.2 — Trace one identity-political controversy in your state
Select one of the following controversies and trace its development in your state from 2020 to 2026:
- A K–12 curriculum dispute (CRT-related legislation, the 1619 Project, sex education, parental rights bills).
- A university DEI-related law or policy change.
- A religious-liberty case or law in your state.
- A transgender-rights or Title IX-related law or policy change.
- An immigration-enforcement-related state law or local-government action.
Document: (a) what specifically was proposed or passed; (b) who supported it and on what arguments; (c) who opposed it and on what arguments; (d) what the legal or policy outcome was; (e) what the empirical effects (if measurable) have been. Cite the actual bill, news coverage from at least one source on each political side, and any litigation if applicable. 800–1,000 words. Resist the urge to characterize one side's arguments as obviously wrong; your job in this exercise is to present both sides at their strongest.
Exercise 23.3 — Steel-man identity politics from BOTH critique angles
Write two essays of 500–600 words each.
Essay A: The progressive critique of identity politics, at its strongest. Drawing on Mark Lilla, Adolph Reed Jr., and the Sanders-aligned tradition (or other progressive critics you find compelling), present the case that identity-focused politics has been bad for the political left. The argument should be substantive: it should engage what identity politics actually does and does not accomplish, what alternative organizing strategies might do better, and why thoughtful progressives should consider these critiques. You are writing this essay as if you were trying to convince a left-of-center reader who is sympathetic to identity-politics framings.
Essay B: The conservative critique of identity politics, at its strongest. Drawing on Yuval Levin, Patrick Deneen, Charles Murray, Christopher Rufo (or other conservative critics), present the case that identity-focused politics has been corrosive of the institutions and commitments classical conservatives value. Again, the argument should be substantive: it should engage why the institutions matter, what specific identity-political practices undermine them, and what alternative civic frameworks might replace them. You are writing this essay as if you were trying to convince a right-of-center reader who has not thought carefully about these critiques.
Both essays should pass what philosophers call the "ideological Turing test": a thoughtful reader of each tradition should be unable to tell, from your essay, whether you personally agree with the critique. After both essays, write a 200-word reflection on which essay was harder to write and why.
Exercise 23.4 — Analyze a Pew religious-political study
Visit the Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life section (pewresearch.org/religion). Select a recent survey report — for instance, "How U.S. Religious Composition Has Changed in Recent Decades" (2024), the religious landscape studies, or post-election validated voter analyses.
Write a 600–800 word analysis answering: (a) What is the central empirical finding? (b) What is the survey methodology and what are its known limitations? (c) How does this finding interact with the other religious-political data presented in this chapter? (d) What political-coalition implications, if any, does the finding suggest? Be careful to distinguish between what the data shows (empirical) and what readers might conclude from the data (normative).
Exercise 23.5 — The cross-pressured voter portrait
Construct a portrait of a plausible cross-pressured voter in 2024. Choose three identity axes that point in different partisan directions (for example: a Black evangelical man in Atlanta; a Hispanic Catholic small-business owner in Phoenix; a white college-educated rural voter in Vermont; an Asian-American Muslim woman in Northern Virginia). Write a 500–700 word analysis of how this voter might have approached the 2024 election: what considerations would be in tension, what cues would be available from each of their identity-affiliated institutions, and how candidates and parties would (and did) appeal to them. The goal is empathic accuracy — getting inside the experience of a voter whose configuration of identities does not map neatly onto the dominant coalition lines.
Exercise 23.6 — The "Christian nationalism" terminology debate
Read three sources on the term "Christian nationalism": (a) Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry's Taking America Back for God (2020) or the underlying Christian Nationalism Scale they developed; (b) one defense from within the broader religious-conservative movement (Yoram Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism, Patrick Deneen's writing on this topic, or First Things essays); (c) one critique from a religious conservative who rejects the label (David French's writing in The Dispatch, Russell Moore's writing post-2021, Tim Keller's later writing).
Write a 500–700 word analysis that does not take a position on whether "Christian nationalism" is good or bad, and does not take a position on whether the term is fairly applied. Instead, analyze the terminology dispute itself: who applies the label, who rejects it, what each side gains and loses by adopting or rejecting the term, and how a reader can navigate the empirical questions about religious-conservative political mobilization without being captured by the terminology dispute.
Exercise 23.7 — Compare two identity-mobilization organizations
Select one organization from each of the following pairs:
- The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) vs. the Family Research Council
- LULAC vs. the LIBRE Initiative
- HRC (Human Rights Campaign) vs. Alliance Defending Freedom
- Indivisible vs. the Tea Party Patriots / FreedomWorks
For each, document: (a) when founded, by whom, with what stated mission; (b) primary funding sources and approximate budget; (c) tactics (electoral, legislative, judicial, cultural); (d) measurable impact on policy or legislation. 600–800 words total. The point is symmetric analysis: both organizations are doing identity-coalitional work, both have legitimate institutional roles in American pluralist politics, and both can be analyzed with the same toolkit.
Exercise 23.8 — The 2024 demographic shifts: empirical or artifactual?
The 2024 election produced several notable demographic shifts: Hispanic voters moved Republican by ~10 points relative to 2020; young men of all races moved Republican; Muslim voters in Michigan shifted dramatically; Black men shifted modestly Republican. Each of these shifts has been variously attributed to durable realignment, candidate-specific factors (Trump and Harris specifically), issue-specific factors (Israel-Gaza, immigration, inflation), or measurement artifact (different exit-poll methodologies producing different numbers).
Read at least two post-election validated-voter analyses (Catalist's "What Happened in 2024," Pew's Validated Voter analysis, the AAPI Data analyses, the Equis Research post-election report on Hispanic voters, or analogous serious work). Write 700–900 words evaluating the durable-realignment-vs-cyclical-fluctuation question for one of the demographic shifts. What does the data we have suggest? What additional cycles of data would settle the question? What structural factors (institutional, demographic, cohort) would push for or against durable realignment?
This is an empirical exercise. You are not asked to celebrate or lament the shift. You are asked to read the data carefully and write what it tells us — and what it doesn't yet tell us — about the political coalitions that are forming.
Exercise 23.9 — The unmarked-default audit
Pick a major political news story from the past year that involves identity in American politics — a curriculum debate, a religious-liberty case, an electoral coalition story, a cultural controversy that crossed into political coverage. Find five news articles or analyses of it from sources spanning the political spectrum (for instance: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal opinion section, The Washington Post, National Review, and The Atlantic; or The Dispatch, The American Conservative, Mother Jones, Vox, and The Free Press).
Read each article carefully and answer, for each: (a) Which identities are explicitly named as identities? (b) Which identities are treated as default or unmarked? (c) Whose perspective is the implied "neutral" reader? (d) Whose perspective is treated as a "side" with a particular stake? Write a 700–900 word analysis of the patterns you observe. The goal is not to declare one outlet biased and another not — every outlet writes for an implied reader — but to see how identity-political coverage routinely treats some identities as "marked" subjects of analysis and others as the unmarked default position from which deviations occur.
This exercise reflects the chapter's analytical discipline: a symmetrical analytical framework treats every demographic political coalition the same way. It also prepares you to read political coverage with greater epistemic awareness, regardless of where on the spectrum that coverage originates.
Exercise 23.10 — Two dinner conversations
Imagine two dinner conversations. In the first, the people around the table all share your political views. Someone makes an identity-political claim that aligns with the group consensus and that you have some doubts about — but everyone else nods and the conversation moves on. In the second, the people around the table all hold views opposed to yours. Someone makes an identity-political claim that contradicts your views, in a tone that suggests dissent will not be welcomed.
Write a 400–600 word reflection on these two scenarios. What are your obligations as a thoughtful participant in each? What is the cost of speaking up? What is the cost of staying silent? What does political-science training (the reading you have done in this chapter and elsewhere) prepare you to do in each case?
The point of this exercise is not to produce a "correct" answer; it is to confront, in a low-stakes setting, the social dynamics that make symmetrical analysis genuinely hard. Identity-political conversations happen in the social settings of real people's lives, not in seminar rooms with rules of engagement. The capacity to navigate them with intellectual integrity in both directions is itself a political skill.