Chapter 23 — Self-Check Quiz
Twelve multiple-choice and four short-answer questions. Answers and explanations follow each question.
Multiple choice
1. The term "identity politics" was first used in print by:
A. Mark Lilla in The Once and Future Liberal B. The Combahee River Collective in their 1977 statement C. Christopher Rufo in his 2020 essays on critical race theory D. Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 article on intersectionality
Answer: B. The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) introduced the descriptive use of "identity politics" to refer to politics rooted in one's own group experience. Lilla, Rufo, and Crenshaw all wrote later. Note that Combahee's original meaning was descriptive and coalitional, not the contemporary contested use.
2. Across the 2008–2024 period, which demographic group has had the most consistent Democratic vote share?
A. Hispanic Catholic voters B. White college-educated women C. Black voters D. Voters under age 30
Answer: C. Black voters have given the Democratic candidate 83% or more in every presidential election from 2008 through 2024. The other groups have all shown larger swings across cycles. Note that the 2024 cycle saw the smallest Democratic margin among Black voters in two decades, but the figure remained above 80%.
3. The "education realignment" refers to:
A. The convergence of voting patterns between college-educated and non-college voters since 2000 B. The post-2016 polarization in which college-educated voters lean Democratic and non-college voters lean Republican C. The shift of educators (teachers and professors) toward the Democratic Party D. The growth of for-profit higher education as a political issue
Answer: B. The education realignment is among the most documented shifts in modern American voting behavior. It is most pronounced among white voters but visible across racial groups.
4. Kimberlé Crenshaw's 1989 article on intersectionality used which legal case as its central example?
A. Brown v. Board of Education B. Bakke (affirmative action) C. DeGraffenreid v. General Motors D. Bostock v. Clayton County
Answer: C. Crenshaw used DeGraffenreid (1976), in which Black women's discrimination claims against GM fell between race-discrimination and sex-discrimination doctrine, as the paradigmatic example of why single-axis civil-rights analysis missed real harms.
5. Per the Pew Validated Voter studies and Catalist data, white evangelical Protestants supported the Republican presidential candidate in 2016, 2020, and 2024 by approximately what margin?
A. 50–55% Republican B. 60–65% Republican C. 80–85% Republican D. 95%+ Republican
Answer: C. White evangelical Protestants have voted approximately 80–84% Republican across the three Trump cycles. Some intra-evangelical dissent exists (the Russell Moore / David French / Beth Moore / pre-death Tim Keller circle), but it has not significantly moved the aggregate vote.
6. Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) ruled that:
A. Race-based affirmative action is constitutionally permissible at private universities B. Race cannot be used as an explicit factor in higher-education admissions C. Universities must consider socioeconomic class in admissions D. Title VI does not apply to private universities
Answer: B. The 2023 SFFA decisions effectively ended explicit race-conscious admissions at higher-education institutions, while leaving open class-based and other "race-neutral" approaches.
7. The "social sorting" thesis developed by Lilliana Mason argues that:
A. American voters have become better at identifying their own party affiliations B. As multiple identities (race, religion, geography, education) align with party, partisan affect intensifies C. American social classes have sorted themselves into geographically distinct neighborhoods D. Voters of different parties increasingly use different social media platforms
Answer: B. Mason's Uncivil Agreement (2018) develops the argument that as Republicans have become more uniformly evangelical, rural, and non-college, while Democrats have become more uniformly secular, urban, and college-educated, the emotional intensity of partisan attachment has grown.
8. "Cross-pressured voters" are:
A. Voters whose identities all point to the same party B. Voters who hold identities pointing in different partisan directions C. Voters who are members of more than one political party D. Voters who switch parties between elections
Answer: B. Cross-pressured voters (e.g., Black evangelical voters, college-educated rural voters) face conflicting partisan pulls from their identities and tend to be more open to persuasion than stable-bloc voters.
9. United States v. Skrmetti (2024) addressed:
A. Religious-liberty exemptions for adoption agencies B. Tennessee's law restricting certain gender-transition medical interventions for minors C. Federal Title IX rules on athletics D. State laws restricting drag performances
Answer: B. The Court upheld Tennessee's law in a 6-3 decision, holding it did not constitute sex discrimination triggering heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.
10. The "religiously unaffiliated" share of American adults in 2024 is approximately:
A. 5% B. 12% C. 28–30% D. 50%
Answer: C. Per Pew (2024), religiously unaffiliated Americans ("nones," atheists, agnostics, "spiritual but not religious") are now approximately 28–30% of adults, the largest religious-affiliation category in the country.
11. The 2024 "young-male shift" refers to:
A. The increase in young male voter turnout overall B. The shift of men aged 18–29 toward the Republican candidate relative to 2020, producing a record within-cohort gender gap C. The increased Republican vote share among college-educated men D. The shift of older men toward Republican candidates
Answer: B. Per Catalist, men aged 18–29 voted Democratic by approximately 7 points in 2024, down from Biden's 24-point margin in 2020, while young women remained ~18 points Democratic — producing the largest within-cohort gender gap in modern polling (~25 points).
12. Per the Catalist 2024 analysis, which is the strongest single demographic axis correlating with vote choice?
A. Income B. Race alone C. Education D. Religion
Answer: C. Education, particularly the college/non-college divide, is now the most consequential single demographic axis in American voting behavior. Income is weakly polarizing in 2024; race, religion, and education each carry significant weight, but education has overtaken income and now rivals religion as the leading class proxy.
Short answer
13. Define "identity politics" in two senses — the descriptive sense from the Combahee River Collective Statement and the contemporary contested sense — and explain why the chapter argues the term is applied selectively in popular discourse.
Sample answer: The Combahee River Collective (1977) used "identity politics" descriptively to mean politics rooted in one's own group experience as a basis for solidarity and analysis. The contemporary contested sense (especially as used by conservative critics) refers to politics that elevates group claims of historical injury into a primary organizing principle, often counterposed to universal-rights frameworks. The chapter argues the term is applied selectively because, when used as a critique, "identity politics" is often reserved for left-coded movements (Black Lives Matter, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights) while right-coded group-affinity politics (white evangelical mobilization, "white working class" framing, regional and ethnic conservative coalitions) is not described in the same terms. A symmetrical analytical framework treats both as identity-coalitional politics.
14. Explain the difference between the academic sense of "Critical Race Theory" and the political sense of the term as deployed in K–12 curriculum debates from 2021 onward.
Sample answer: The academic sense refers to a tradition in legal scholarship dating to the 1980s — work by Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, and others — that examines how race and law interact in ways that formal equality alone cannot capture. It is graduate-level legal-academic work that virtually no K–12 school has taught. The political sense, deployed from 2021 onward, refers more loosely to any K–12 pedagogy that emphasizes systemic racism, racial-disparity analysis, or race-based identity formation. Christopher Rufo has acknowledged choosing to "freeze the brand" of CRT as a political target. Defenders of the targeted curricula argue the political use is a deliberate misdirection. Both points have substantive content: there is a real academic tradition called CRT, but most K–12 curricular practices being debated are not directly authored by academic CRT scholars.
15. Identify one progressive critique and one conservative critique of identity politics, and one progressive defense and one conservative defense of group-affinity politics. Briefly state the strongest version of each.
Sample answer: - Progressive critique (Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal): Identity-focused politics, even when deployed for marginalized groups, can crowd out the cross-group civic appeals needed to win durable political power, and ranks identities rather than appealing to shared citizenship. - Conservative critique (Yuval Levin, A Time to Build): Identity politics is a symptom of broader institutional erosion; the institutions that once formed citizens have weakened, and politicized identity has rushed in to fill the void. - Progressive defense (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me): Race-specific historical experiences (slavery, Jim Crow, redlining) have produced race-specific harms that race-neutral remedies cannot fully address; "color-blind" framing can mask discrimination. - Conservative defense (Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism): Faith communities, traditional families, and national identity are legitimate axes of political organization; the selective application of "identity politics" as critique only of left-coded movements is itself a partisan move.
16. What does it mean to say "the data settle some questions and leave others open" in the context of identity and politics? Give an example of each.
Sample answer: The data settle empirical questions of correlation and trend: race, religion, gender, education, geography, and generation correlate strongly and persistently with vote choice; white evangelicals vote approximately 81–84% Republican; the education divide has overtaken income as the leading class predictor in voting. The data do not settle normative questions: whether identity-coalitional politics is healthy or corrosive for American democracy, whether specific institutional practices (DEI training, race-conscious admissions, parental-rights laws) are wise, or what the proper relationship is between group-affinity claims and universal civic commitments. Empirical correlations can be measured; normative judgments require value commitments that the data themselves cannot adjudicate. A serious citizen distinguishes the two.