During the 1990s, there was much hand-wringing in some quarters at the prospect of America’s beautiful mosaic fracturing into an unworkable, divided society. Doomsayers fretted that Americans were no longer identifying themselves as, well, Americans first and foremost.
Critics claimed that identity politics were the culprit in this emerging crisis. That too many people’s allegiances, identities, and agendas were based on their membership in various sub-groups of ethnicity, gender, and/or class. None other than Arthur Schlesinger, an eminent American Historian and former adviser to President John Kennedy, complained that America was suffering from “too much pluribus and not enough unum.” Another term that became popular among critics was “hyphenated Americans,” a jab at those who supposedly were not content to be simply “American.”
Of course identity politics were nothing new to the United States. Indeed, the very term “hyphenated Americans” was first popularized by President Theodore Roosevelt back in 1915 when he gave a Columbus Day speech in which he derided anyone, whether immigrant or nativist, who did not identify solely as American. “There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American,” he 
decried. “The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”
The issue girding identity politics in Roosevelt’s time was foreign immigration. Immigrants had been washing over America’s shores by the millions for 35 years when TR gave his speech at a Knights of Columbus meeting in New York City, to an audience comprised mostly of Irish immigrants no less. But identity politics in American history go back much further than that.
Historians, though they don’t necessarily use the term in this context, are keenly aware that Andrew Jackson’s rise to the presidency came as he rode a wave of unprecedented identity politics. Although their candidate was a wealthy land speculator who owned a cotton plantation nearly two square miles in size and over 150 slaves, Jackson’s campaign presented him as an every man. They starkly contrasted him against and even mocked the well-heeled, blue blood elitism of his main rival, John Quincy Adams.
The timing of this approach was not coincidental. By the 1820s, most states had lifted property requirements for voting. Universal, white male suffrage had arrived, and the elections of that decade pivoted on an expanded electorate that now included poor and working white men previously shut out of politics. Jackson capitalized on this by casting himself as a man of the people despite his own wealth and standing.
Going back even further, one could argue that the first case of identity politics in U.S. 
history was the Revolution itself. After all, prior to the 1770s, there weren’t too many Americans who really thought of themselves as, you know, Americans. Rather, they viewed themselves as British, as did most of the loyal subjects in Great Britain’s twenty-two Atlantic colonies that ran from Canada to the Caribbean.
Although their grievances began stockpiling in 1763 at the conclusion of the French and Indian War, most Americans continued to see themselves as British. Even as late as July of 1775, leaders of the Continental Congress tried to make nice with King George, sending him the so-called Olive Branch Petition, in which they openly avowed their obedience and brotherhood. They carefully accorded King George all of the niceties due His Most Gracious Sovereign Majesty, and referred to themselves as his “faithful subjects.” The letter closed with men like Hancock, Franklin, Jefferson, Henry, Jay, and the Adamses proclaiming their desire to be:
. . . the most dutiful subjects and the most affectionate colonists. That your Majesty may enjoy a long and prosperous reign, and that your descendants may govern your dominions with honor to themselves and happiness to their subjects is our sincere and fervent prayer.
But alas, in a more modern parlance, the letter was a day late and a dollar short. There was too much water under the bridge, and too much of it in the Atlantic Ocean for the mails to reach London in a timely manner. In August, before ever seeing the petition, King George declared New England to be in a state of rebellion. And after he saw and dismissed it, Parliament tacked on the other nine colonies the following December.
Waging a successful political revolt partially hinged on Americans inventing new identities as just that: Americans. And in fact, not everyone bought into the notion that you’re British one day and something called “American” the next. Historians 
estimate that as many as one-third of the colonists remained loyal British subjects, known as tories. Another third wavered for various reasons and trod a neutral path until the rebellion actually started going well. But a feisty third or more engaged in a revolutionary form of identity politics, reclassifying themselves as Americans. Meanwhile, roughly 80,000 tories either abandoned or were chased out of the colonies, re-settling in other parts of the British Empire.
It would seem then that identity politics has a long and tempestuous history in the United States. So perhaps it is not surprising that the worried teeth gnashers of the 1990s were not in fact prescient prophets; rather they simply misread the tea leaves and misinterpreted the zeitgeist. After all, terms like African American, Asian American, and Native American are rather mundane at this point, and no longer come off as terribly fractious. In fact, they are often easily interchanged with other, older terms such as black, Chinese, and Indian.
In retrospect, it seems the new terms were less about driving wedges into society and more about historically marginalized groups demanding respect. If anything, it was a de-escalation of the Pride and Power politics of the 1970s. It was creating a new language to usurp the common derogatory epithets and suddenly-arcane terminology (“negro,” anyone?) of pre-civil rights America. It was about being new, more so than it was about being divisive. Multiculturalism and Diversity were less 
about building fences and more about increasing America’s cultural flexibility. Of course reading Shakespeare is wonderful. But adding Zora Neale Hurston to the list doesn’t water it down, it strengthens it.
On Thursday, I’ll offer a personal take on today’s identity politics, and show how Hi-top fades and Amy Tan have been replaced by Whole Foods and Ayn Rand.