"I Guess I Better Watch My Language" by Karen Rogers
A couple of months ago, I was intrigued by a headline I saw in a Facebook friend’s post. The friend is Lakota, and the article she shared had something to do with the use of the term “tribalism.” The post sounded interesting, so I looked through the article rather quickly but then moved on. Since that reading, I’ve become more aware of how I use the term. You know how it is when something is called to your attention — something you didn’t find noteworthy before, and then you start noticing it everywhere? That’s how it is for me with “tribalism.”
As an experiment recently, I googled “tribalism” and looked at the headings under the first six videos in which pundits had used the term. Here’s what popped up:
“The Dangerous Rise of Tribalism in America”
“Growing Concern in US about Political Tribalism”
“Tribalism in a Polarized America”
“Can Americans Resist the Pull of Tribalism?”
“Why Hardened Tribalism Will Bring Down America”
“How Partisan Tribalism is Killing Democracy”
The Facebook article I had originally read was correct. More and more, “tribalism” has come to mean something inherently negative, dangerous, polarizing, toxic, ugly. But it hasn’t always been that way. It seems that the root of “tribe,” as a description of a people group, showed up in Latin (tribus) as a reference to the three original divisions of the Roman people 2,500 years ago. Then, we’re all familiar with the 12 Tribes of Israel and the designations of tribes among indigenous people on all continents. If what I’ve been reading lately is correct, it wasn’t until the 1800s, in the era of Western European expansion, that tribalism took on negative connotations as referring to people who were thought to be inferior, needing to be “civilized” by colonists. And now tribalism has morphed into a buzzword for factionalism, polarization, insular rigidity, brute partisanship.
Until I dug a little deeper, I didn’t realize that the consistently negative way I (we?) use the term now is hurtful to our native American friends. The current usage casts aside all the positive, life-supporting characteristics of most tribal life. Describe someone’s thinking as “tribal” now, and you infer that it’s grounded in animosity with strong negative feelings toward people outside the tribe.
By contrast, some who have studied tribal life will tell us that “… the problem today is not tribalism but its absence. The fellow-feeling that tribalism cultivates can fix what factionalism has broken.” (Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, University of Pittsburgh) She continues,
Indeed, we have enormous political challenges because we no longer value or know how to live like tribes: to make rules together, to develop consensus, to work out difficult problems without calling for outside help. In fact, tribes – real tribes – provide a great deal of meaning, community, and connection. Let me take this a step further: if American society were to adopt some ‘tribal’ characteristics, we would all be a lot better off.
What I haven’t learned or understood about language would fill volumes. How the words I choose impact people outside my own life experience will, largely, remain unknown. One thing I’ve learned, though, as a product of the COVID-induced reading binges I’ve been on, is that I can be more careful about using the term “tribalism” only as a pejorative. In its place, I might use “factionalism” or “polarization” or “partisanship.” Doing so may leave space for my thinking to recall that tribalism can also mean fidelity, allegiance, working toward a common good, cohesion, devotion.
I’m struck by the way Devaka Premawardhana framed it in this Op-Ed from the Los Angeles Times (“A cure for tribal politics? Try learning from actual ‘tribal’ people” Feb. 20, 2020):
In our public discourse, “tribalism” is often used to express how far our political and social lives have regressed to something primitive that we should have left behind. This is deeply ironic, for it may be by thinking anew about indigenous people and opening ourselves to their “tribal” ways that we stand our best chance of becoming civil — maybe even civilized — again.
Devaka Premawardhana is an anthropologist and assistant professor of religion at Emory University.