We are entering dangerous territory, the sort of tribalism that worried the astute Martin Luther King Jr. precisely because he had seen what had happened in the South by the 1960s, when a white majority tactically feigned grievance, and as various rival and often mutually suspicious ethnic groups began coalescing and forging a new white commonality, holistically defined in opposition to nonwhites.

King instead preferred that blacks adopt the higher moral ground, downplay their racial separatism, and emphasize instead a common content of character and humanity that transcends the color of one’s skin — and urge others to do the same.