Civic Divide: How Power Scripts Conflict Between Communities

The civic divide does not appear out of thin air. It shows up when power needs a wedge to redirect attention or reshape incentives. Once the script is written, communities find themselves performing roles they never auditioned for.

The Lawsuit, the Wedge, and the Civic Divide

The end of affirmative action did not arrive as a neutral adjustment. It arrived through a lawsuit fronted by Asian American plaintiffs but orchestrated by Edward Blum, a conservative activist who understood how a well-placed wedge could reshape the narrative.

Inside the courtroom, statistical claims were used to ignite comparison. One expert argued that an Asian applicant with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 95 percent chance if they were Black with identical credentials. This was less about clarity and more about choreography: setting the stage for conflict.

Outside the courtroom, the public conversation ignored a simple truth. Most Asian Americans support affirmative action. According to the 2022 AAPI Data Voter Survey, nearly seven in ten favor it. The divide did not come from the data. It came from the way the story was told.

The Model Minority as a Political Tool

The Model Minority myth did not emerge from triumph. It emerged from strategy. During the Cold War, the United States needed proof that its system could lift certain groups. Highlighting Asian success served that purpose and created a convenient contrast with Black poverty, which was blamed on culture rather than policy.

The myth works in one direction. It elevates when elevation is useful and erases when usefulness ends. Praise is conditional. Proximity is provisional. Neither promises safety.

History makes this pattern clear. Exclusion laws, Japanese incarceration, and refugee placement on unstable land in New Orleans all point to the same conclusion: proximity to acceptance is a lease with no renewal guarantee.

This dynamic widens the civic divide by turning communities into instruments rather than partners.

Assimilation as Moving Goalpost

Assimilation is often sold as a strategy for safety: speak the language, earn credentials, move closer to whiteness, and distance yourself from communities that are framed as “problems.” It feels like progress until the moment the ground shifts.

Crisis reveals the truth. During COVID, hate crimes did not stop to check résumés, marriages, or salary brackets. The same society that praises Asian achievement can redefine Asian identity as threat with one change in narrative.

The internal cost is heavy. People begin to fold themselves into shapes that fit someone else’s expectations. Food becomes embarrassing. Language becomes optional. Culture becomes negotiable. None of it buys permanence.

What Black America Already Understood

Black communities have lived inside this cycle for generations. Progress followed by backlash. Rights followed by redesign. Recognition followed by punishment. It builds a different instinct about power. Not fear. Awareness.

Yet the story is also one of alliance. Filipino and Mexican farmworkers linking arms with Black laborers. Japanese American activists standing with Malcolm X. Campus coalitions rewriting university policy. The archive is full of moments when solidarity was not theory but practice.

Coalition or Choreography

The affirmative action ruling revealed a simple structure of choice. Communities can work in coalition or perform choreography designed by someone else. One builds power. The other entertains it.

• Coalition asks who benefits together.
• Choreography asks who performs well enough to be rewarded temporarily.

Coalition requires honesty about internal bias, inequality, and the emotional inheritance of immigration and racial conflict. Choreography requires only silence and cooperation with the script.

Understanding the civic divide requires looking at who benefits from the conflict and who is removed from the resolution.

The Discipline of Refusing the Wedge

Refusing the wedge means recognizing when comparison replaces context. It means refusing narratives that credit culture but ignore structure. Housing policy, school funding, zoning, surveillance, and immigration enforcement shape outcomes far more than stereotypes ever will.

It also means investing in the slow, unglamorous infrastructure of safety: joint organizing, shared data, legal strategy, and public pressure that continues even when the media cycle moves on.

Reclaiming Identity Within the Civic Divide

Reclaiming identity begins with stepping outside the roles that proximity demands. Dignity cannot be borrowed from whiteness. It must be built from clarity about how power uses narratives to separate communities that would be stronger together.

When the civic divide is seen for what it is—architecture, not accident—the wedge loses its sharpness. The conversation shifts from “who is ahead” to “who is shaping the rules.”

Where the Wedge Goes Next

Affirmative action was only one stage. The next arenas are already visible: housing discrimination cases, immigration policy battles, zoning fights, school admissions, and labor rights in emerging tech corridors. The wedge moves where the political return is highest. Understanding its mobility is part of understanding its purpose.

The Groundwork

The end of affirmative action is more than a legal event. It is a blueprint for how power scripts conflict, assigns roles, and discards the cast once the goal is met. The civic divide is not a natural condition. It is a design choice.

Coalition remains the only structure that forces this country to change its laws rather than its language. When communities refuse the roles assigned to them, the script collapses and a new story becomes possible.