"Got Hold of a Nuclear Warhead"

"Earlier and more clearly than most of his contemporaries, Shanker foresaw how 'identity politics' would eventually tear apart the Democratic Party. It would rob liberals of the moral power of the argument for a colorblind society. It would fracture liberalism along racial, ethnic, and gender lines, pitting blacks not only against whites, Jews, and women, but also every other ethnic or minority group, as each stepped forward with separate, and competing, grievances. The special-interest sparring would prevent working-class Americans from ever making common cause on an agenda of economic betterment, to the detriment of all. Shanker all but begged liberals, through the 1970s and '80s, to concentrate on more bread-and-butter issues, to little avail."

In Slate, Sara Mosle reviews Richard Kahlenberg's Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy.

As does Thomas J. Sugrue in The Nation.