New London — A New York University professor says to combat the tribalism threatening our democracy, we need to find ways to draw on nonpartisan identities, and it is only through identities that we can go forward.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at NYU, addressed a group of more than 60 people Wednesday evening, most of whom share the same nonpartisan identity: Coast Guard Academy cadet.

He gave a lecture called "Forward Together: Solving America's Identity Crises" at the Coast Guard Academy, voluntary for cadets to attend, as part of the Office of Inclusion and Diversity Lecture Series.

The series last month featured Eddie S. Glaude Jr., chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton, and previously featured "How to be an Antiracist" author Ibram X. Kendi.

Some students at the academy read and discussed Appiah's latest book, "The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity" in an ethics class. The book focuses on the identities of gender, creed, country, color, class and culture.

Appiah focused on class divisions in his lecture Wednesday, talking about meritocracy and how the upper class exploits advantages to give their children a leg up.

"Class identities in a meritocracy reduce people to a single measure of worth," he said, adding, "Whatever you think about success in the labor market, it surely isn't the only important thing about people."

Segueing into politics, he said American politics are driven less by what we think and more by what we are, and identities precede ideologies.

Appiah said three things about identities: They come with labels and ideas about why and to whom they should be applied, membership in an identity group matters for members' emotions by creating solidarity, and one's identity gives others reason to help or harm them.

He talked about the role of generics in how we think about identities, noting that people can believe Xs are Y even if most Xs aren't Y. For example, he said, a lot of people have the thought of a terrorist when they see a Muslim, even though most Muslims aren't terrorists.

In response to a question from a student about how nature versus nurture plays into identity, Appiah said what people are like is in many ways a matter of what genes they have, but people also are shaped by their peers, and he doesn't think it makes sense to assign a proportion to the impact of nature versus nurture.

e.moser@theday.com