CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Around the world, people are grouped in kindred segments. It's a basic fact of sociology and psychology, sometimes called tribalism.

Some divisions are inborn, such as racial groupings of whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics and the like. Some are based on language, such as Canada's divide over French-speaking Quebec. Some are biological, such as gays and "straights." Some are nationalistic and ethnic, depending on country of origin.

Others are religious. People are "tribalized" as Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Catholics, Protestants, or secular "nones." Even within categories, divisions can be extreme. Sunni and Shiite Muslims often clash violently. Among Protestants, high-church Episcopalians are miles away from talking-in-tongues Pentecostals.

Other divisions are circumstantial, such as groupings by rich and poor, young and old, urbanites and rural folk, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, college graduates and high school dropouts, union members and lone wolves.

These many, many societal cliques are analyzed in a recent book, Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind, by science writer David Berreby - and by another landmark book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, by journalist Bill Bishop. The latter warns that group identity increasingly isolates Americans into self-absorbed enclaves.

Amid this tangle of groups and subgroups, democracy makes all the disparate people equal, melded in a common society. E pluribus unum - from many, one. Divisions remain, yet each person shares equal citizenship with all the others. In America, we're all Americans together.

If divisions are allowed to fester, they can breed strife and cruelty. But people also have a capacity for teamwork - an ability to reach across categories and join in mutual cooperation based on equal fairness. Theologian Reinhold Niehbur said: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

America's equality laws are rooted in a belief that society can overcome its many differences and function in a unity that treats all groups fairly. Can that goal be achieved, or will tribalism forever breed inequality?

Three months ago, in an address to the National Governors Association, former President Bill Clinton cited The Big Sort book to warn that Americans are growing more polarized and alienated into self-focused subgroups. Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine - top speaker for tonight's Democratic Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner at the Charleston Civic Center - made a comment that applied to his political gulf with the Clintons, but might apply to all social divisions: "We're human beings, so there are feelings, but we understand that this is a team sport and we come back together as a team."

The more serious societal gulfs are, the more harm they can do. America's former racial segregation was an ugly example of tribalism. But that blight has faded greatly. The era of domination by WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) is relentlessly receding. The Census Bureau projects that non-Hispanic whites soon will be a minority in America - except in places like West Virginia, the third-whitest state after Maine and Vermont.

This afternoon, the Gazette's editor will join a dozen scholars in a Marshall University conference discussing whether lingering Appalachian racism will be factor in the Nov. 4 presidential election in West Virginia.

We hope the panelists agree - and the ballot results prove - that West Virginians have joined the changing times that are erasing the dividing lines in most of America.

Some divisions are inborn, such as racial groupings of whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics and the like. Some are based on language, such as Canada's divide over French-speaking Quebec. Some are biological, such as gays and "straights." Some are nationalistic and ethnic, depending on country of origin.

Others are religious. People are "tribalized" as Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Catholics, Protestants, or secular "nones." Even within categories, divisions can be extreme. Sunni and Shiite Muslims often clash violently. Among Protestants, high-church Episcopalians are miles away from talking-in-tongues Pentecostals.

Other divisions are circumstantial, such as groupings by rich and poor, young and old, urbanites and rural folk, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, college graduates and high school dropouts, union members and lone wolves.

These many, many societal cliques are analyzed in a recent book, Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind, by science writer David Berreby - and by another landmark book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, by journalist Bill Bishop. The latter warns that group identity increasingly isolates Americans into self-absorbed enclaves.

Amid this tangle of groups and subgroups, democracy makes all the disparate people equal, melded in a common society. E pluribus unum - from many, one. Divisions remain, yet each person shares equal citizenship with all the others. In America, we're all Americans together.

If divisions are allowed to fester, they can breed strife and cruelty. But people also have a capacity for teamwork - an ability to reach across categories and join in mutual cooperation based on equal fairness. Theologian Reinhold Niehbur said: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

America's equality laws are rooted in a belief that society can overcome its many differences and function in a unity that treats all groups fairly. Can that goal be achieved, or will tribalism forever breed inequality?

Three months ago, in an address to the National Governors Association, former President Bill Clinton cited The Big Sort book to warn that Americans are growing more polarized and alienated into self-focused subgroups. Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine - top speaker for tonight's Democratic Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner at the Charleston Civic Center - made a comment that applied to his political gulf with the Clintons, but might apply to all social divisions: "We're human beings, so there are feelings, but we understand that this is a team sport and we come back together as a team."

The more serious societal gulfs are, the more harm they can do. America's former racial segregation was an ugly example of tribalism. But that blight has faded greatly. The era of domination by WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) is relentlessly receding. The Census Bureau projects that non-Hispanic whites soon will be a minority in America - except in places like West Virginia, the third-whitest state after Maine and Vermont.

This afternoon, the Gazette's editor will join a dozen scholars in a Marshall University conference discussing whether lingering Appalachian racism will be factor in the Nov. 4 presidential election in West Virginia.

We hope the panelists agree - and the ballot results prove - that West Virginians have joined the changing times that are erasing the dividing lines in most of America.