What does it look like when a country’s identity falls apart? Interior Design/shutterstock.com Monica Duffy Toft, Tufts University What happens to a country when its core national identity – its preferred image of itself in terms of race or religion – doesn’t match its demographic reality? Say a Sunni-dominated Arab country is actually a majority Shi'a Arab country; or a Russian-Slavic majority becomes a minority; or a white Protestant U.S.