Joel Kotkin has an interesting Tablet piece on the possible future of ethnic conflict in the US.
After Intersectionalism
As ideology takes a back seat to intergroup competition, the future of ethnic conflict in America is going to look more like the past
The divisive racial ideology that dominated American politics for the past decade is dying. Led by minority activists and white progressives, “woke” ideology promoted a Manichean struggle between a coalition of the BIPOC, an acronym for “Black, Indigenous, and people of color” (assumed to be natural allies) against what the BIPOC Project calls a hegemonic system of “white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism.” But this vision of Black and white racial conflict, while still influential in universities and elite institutions, keeps getting rejected by American voters—as happened in political referendums on issues like policing and immigration, and most recently in the triumph of “normies” and centrists in the midterm elections.
Does this mean that Americans should expect a new era of kumbaya racial harmony? Not likely. Rather, the future may look more like the past, as America reverts to an older style of ethnic politics in which ideology takes a back seat to practical concerns and different groups compete over resources like jobs and the spoils of government spending.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a useful angle on what may turn out to be a shift to complex, but less doctrinaire jostling for political influence along ethnic lines.
The Democrats are now starting to take notice of Latinos’ growing support for Republican candidates and policies. Longtime Democratic analyst Ruy Teixiera recently argued that the party would do better addressing the everyday concerns of working-class Hispanics than litigating the legacy of January 6. Minorities make up over 40% of the U.S. working class and will constitute the majority by 2032. Such a shift in strategy would require a swing in Democratic messaging away from race, climate and abortion to focus instead on issues like inflation, rising crime, poor schools, and the threats to stable working and middle-class livelihoods posed by draconian green policies...
Poll after poll has shown that most Black voters and other minorities do not favor defunding the police, even as these policies are pushed in their name. Last year, New Yorkers, and New York’s African American community in particular, voted in a former cop, Eric Adams, as mayor. Minority voters have also backed more conservative candidates in Buffalo and Seattle. Similar shifts have taken place in Virginia, which saw the election of a West Indian as lieutenant governor and a Cuban American as attorney general.
2 comments:
Slightly off-topic, but the discussion around "latino" and "latinx" reminds me of a major bust-up I had in my last job.
The HR Department tasked me with writing a report on a colleague who had allegedly committed a serious misdemeanour. It rapidly became evident that HR just wanted to stitch this colleague up, as I was allocated some dozy West Indian woman from HR who interfered in what I was doing and tried to nudge me in the approved direction. She had re-written part of my report, and I said that I knew it had been doctored because I always wrote as plainly as possible, and would never indulge in such "Latinate" prose. A stand-up row ensued, and she ran from my office in tears.
Within the hour I was summoned by the HR supremo because I had allegedly called one of her staff a "Latina".
Sam - I hope you received an abject apology from her. You could even have accused her of racist mishearing, but it sounds as if it would have been an uphill struggle.
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