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Identity Politics Now the Driving Force of the Democratic Party

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Political opponents of President Trump often accuse him of “sowing division” with his “racist language,” Heather MacDonald writes in the WSJ.

Yet Mr. Trump rarely uses racial categories in his speech or his tweets. It is the elite media and Democratic leaders who routinely characterize individuals and groups by race and issue race-based denunciations of large parts of the American polity. Some examples:

  • “As race dominates the political conversation, 10 white Democratic candidates will take the stage” (the Washington Post).
  • Trump’s rally audiences are “overwhelmingly white” (multiple sources).
  • Your son’s “whiteness is what protects him from not [sic] being shot” by the police (Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand).
  • White candidates need to be conscious of “white privilege” (South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg ).
  • “White supremacy manifests itself” in the criminal-justice, immigration and health-care systems (Sen. Cory Booker ).
  • “Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri” (Sen. Elizabeth Warren ).
  • Whiteness is “the very core” of Mr. Trump’s power, whereas his “predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness” (Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic).

Liberal opinion deems such rhetoric fair comment, even obvious truth, not “racially divisive.” America’s universities deserve credit for this double standard. Identity politics dominate higher education: Administrators, students and faculty obsessively categorize themselves and each other by race. “White privilege,” often coupled with “toxic masculinity,” is the focus of freshmen orientations and an ever-growing array of courses. Any institutional action that affects a “person of color” is “about race.” If a black professor doesn’t get tenure, he’s a victim of discrimination; a white professor is presumed to be unqualified.

The Trump Phenomenon

Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, recently denounced Mr. Trump’s “almost daily attacks on black and brown people.” But “almost” and “black and brown” are superfluous.

Mr. Trump’s attacks on his fellow 2016 candidates—and on more-recent adversaries as homogeneous as Robert Mueller, Rep. Adam Schiff, Joe Biden and Ms. Warren—were as nasty as anything he’s directed at Rep. Elijah Cummings or Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Identity politics is now a driving force in the Democratic Party, which celebrates the racial and ethnic identities of designated victim groups, while whites—especially heterosexual white men—are consigned to scapegoat status, observes Ms. MacDonald.

If “whiteness” is a legitimate topic of academic and political discourse, some individuals are going to embrace “white identity” proudly.

Read more here from Ms. Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.”

Read more here.

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Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving her Porsche Boxter S through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga.