Is the BIPOC Coalition Coming Apart? – Glenn Loury
The Democratic Party and some on the left have sought to build a coalition of people of color that fuses minority groups whose interests align, the argument goes, because they all suffer similarly under the yoke of white supremacy, systemic racism, or whatever you want to call the racial prejudice supposedly endemic to all areas of public life in the US. This coalition only holds together when members of these constituent groups can be convinced that what is good for one is good for all, even when, as the case against Harvard s and the University of North Carolina’s race-based admissions policies have shown, it s patently untrue.
My guest this week, Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam, thinks this top-down consolidation of minority racial identities may be on the cusp of breaking up. And when that happens, new political alignments and forms of social organization may emerge that make the BIPOC coalition impossible to maintain. It s already the case that many first and second-generation immigrant communities recognize that their interests aren t reflected by racial preferences in admissions, by DEI initiatives, by defunding the police, and by any number of other political trends. When these fault lines deepen and the notion of people of color loses coherence, our contemporary ways of thinking about racial identity may change along with it, dramatically so.
I have been saying this for sometime, as the very alert readers of the RC will know. The first to break away will be LatinX (ho ho) Americans. I’m too old to learn Spanish, but I believe the future holds a majority Hispanic and conservative Southwest USA. Ole and hurrah.