Over at The Week, Damon Linker has written a widely read essay pushing back against the liberal conventional wisdom that “demography will come to their rescue.” In other words, just wait long enough for America to become a minority-white nation, and Democratic ascendancy is guaranteed. Linker says “don’t bet on it.” He rightly notes that non-white citizens hardly constitute a homogeneous demographic, and he rightly notes that ethnic categories may not remain stable over the decades, but the most important aspect of his essay is the warning in the latter half — that the effort to forge non-white solidarity will lead to “anti-white identity politics.”
In other words, the “emerging Democratic majority” may never come to pass:
Unless, that is, liberals can convince the non-white members of their current electoral coalition to begin thinking of themselves, first and foremost, as “people of color” united by their antipathy to, and in their oppression by, white America. If racism is defined, in part, by the tendency of whites to view everyone but themselves as “not white,” then this would be a form of counter-racism in which non-whites positively affirm as a politically potent identity what was once treated as a form of stigma.
Linker’s essay reminds me of a recent Remnant podcast with Jonah Goldberg and Michael Brendan Dougherty. I’m paraphrasing, but Michael made the point that the Left is simultaneously crowing about the decline of the white voter while scolding any…
