Author: Orson Aguilar / Source: miamiherald
We keep seeing political pundits condemning Democrats and progressives for embracing “identity politics.” This, they argue, alienates working class whites and the (largely mythical) “centrist swing voter.” They’re wrong.
Consider the screed written last November by the Washington Post’s Ed Rogers, blasting the “Democrats’ need to wallow in identity politics.” Or a piece from July by Bret Stephens of the New York Times, in which he speculated that President Donald Trump might be reelected in 2020 by mocking the Democrats’ allegedly excessive focus on things like “gender-neutral pronouns and bathrooms.”
Commentators like these urge Democrats to not talk about the specific concerns of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, women, immigrants or LGBTQ people, and focus instead of the issues that matter to working class whites — things like jobs and financial security.
But the U.S. working class actually has a higher percentage of people of color than our population overall. And black and Latino household income and wealth still lag well behind whites — gaps that didn’t arise by chance.
You can’t address “good jobs and higher wages” for millions of economically struggling Americans if you ignore ongoing redlining and discrimination — including a criminal justice system that disproportionately...
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