Back in 1976, I drove from Wisconsin to the Canadian Rockies. In North Dakota I drove past endless miles of wheat farms, with some sunflower farms thrown in. The countryside looked much the same after crossing the border into Saskatchewan, Canada.
But one thing changes dramatically at the border. Just south of the border the farmers tend to vote for right wing candidates that are strongly opposed to Obamacare. To the north, the farmers vote for candidates that support Medicare for all. A system that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would love.
A person’s political views can never be understood in isolation, only in the context of the broader society in which they are embedded. Based on numerous comments that I’ve seen in the press, I don’t believe that either party understands the role of “identity” in politics. Republicans sometimes suggest that their party would have won states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan if not for the votes of cities with large black populations, such as Detroit, Philadelphia or Milwaukee. Democrats suggest that America will gradually become a country where a majority of the population is “people of color” and that this will help their party in the long run. Both are wrong.
If having lots of black voters made a country more left wing, then you’d expect America to be more left wing than Canada, and you’d expect the Deep South to be the most left wing part of America. What both parties miss is that the existence of racial minorities changes the voting behavior of white voters.
There’s very little evidence that a majority of the population will ever become non-white, because the category “white” is so fluid. Watching the NBA draft on Wednesday, I was struck by how many of the first round draft picks came from bi-racial families. Admittedly this is a skewed sample that is not representative of the broader population. But both Hispanics and Asians intermarry at a surprisingly high rate. My Asian wife gave birth to a daughter that our society views as white.
Race won’t go away, but there is no realistic prospect of whites becoming a minority in the US in the foreseeable future. Reason magazine reports that one Washington school district has already declared that Asian-Americans are white:
One school district in Washington state has evidently decided that Asians no longer qualify as persons of color.
In their latest equity report, administrators at North Thurston Public Schools—which oversees some 16,000 students—lumped Asians in with whites and measured their academic achievements against “students of color,” a category that includes “Black, Latinx, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Multi-Racial Students” who have experienced “persistent opportunity gaps.”
Expect much more of this in the future.
Then there is the “Latino” population:
Though not everyone in the Rio Grande Valley self-identifies as Tejano, the descriptor captures a distinct Latino community—culturally and politically—cultivated over centuries of both Mexican and Texan influences and geographic isolation. Nearly everyone speaks Spanish, but many regard themselves as red-blooded Americans above anything else. And exceedingly few identify as people of color. (Even while 94 percent of Zapata residents count their ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino on the census, 98 percent of the population marks their race as white.) Their Hispanicness is almost beside the point to their daily lives.
It is foolish to use ethnic identity to predict the future course of politics.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Z
Nov 22 2020 at 12:32am
“If having lots of black voters made a country more left wing, then you’d expect America to be more left wing than Canada, and you’d expect the Deep South to be the most left wing part of America.”
There’s a pretty big ‘ceteris paribus’ that goes along with this. America is more culturally conservative that Canada, but then in many ways black Americans are relatively culturally conservative (a big reason why southern Democrats tend to be more conservative than northern ones). On economic policy, despite our global reputation as a Randian dystopia, America is really only moderately ‘right’ of Canada, and black voters, though overwhelmingly left of center, are arguably more moderate than Democrats, so it’s not clear their presence should alter American political landscape that much relative to Canada. Canada also has a significantly higher immigrant fraction than the US, which conventional wisdom would predict would push Canada back in the leftward direction.
Mark Z
Nov 22 2020 at 12:33am
*correction: ‘are arguably more moderate than white Democrats.’
Scott Sumner
Nov 22 2020 at 1:47am
Mark, You said:
“There’s a pretty big ‘ceteris paribus’ that goes along with this.”
Yes, that’s part of what I’m saying. These discussions tend to assume ceteris paribus, which is simply not a valid assumption when thinking about the effects of changes in demographics. If you change one part of the culture, other parts will change as well.
I agree with your claim that blacks (or Hispanics I would add) are not inherently left wing.
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 22 2020 at 8:56am
Scott – well thought out and good post. I wish we could move past the racial/ethic identity stuff. There is still a lot of inbred racism in America that seems to be hard to overcome but it’s largely in the older segment of the population. Rates of intermarriage or domestic partnerships of different racial/ethnicities has been increasing over recent decades in many areas of the country which will prove to be a moderating influence on society.
Efforts to reduce things to tribal allegiances are problematic in my mind. As you have noted above, there is no one size fits all among demographic groups. It’s best to get beyond all this and move on to what society needs from government.
Robert Schadler
Nov 22 2020 at 2:32pm
The very use of ethnic/racial identity indicates the framework is problematic. Ethnic identity is different than racial identity.
In an American context, there is something weird in the use of “Asian identity.”
Americans of Korean, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese and Filipino backgrounds may have something in common. That’s worth figuring out. But the two main reasons for political commonality in the U.S. seems to be: what caused you to come to the U.S. ? and how well have your fared since arriving?
Likewise, just what Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Mexicans who are now Americans have in common, other than some connection to the Spanish language? Do those who came from Spain identity as “Hispanics”? The ones I know don’t seem to. And, for what it’s worth, most from Spain and Cuba might well see themselves and be seen by others as “white”.
By virtue of all this being so obvious, it hardly counts as an “insight”.
Joseph McDevitt
Nov 22 2020 at 5:04pm
A long time ago in 1973 the Nixon administration had a policy called Statistical Directive, Casper Weinberger came up with a formula that would classify the American people, the result was the five official races. White,Black,Hispanic,Asian,American Indian. What happen to all men are created equal,but not groups? E Pluribus unum if not now when?
Shane L
Nov 23 2020 at 7:28am
The impression I get from the US and many European countries is that nationalism is associated with the right.
Here in Ireland, by contrast, the strongest nationalists are on the far-left, not the right. This is probably because of the Troubles, where a broadly right-wing Unionist establishment reserved political and economic opportunities for Protestants, and were confronted by a left-wing Catholic response. The most extreme of the latter, including the Provisional IRA, embraced far-left positions to some extent.
Today, Sinn Féin, who were associated with the Provisional IRA during the Troubles, are the biggest left-wing party in the Republic of Ireland and also the most nationalist major party, by far. So these things can take on surprising characteristics!
Incidentally, I’m always surprised by the assumption that immigrants from developing countries will vote for the left. In many cases they are religious and socially conservative; see the staggering differences on attitudes towards homosexuality between developed and developing countries for example.
Bob Anderson
Nov 23 2020 at 7:35am
Is the demographic makeup of Saskatchewan fundamentally different from North Dakota? Canada has a significant racial minority population, although not in Saskatchewan, yet voters in Saskatchewan support government healthcare, while also lily-white North Dakota does not. Something more is afoot. It’s the elephant in the room, exploited to great benefit by one of America’s two major political parties.
Scott Sumner
Nov 23 2020 at 12:55pm
I’d say that America and Canada differ much more than North Dakota and Saskatchewan.
Mark
Nov 23 2020 at 11:12am
Another interesting identity politics case study is Sweden. it looks like the left-wing parties wins the countryside and the right-wing parties, including the populist-nationalist one, win the cities! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Swedish_general_election. So even the urban-rural divide is not an iron law. Why is this and are there any other countries where this is the case?
Floccina
Nov 23 2020 at 2:52pm
Living with a Honduran wife in Florida, I think at least in Florida that when talking about race we should use black and non-black (or maybe even American Descendants Of Slaves (ADS) and ADS.) Everyone else seems to be doing fine and merging fast. ADS are merging but slower.
Intermarriage in the U.S. 50 Years After Loving v. Virginia
Michael Pettengill
Nov 25 2020 at 9:23pm
Couldn’t be better evidence “race” is a fiction.
Now if Trump tweeted you are X where X is anything but white, do you have I right to claim to be white? For Trump, you are what he says you are, not what objective observation, or you think you are. He is simply unchecked in saying what his supporters feel. They seek to elevate their status far above what is deserved by their accomplishments. Trump can’t stand Obama is more accomplished than he, but the best he can do is call him names.
Merely being “equal” in society in status is an existential to Trump and the tens of millions like him.
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