Democratic Self-Segregation by Race Is as Embarrassing as It Is Menacing

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

 

Kamala Harris’s allies deeply resent the suggestion that their candidate for the White House is the “DEI candidate” — that is, when they’re not promoting the idea that Harris “would be a DEI president” and “that’s a good thing.”

 

These conflicting messages are reconcilable only if you assume that they are designed to be consumed by distinct audiences who have little contact with one another. If Harris’s supporters are operating on the assumption that America’s political tribes self-segregate in that fashion, it would help explain the bizarre effort to categorize and sequester the vice president’s backers by race.

 

The Harris camp is dividing up its backers by their shared accidents of birth and directing them to virtual fundraisers dominated by those with similar traits — “including Black women, Hispanic women, Black men, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and the LGBTQ+ community,” the Associated Press reported. For example, the AP reporter on the job was wowed by the celebrities who dropped in on one indicative “White Dudes for Harris” virtual call. But this self-segregation does little to advance the Democratic claim that their opponents are the “weird” ones in this race.

 

Take, for example, Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s appearance on the “White Dudes” call. “How often in the world do you make that bastard” — i.e., Donald Trump — “wake up afterwards and know that a black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road,” Walz asked his fellow Harris supporters. “And you know that’s something that guy is gonna have to live with for the rest of his life.”

 

The proposition to which Walz seems to subscribe is that there is something uniquely mortifying in being defeated by a “black woman.” . . . Why is that exactly? If we’re being charitable, we would conclude that Walz is accusing Trump of harboring racist or misogynistic sentiments (or both). But someone less inclined to polish Walz’s apple might wonder how he came up with that notion and why he thought an exclusively white, male audience would intuit his meaning.

 

Those are, at least, the conclusions to which political observers would instantly arrive if the partisan roles in this drama were reversed.

 

The fan-organized “White Women for Harris” call wasn’t any better, even though it was star-studded as its male-dominated counterpart and attracted a staggering 164,000 participants. In it, a presentation by a personality who goes by the sobriquet “Mrs. Frazzled” deployed a practiced shtick in which she summoned all her powers of condescension to explain what is expected of her fellow white women over the next 98 days.

 

“BIPOC women” — which is to say, women who are black, indigenous, and “people of color” — have “tapped us in,” said social-media influencer Arielle Fodor. “As white women, we need to use our privilege to make positive changes.” Apparently, the change she seeks involves being as contemptuously patronizing toward black Americans as possible.

 

“If you find yourself talking over or speaking for BIPOC individuals, or God forbid, correcting them, just take a beat and, instead, we can put our listening ears on,” Fodor added. “As white people, we have a lot to learn and unlearn. So do check your blind spots.”

 

Once again, we’re left to wonder how Fodor internalized the idea that Americans of minority descent are far too fragile to endure correction from or even disagreement with their melanin-deprived neighbors. And it’s up to us alone, apparently, to unpack the presumptions that led her to say as much without a hint of self-consciousness to an all-white audience.

 

DEI activists will be quick to inundate you with the data that supposedly convey the virtues of so-called racial affinity groups. Although the vast majority of Americans have no personal experience with organizations based on a “shared identity,” they are not hostile to the concept. When it comes to political organizing, they’ll be the first to insist that minority-dominated affinity groups are effective mobilization tools. But their efficacy doesn’t render the act of racial self-segregation any less pernicious.

 

Maybe it required the creation of wildly popular whites-only political clubs on the Left, which are equal parts embarrassing and menacing, to demonstrate that separatism breeds contempt.