America is a nation with a great deal of historical racism and sexism, and I think it would be odd not to assume that they play some role in elections.
The operative word here is "historical." The institutions of this country are in fact in a "flight from White." It is *advantageous* to be non-White in national politics. Gender, admittedly, isn't quite so tilted. But this idea that there's a cabal of racist voters out there who won't pick non-White candidates is pure fantasy. In this, the most 2022 of years, this electorate doesn't exist beyond maybe a low six figures nationwide; a number utterly and completely dwarfed by the electorate of all colors and stripes that would, all else being equal, prefer a non-White candidate.
Even without redress to polling and actual election results, you can run a very simple heuristic to determine that this is true. At the highest levels of politics, people tend to be more cut-throat and more ruthless. As such, you'd expect people who could conceivably gain an advantage by passing as White to do so. Yet there is not one political figure on the national stage - not a single, solitary one - who tries the kind of passing that was de rigeur to get into polite society well into the 20th century. That's because it would be completely counterproductive: it would make you *less* popular, *less* relevant, to deny your status of color. In fact national politics is an unseemly scramble to be more ethnic than thou, to the extent that you have Liz Warren *still* bizarrely claiming to be Indian (a scam that she began *decades* ago, if you don't recall), and Beto adopting Hispanic-face and calling himself a "child of the border."
People just think this is a nation of Archie Bunkers. They're flat-out, fundamentally, directionally wrong.
I made no claims and therefore need not present any evidence.
Freddie did. He's wrong.
America is a nation with a great deal of historical racism and sexism, and I think it would be odd not to assume that they play some role in elections.
The operative word here is "historical." The institutions of this country are in fact in a "flight from White." It is *advantageous* to be non-White in national politics. Gender, admittedly, isn't quite so tilted. But this idea that there's a cabal of racist voters out there who won't pick non-White candidates is pure fantasy. In this, the most 2022 of years, this electorate doesn't exist beyond maybe a low six figures nationwide; a number utterly and completely dwarfed by the electorate of all colors and stripes that would, all else being equal, prefer a non-White candidate.
Even without redress to polling and actual election results, you can run a very simple heuristic to determine that this is true. At the highest levels of politics, people tend to be more cut-throat and more ruthless. As such, you'd expect people who could conceivably gain an advantage by passing as White to do so. Yet there is not one political figure on the national stage - not a single, solitary one - who tries the kind of passing that was de rigeur to get into polite society well into the 20th century. That's because it would be completely counterproductive: it would make you *less* popular, *less* relevant, to deny your status of color. In fact national politics is an unseemly scramble to be more ethnic than thou, to the extent that you have Liz Warren *still* bizarrely claiming to be Indian (a scam that she began *decades* ago, if you don't recall), and Beto adopting Hispanic-face and calling himself a "child of the border."
People just think this is a nation of Archie Bunkers. They're flat-out, fundamentally, directionally wrong.