{"id":451,"date":"2022-06-15T09:29:27","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T14:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/?p=451"},"modified":"2022-06-16T18:51:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T23:51:10","slug":"hispanic-rejection-of-exploitive-identity-politics-may-save-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/hispanic-rejection-of-exploitive-identity-politics-may-save-us-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Hispanic rejection of exploitive identity politics may save us all"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I have said that the Hispanic population will be the force nationally that saves us from entrenched partisan identity politics. They will force us to a moral and rational center. Absent a center, they will swing right into red.<\/div>\n
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That proved true last night in Texas when Republican Mayra Flores won a special election and flipped a Congressional House seat that has been in the Dem’s column since Reconstruction.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As goes Texas, so goes the country. That case has been well-made by many, and any hopes on the left that Texas might at least turn purple vaporized last night when Flores won a heavily Latino \u2014 and previously heavily Democratic –district in South Texas. A star is born.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It’s really a significant loss for Dems. With beta-boy Beto — who is now seen as an opportunistic self-serving charlatan in large swaths of the Hispanic community — as the Dem’s gubernatorial candidate, the GOP will have a field day turning South Texas purple, which will just turn Texas a deeper shade of red.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I have been warning my respected friends on the left in Washington and Cambridge that Hispanics in Texas do not want to be seen or treated as “people of color,” and most assuredly not lumped in with \u2014 or treated \u2014 like they were black. Hispanics have watched as prominent Democrats, including Biden himself, treat themselves as arbiters of blackness or treat blacks as a monoculture whose votes are always in the Dem’s hip pockets (e.g., Biden’s “you ain’t black” comment). Volumes of polling data show Hispanics crave meritocracy not exploitation or perpetual marginalization as victims. They see the failures of progressive Democrats to acknowledge the differentiation within the black community in terms of history, education, achievement, viewpoints and concerns as a warning. My Hispanic colleagues deeply resent POC presumptions made by the DNC and white liberals who benefit from both the overt and inherent racial exploitations of the identity politics cult.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Trends in Hispanic voting in 2020 \u2014 especially along the Texas border \u2014 were extended last night in the election of Flores. Hispanics voting red are now a tangible political force in Texas. Trump did surprisingly well with Hispanic voters not because they liked or respected the man, but because they far more deeply resented the presumptions made by the DNC about the nature of Hispanic self-image, concerns, and aspirations.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Biden’s disastrous border policies which \u2014 despite the many polls and signs that should warn them otherwise\u2014 leftist Dems errantly think Hispanics overwhelmingly support, are deepening a growing rift with Hispanics.<\/div>\n
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Moreover, proud cultural traditions and values among Hispanics are fundamentally at odds with much of progressive “woke” culture. The harder the left pushes that agenda, the faster Hispanics will walk away from the Dems.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have said that the Hispanic population will be the force nationally that saves us from entrenched partisan identity politics. They will force us to a moral and rational center. Absent a center, they will swing right into red. That proved true last night in Texas when Republican Mayra Flores won a special election and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9949,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[297806],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taking-bearings-column"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9949"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kleelerner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}