It’s Now All About Your Identity

Since the election, some fatalistic Washington conservative elites have accepted — and Obama operatives have rejoiced in — a supposedly new and non-white-male ethnic electorate:  Americans will be categorized, and collectively so, on the basis of largely how they look and, to a lesser extent, how they sound…

Is the 20 year old who is one-quarter Mexican-American still a minority? And so, why is not the much-darker-to-the-eye, one-hundred percent Pakistani a victim–at least for purposes of affirmative action? The daughter of the Goldman Sachs financier counts as progress when she is enrolls at Yale Law School, in a way that the Bakersfield son of the Oklahoma diaspora would not?…

If we are to live in a tribal society, at least get the narrative down to avoid embarrassing contradictions. America was a racist patriarchy of homophobic, intolerant nativists that exploited others — somehow to build the Hoover dam, invent electricity, create the largest economy in the world, provide a model for globalization, and craft the most inspired constitution in the history of civilization…

via Works and Days » Too Few Oppressors, Too Many Victims.