Making race a decisive factor in public decisions

Joel Kotkin writes,

while Biden has placed racialism — making race a decisive factor in public decisions — at the heart of his political programme, in reality minorities may not prove the Castroite fifth column dreamed up by either the far-Right or their leftist doppelgängers. Minorities are more than genetic constructs; they are people with ambitions, families, and budgets. And sadly, Biden’s policies are not making their lives any better.

Overall, Biden’s racialist focus also runs against a changing demographic reality. When Biden was growing up, African Americans were the primary racial minority. As late as 2005, black people and Latinos constituted 14% of the population. Today, however, the Hispanic population stands at 62 million, far outnumbering the 47 million African Americans. By 2050, according to Pew, the Hispanic population will swell to 30% of the population, more than twice the black share. Asians, meanwhile, will have grown from barely 12 million in 2000 to more than three times that number by mid-century. Taken together Asians and Latinos will account for 40% of Americans, and the vast majority of the racial minorities.

Simply put, the rhetoric around race needs to change. Rather than the language shaped by slavery, progressive Americans should instead embrace what those liberals who dominate our publications and airwaves don’t realise: that most Americans don’t learn about race in college grievance classes but by personal, daily experience. They live in a country where salsa outsells ketchup, Modelo is about to surpass Budweiser as the nation’s top beer brand, and Latin music is the fastest-growing in the country.

There’s also a movement between regions, which is making red states evermore politically influential, as well as diverse. Minorities are leaving the “enlightened” centres of racialist religion — New York, California, Illinois — for the red states of the old Confederacy, Texas, Arizona, Utah and even Great Plains. It’s not hard to see why: in recent report for the Urban Reform Institute, we found minorities have generally done much better — in terms of income and homeownership in deep red areas than in the more loudly “anti-racist” blue regions. In Atlanta, African American-adjusted median incomes are more than $60,000, compared to $36,000 in San Francisco and $37,000 in Los Angeles. The median income for Latinos in Virginia Beach-Norfolk is $69,000, compared to $43,000 in Los Angeles, $47,000 in San Francisco and $40,000 in New York.

The key to ending racial antagonism, then, doesn’t lie in equity programmes, but in economic growth and opportunity. Unity can’t just be conjured out of thin air — people need to feel it in their bank accounts first. This won’t be achieved through a national campaign of penance, or through boxing the country into a racial zero-sum game. If Biden really cares about America’s minorities, the goal should be simple: to help them to find a road to prosperity and financial independence, along with the rest of the country.

Read more here: https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-cost-of-bidens-race-war/