Back during the 2016 campaign, I wondered what liberals would do when President Trump started making meaningful gestures toward minority voters. Of course, I should have known that they’d call him racist for it. What I didn’t anticipate was liberals effectively calling the minority voters who support the president a bunch of Uncle Toms.
That’s what liberal Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart did in a column on Monday, warning Democrats that Trump “is making a serious play for African American and Latino votes.”
Capehart wrote that “white supremacy” remains “potent” because whites in power are at times willing to bestow “whiteness upon those once excluded in order to maintain majority numbers.” He then faulted the “willingness of the once-excluded to accept the invitation to join the fold.” To add intellectual heft to that stunning statement, Capehart quoted George Mason University Professor Justin Gest, who said that “In exchange for their marginal promotion” in society, Latinos may “defer to the constructed racial hierarchy that once subordinated them.”
But it gets even better!
Capehart capped that off, stating, “For some Latinos, who otherwise would have been excluded from whiteness, a vote for Trump could be perceived as their claim to de facto ‘white’ membership.”
He’s explicitly saying that Latinos might be tempted to support Trump in order to feel white. How does anyone get away with saying something like that?
Perhaps, because Capehart is black, he avoided accusing other blacks who might vote for Trump of betraying their race. Instead, he said that Trump’s recent grab for more black support might simply hurt the Democratic nominee enough to cost him or her the election.
But what a dim view Capehart must have of black voters who make the choice to vote for Trump. For Capehart, it won’t be because they voted their values or their perceived self-interest, but because deep down they all want to be white. And when Trump does like every politician and reaches out to seek their vote, Trump is actually “seeking to exploit” their vote. (Capehart’s words, not mine.)
This is how liberals see race in elections: Nonwhites who don’t vote a certain way (conveniently, their way) are either opportunistic or ignorant.
This is what freshman Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley meant when she said last summer, “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.”
To liberals, minority status is only valuable so long as you see things their way.
