Dem
47
GOP
53
What? Doesn't this fly in the face of the previous item? No. There aren't any "colored" folks or "Negroes" anymore, either, although 14% of the U.S. population has roots in Africa. And hardly any people are "Latinx."
The reason is a mistaken assumption on the part of Democrats that people who are not white can be lumped into the same basket, labeled "people of color." As it turns out, people whose ancestry goes back to Senegal, Egypt, China, or Nicaragua don't have much in common with one another politically and have nothing in common with Apaches and Navajos. One size does not fit all. There are no deep-seated cultural, social, economic, or political linkages between these disparate groups.
In 2024, the Democrats were startled by working-class Black and Latino voters voting like working-class whites and college-educated Black and Latino voters voting like college-educated whites. Education and income have become better predictors of voting behavior than race or ethnicity. Bernie recognized that, but the other Democrats have been slow to catch on.
As a result of this new development, Democrats are at a loss about what to do. For years they have been talking about "people of color" as though it was a well-defined voting bloc. Turns out it really isn't, and to the extent it is, this is because many minorities are lower middle class or poor and it is their class commonality, not their ethnic commonality, that causes many of them to vote for Democrats.
Democrats talk about "people of color" all the time. Republicans never do, except when mocking it as "wokespeak," along with "Latinx," which virtually no Latina uses, despite being the target audience for the new, very-not-Spanish word dreamed up by some white professor at an elite college.
What Democrats have also missed is that social unrest is sometimes due to conflict between one minority group and another, not between a minority group and white people. The Los Angeles riot of 1992 was mostly Black Angelenos vs. Korean Angelenos. At the height of COVID-19, there were hate crimes committed by Black people (who lost their income) against Asian people (who the perpetrators blamed for their misfortune). On eX-Twitter, there is anti-Black sentiment in the Latino community. Talking about "people of color" glosses over the fact that the various minority groups are sometimes not all that fond of one another and aren't united in opposition to white people.
Trump may have gotten more votes than expected from various minority groups because they don't believe he is a deep-seated KKK racist who burns crosses on people's lawns as a hobby. They think he is more of a casual racist, who says things he doesn't actually believe to get votes and then forgets them. He is not the second coming of George Wallace.
The opposite may also be true. Some studies have shown that for a substantial portion of Asian voters, Kamala Harris' background as half-South Asian meant exactly zero to them. It didn't figure into their voting decision at all.
To start winning back minority voters, Democrats would be advised to drop the term "people of color" and start addressing the different ethnic groups on their own terms or talk about class issues instead, although that will cause the Republicans to scream that they are pushing socialism. Ads in Michigan should focus on issues relevant to Blacks but ads in Nevada should focus on issues relevant to Latinos. These may overlap, but are not identical. In any event, "people of color" needs to go to a nice retirement home to hang out with the "Negroes." (V)