Unlike his colleague Jamelle Bouie, who writes crunchy columns based on rigorous historical research, Charles Blow typically just whines about the evils of white supremacy without providing any useful descriptions or original analysis. For that reason, I rarely bother to read him. His column in today’s NYT, however, actually contains some useful information that he should find embarrassing. It is worthy of my comment.
The gist of the column is that surveys show that light-skinned Hispanics are subject to less discrimination than dark-skinned Hispanics. Worse, from his perspective, light-skinned Hispanics identify with white people and discriminate against dark-skinned Hispanics themselves. So, it seems, a future America that is no longer majority Caucasian is not guaranteed to be sympathetic to black people.
True enough; the real demographic bomb for the GOP is young people, not Hispanics. But what does this mean for supporters of the 1619 Project? How do its authors make the case that America is exceptional–an evil empire, if you like–due to its undying racism, if Hispanics are no better? Where do they go from here?
Nowhere, if the NYT has any sense, which is questionable in this case.