The Bonfire of the Multicultural Vanities

Does New York Times columnist David Brooks nail it, or does he nail it?  This contest for the nomination of the Democratic Party between a white woman and a black man is turning into a bonfire of the multicultural vanities, he advises. 

Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton victory wouldn’t just be a victory for one woman, it would be a victory for little girls everywhere. An Obama victory would be about completing the dream, keeping the dream alive, and so on.

As we wrote here yesterday.  It was grand fun to play the race card when a black man was running against an eevil racist Republican, or play the gender card when a white woman was running against an eevil sexist conservative.  Serve those dead white males right.  But now the game of identity politics is turning into a civil war in the Democratic Party

The problem is that both the feminist movement Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male establishment. They are facing each other.

I know what you are saying.  It couldn’t happen to more deserving people.  Let the feminist sexists and the black racists slug it out.  They deserve each other.  That’s what Brooks says, more politely.  And then he delivers the payoff:

The interesting split is not between the feminist and civil rights Old Bulls, it’s between the establishments of both movements, who emphasize top-down change, and the younger dissenters, who don’t. Second, this dispute is going to be settled by the rising, and so far ignored, minority group. For all the current fighting, it’ll be Latinos who end up determining who gets the nomination.

That’s a good point.  We haven’t heard from Latinos yet.  In fact, I should think it is insensitive of the two racist sexist combatants not to have considered the feelings of Latinos.   It is demeaning to conduct the contest for the Democratic nomination purely in terms of sexism and black/white racism.

What about La Raza?  What about La Reconquista?  What about the identity of the folks cruelly conquered and enslaved by dead white Spanish conquerors?