Once upon a time, your social and ethnic background was expected to shape your political views. If you belonged to a minority, for instance, you were likely to have liberal views and become a Democrat. Nowadays, however, if you don’t have the expected viewpoint, your ethnicity is questioned. The best example is how black conservatives are called "not black enough," especially if they succeed on their own merits, without claiming to be a victim. For instance, a leftist may view Thurgood Marshall as a black Supreme Court justice, but not Clarence Thomas, though his skin color was always darker than Marshall’s. This allows liberals to get away with treating Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, Herman Cain, etc., the same way that racists used to treat blacks in general. It never fails to amaze me how much conservatives of color are detested by progressives of pallor.
I don’t think using one’s views to determine his identity is an improvement over the days when we did the opposite. We saw how absurd this can be in 2012, when a Latino Jew was described as white, because it fit the media’s race narrative better, while a white woman running for the Senate became a Cherokee Indian.
Along those lines, does anyone remember when Bill Clinton was called the first black president, because he was raised in a single-parent home, liked fried chicken, and got in trouble with white conservatives? That ended in a hurry when Barack Obama came along.
