Yeah, that’s really true in the limited experience of my short life and also in the political science literature. To show you I’m serious, I’ll give you one example contra that requires explanation if I am correct.
Anti-Indian racism is more virulent in “reservation towns,” the only place I ever heard the phrase “prairie nigger.”
But if you drill down, the reservation may be near by but it is a mystery. White folks don’t go there unless they work there and those who work there do not share the attitude that much of the town exhibits.
Because reservations are dry, that bit of public policy stupidity creates a problem with public drunkenness in the border towns and the road between booze and the rez are death alleys if you look at the drunk driving statistics.
That appears to reinforce stereotype but it doesn’t last long if you drill down into the research about Indians and alcohol.
Compare to places where what we’ve learned to call “integration” is the rule. The big one is Oklahoma, where I was born and raised. There is racism, but the racists stand out like so many sore thumbs and they by and large don’t get elected to anything.
Look at how even recent immigrants from Mexico get along in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Look at El Paso and note that “Beto O’Rourke” is not exactly an Hispanic name. From San Antonio on south you get white candidates and brown candidates elected in a manner that looks random on paper but is not when you live here.
So-called Hispanics are the only major voting bloc you can find by surname. Note what happened when George W. Bush appointed Hispanics to state wide offices that were vacant. The folks who run campaigns will tell you that keeping the job became one big problem: clearing the Republican primary. If they could get to the general election, they would be home free. Most could not, but Bush’s attempt got him a major slice of the Hispanic vote anyway. Whether that was enough to offset the losses in the white racist vote is an easy question.
Because I had to run for election in my first career, my opinions got shaped at the intersection of the political science literature and the praxis that, in all honesty, does not come directly from the literature because most of the politicos on the ground don’t read it. I was an exception in that I did read that stuff.
I used to get accused now and then of having my head in some place called “the Ivory tower.” Racism was a factor that had to be anticipated and dealt with in the campaigns I was involved in before I had my own campaigns.
The cartoonish idea you have of “diversity” probably comes from a deeper academic study and more praxis on the ground than my ideas that don’t have much currency these days as I dribble oatmeal on my shirt and have to sit in front of doors until somebody will open them for my little electric scooter. I know I won’t be in your way much longer and your ideas have more power right now than mine. I stood for diversity in the fifties seriously enough to get what we used to call “don’t bumps” on my head and the scent of tear gas was quite familiar. Until the current POTUS was elected, I thought we weirdos had won. However, the truth of the matter is that the stage is now yours and we are in the process of seeing how the nation will fare when e pluribus is no longer unum.
