> So, progressive groups support minorities, and then promote minorities with progressive opinions
Progressives promote minorities with progressive opinions and pass those progressive opinions off as representative of those minority groups. White progressives self-consciously wear that label; non-white progressives invoke their ethnic identity without the progressive qualifier.
Progressives in media, academia, and politics often use their institutional power to manipulate the public narrative surrounding minorities. As my dad once lamented, "CNN made Ilhan Omar into the face of American Muslims."
> you don't like that because you're a minority with non-progressive views and feel underrepresented?
I personally don't like it because I have fairly typical views for my minority group and I don't like being misrepresented. I'd like a more honest public discourse that acknowledges something like "brown people love Obamacare, but really don't want their young kids learning about sex."
More importantly, it disenfranchises the very minorities these progressives purport to speak for.
It enables white progressives to hijack the political power of minorities within the broader center and center left (Democrats and Democrat leaners). For a spell in 2020, progressives turned "Defund the Police" into the "Black" position on policing, and weaponized claims of "racism" against anyone who opposed violent protests and riots. They got the Op-Ed guy at the New York Times fired for publishing a piece by Tom Cotton about putting a stop to the riots. Lots of well-meaning white people care what Black people think about policing, and they are terrified of being called racist, so they put up BLM signs on their lawns and reposted quotes like "riots are the voice of the unheard."
Of course Black people didn't want to Defund the Police, and they don't like riots. When Larry Hogan sent in the Maryland National Guard to put a stop to the Freddie Gray riots, his approval rating in majority-Black Baltimore soared over 70%: https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bal-maryland-gov-larry.... Luckily this ended with respect to this specific issue because people like Eric Adams were in a position to call out the white progressives: https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-adams-defund-the-police... ("NYC mayoral candidate Eric Adams says 'young white affluent people' lead the 'defund the police' movement").
This happens on issue after issue: progressives claim the moral high ground by purporting to speak on behalf of minorities while advancing policies those minorities actually oppose. For example, you see all these moves toward race-conscious hiring driven by progressives on behalf of Black and Hispanic people. But most Black and Hispanic people oppose such policies: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pe....
In some cases, this interferes with the ability of minority groups to advocate for their own personal safety. During the increase in crimes against Asian Americans in NYC and SF, CNN was full of Asian activists and academics who stressed the importance of non-white solidarity and not letting the violence derail efforts at criminal justice reform. The Asian American activists platformed by progressives care primarily about maintaining solidarity with other progressive groups, not about the unique interests of Asian Americans: https://www.slowboring.com/p/yang-gang?s=r.
But Asian American communities face fundamentally different trade-offs with respect to over-policing versus under-policing compared to other minorities. A white American is three times more likely to be shot by a cop as an Asian American. Asian American voters thus strongly supported Andrew Yang in NYC, and large numbers defected for Curtis Sliwa in the general election. Manipulation by white progressives impaired the ability for Asian Americans to advocate for their own interests.
Fundamentally, white progressives who participate in ethnic identity politics have a conflict of interest. They have tremendous incentives to use their larger numbers and institutional power to advance their own interests, not those of minority groups: https://contexts.org/blog/who-gets-to-define-whats-racist/ ("White elites —who play an outsized role in defining racism in academia, the media, and the broader culture — instead seem to define ‘racism’ in ways that are congenial to their own preferences and priorities.").
> so that everyone can see that not all minorities are progressive
Most minorities aren't progressives. Progressives are whiter on average than the population as a whole, and about as white as traditional conservatives: https://hiddentribes.us/profiles (80% white for progressives, 70% white for traditional conservatives). If you disaggregate say Asian Americans into finer groups than just "Democrat" and "Republican," you'd see that most are moderates, the next biggest chunk are moderate conservatives, and progressives make up a relatively small fraction.
The ones that are progressive (mostly Latinos) are much more likely to be Bernie-style economic progressives than to embrace the intersectional progressivism of Elizabeth Warren. In the 2020 Democratic Primary, Bernie won Latinos in California with 45%. Warren placed fourth with just 7%, lower than Mike Bloomberg. Among Black voters in Virginia, Biden won 63%, and Warren again placed fourth behind Mike Bloomberg, with just 7%.
In fact, Warren was actually never a viable candidate in a Democratic Party that relies on southwestern Latino and southern Black voters to win elections: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/elizabeth-warren-boo... (" In February 2020, New York Times reporter Astead Herndon detailed how Warren’s success with Black and Latino political activists had yielded barely any support among actual Black and Latino voters."). But we were subjected to months of white progressives in media treating her like a frontrunner because they thought that the ethnic minority activists she had on stage with her represented real support from ethnic minorities.
> and some want to work together to hold back minority groups they aren't part of?
Minorities have their own ideas of what policies are good for them, and for the most part they're different from what progressives believe. They should be able to advocate for those interests without white progressives using their institutional power and donor dollars to drown out their voices on issues that concern them.
Progressives promote minorities with progressive opinions and pass those progressive opinions off as representative of those minority groups. White progressives self-consciously wear that label; non-white progressives invoke their ethnic identity without the progressive qualifier.
Progressives in media, academia, and politics often use their institutional power to manipulate the public narrative surrounding minorities. As my dad once lamented, "CNN made Ilhan Omar into the face of American Muslims."
> you don't like that because you're a minority with non-progressive views and feel underrepresented?
I personally don't like it because I have fairly typical views for my minority group and I don't like being misrepresented. I'd like a more honest public discourse that acknowledges something like "brown people love Obamacare, but really don't want their young kids learning about sex."
More importantly, it disenfranchises the very minorities these progressives purport to speak for.
It enables white progressives to hijack the political power of minorities within the broader center and center left (Democrats and Democrat leaners). For a spell in 2020, progressives turned "Defund the Police" into the "Black" position on policing, and weaponized claims of "racism" against anyone who opposed violent protests and riots. They got the Op-Ed guy at the New York Times fired for publishing a piece by Tom Cotton about putting a stop to the riots. Lots of well-meaning white people care what Black people think about policing, and they are terrified of being called racist, so they put up BLM signs on their lawns and reposted quotes like "riots are the voice of the unheard."
Of course Black people didn't want to Defund the Police, and they don't like riots. When Larry Hogan sent in the Maryland National Guard to put a stop to the Freddie Gray riots, his approval rating in majority-Black Baltimore soared over 70%: https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bal-maryland-gov-larry.... Luckily this ended with respect to this specific issue because people like Eric Adams were in a position to call out the white progressives: https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-adams-defund-the-police... ("NYC mayoral candidate Eric Adams says 'young white affluent people' lead the 'defund the police' movement").
This happens on issue after issue: progressives claim the moral high ground by purporting to speak on behalf of minorities while advancing policies those minorities actually oppose. For example, you see all these moves toward race-conscious hiring driven by progressives on behalf of Black and Hispanic people. But most Black and Hispanic people oppose such policies: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pe....
In some cases, this interferes with the ability of minority groups to advocate for their own personal safety. During the increase in crimes against Asian Americans in NYC and SF, CNN was full of Asian activists and academics who stressed the importance of non-white solidarity and not letting the violence derail efforts at criminal justice reform. The Asian American activists platformed by progressives care primarily about maintaining solidarity with other progressive groups, not about the unique interests of Asian Americans: https://www.slowboring.com/p/yang-gang?s=r.
But Asian American communities face fundamentally different trade-offs with respect to over-policing versus under-policing compared to other minorities. A white American is three times more likely to be shot by a cop as an Asian American. Asian American voters thus strongly supported Andrew Yang in NYC, and large numbers defected for Curtis Sliwa in the general election. Manipulation by white progressives impaired the ability for Asian Americans to advocate for their own interests.
Fundamentally, white progressives who participate in ethnic identity politics have a conflict of interest. They have tremendous incentives to use their larger numbers and institutional power to advance their own interests, not those of minority groups: https://contexts.org/blog/who-gets-to-define-whats-racist/ ("White elites —who play an outsized role in defining racism in academia, the media, and the broader culture — instead seem to define ‘racism’ in ways that are congenial to their own preferences and priorities.").
> so that everyone can see that not all minorities are progressive
Most minorities aren't progressives. Progressives are whiter on average than the population as a whole, and about as white as traditional conservatives: https://hiddentribes.us/profiles (80% white for progressives, 70% white for traditional conservatives). If you disaggregate say Asian Americans into finer groups than just "Democrat" and "Republican," you'd see that most are moderates, the next biggest chunk are moderate conservatives, and progressives make up a relatively small fraction.
The ones that are progressive (mostly Latinos) are much more likely to be Bernie-style economic progressives than to embrace the intersectional progressivism of Elizabeth Warren. In the 2020 Democratic Primary, Bernie won Latinos in California with 45%. Warren placed fourth with just 7%, lower than Mike Bloomberg. Among Black voters in Virginia, Biden won 63%, and Warren again placed fourth behind Mike Bloomberg, with just 7%.
In fact, Warren was actually never a viable candidate in a Democratic Party that relies on southwestern Latino and southern Black voters to win elections: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/elizabeth-warren-boo... (" In February 2020, New York Times reporter Astead Herndon detailed how Warren’s success with Black and Latino political activists had yielded barely any support among actual Black and Latino voters."). But we were subjected to months of white progressives in media treating her like a frontrunner because they thought that the ethnic minority activists she had on stage with her represented real support from ethnic minorities.
> and some want to work together to hold back minority groups they aren't part of?
Minorities have their own ideas of what policies are good for them, and for the most part they're different from what progressives believe. They should be able to advocate for those interests without white progressives using their institutional power and donor dollars to drown out their voices on issues that concern them.