By Selwyn Duke
Here’s a thought exercise: Ask yourself whether historians 100 years hence might write the following lines about a late, great United States:
“The U.S. was a society obsessed with racial identity. Racial categories influenced whether a person could get or retain a job in the civil service, become a member or a leader in certain organizations, or an officer in the army.”
Now consider that this line was written by a historian, at Oxford Academic — while talking about Nazi Germany. I just altered it somewhat, substituting “The U.S.” for “Nazi Germany,” “identity” for “purity,” “influenced” for “determined,” and “certain organizations” for “Nazi organizations.”
If that doesn’t give you pause about the identity-politics road we now tread, ponder a Friday article titled “What happens when mixed-race people don’t have the right mix.”
Read the rest here.
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