A reader of this post raised a good question: Why are white Democrats so much more progressive these days than nonwhites? Back when Jesse Jackson was running for president, African Americans were seen as the bulwark of the party’s Left wing.

A full answer to that question would probably take a book, but I would guess that there’s a pretty simple partial answer: White voters have sorted themselves into political parties based on ideology to a much greater extent than nonwhite voters have. White conservatives have largely left the Democratic Party for the Republicans, and vice-versa for white liberals. So white Democrats are as a group much more progressive than the white Democrats of yesterday. Meanwhile, a lot of conservative black, Hispanic, and Asian voters are Democrats. A much higher share of moderate nonwhites than of moderate whites are Democrats too.


The wokeness of white Democrats is thus in part a predictable consequence of white realignment.