To end a long week, nothing says “progress” in America 2019, apparently, like being anti-miscegenation.

The author’s Latino, he’s been reading Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, he’s tired of the petty asides he gets about dating white women — from nonwhites, let me stress — he’s positively aching to be properly woke. What’s a righteous free-thinking uncolonized brown-skinned man to do if he wants to move America forward after centuries of racism?

Answer, it seems: Oppose race-mixing.

This piece suggests an exciting new scale of modern racial enlightenment: Woke, Extremely Woke, Ludicrously Woke, Jim Crow.

But the real reason I think I can no longer date white women isn’t any of that. It’s because in today’s hashtag-woke society, there is mad pressure to be hashtag-woke. To be aware of the implications of whom you’re attracted to and why. Which means that in the eyes of others, the color of the women I date is a big deal. Like I’m the problem. Like I’m betraying my people if I date white women. But I was taught that we were all one people! I see people watching me with a stink eye, noses turned up, as if they think black and brown people would somehow be better off if I dumped my white girlfriend. It’s a lot of pressure. Along with each watchful eye, the whispers of, “Pick a side, Chris, pick a side,” fill my already noisy mind… How did we get here? If everyone is so woke, why are things so terrible?

“If everyone is so woke, why are things so terrible?” he asked unironically about a movement of Savonarolas on a perpetual hunt for social-justice thoughtcrimes, up to and including one’s taste in sexual partners. Congrats to this guy on penning the least self-aware sentence ever to appear in the New York Times.

He ends by observing that “something just doesn’t feel right” about his determination that interracial relationships are wrong or at least that enough other people think they’re wrong that he probably should too. Maybe he’ll do some more thinking and see if he can figure out why internalizing one of the most notorious pillars of America’s pre-civil-rights racist legal architecture might itself be “problematic.” Until then, may I interest you in a charming story out of the deep south about reporters of a certain race being barred from a political event while reporters of another race were allowed in? How about a hyper-woke take from Slate about how Pete Buttigieg, running to become the first openly gay president of the United States, isn’t remotely gay enough?

I’ll leave you with a short round-up of recent headlines from Ben Shapiro. The future of progress is bright, my friends.