Obama came into office amid hopes that America’s racial divisions would become a thing of the past. Instead of healing them, however, Obama has exacerbated them.

Now he is going even further: one of the lasting legacies of his disastrous administration may be the creation of an entirely new “race.”

USA Today reports:

[T]he White House is putting forward a proposal to add a new racial category for people from the Middle East and North Africa under what would be the biggest realignment of federal racial definitions in decades. If approved, the new designation could appear on census forms in 2020 and could have far-reaching implications for racial identity, anti-discrimination laws and health research.

This new Middle Eastern/North African designation — “MENA” — is being created for the benefit of Muslim Arabs. However, MENA would include Middle Eastern and North African Christians and other non-Muslims, and would exclude Muslims who aren’t Middle Eastern and North African.

It is unclear whether Israeli Jews would be able to claim the MENA race. Certainly, the designation is not being created for their benefit.

For years, those of us who have dared to note how Islamic jihadis invoke the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and to recruit peaceful Muslims have been accused of “racism.” This Big Lie has been repeated incessantly, without any breaking of ranks among the bought-and-paid-for mainstream media. In response, I have repeated more times than I could possibly recall:

What “race” is the jihad mass murder of innocent civilians?

I’ve pointed out just as often that Muslims who believe their god commands them to wage war against, and to subjugate, those who don’t believe as they do come in all races. And that race has nothing to do with their imperatives.

These simple truths have not stopped the charges of “racism,” of course. Those charges have George Soros millions behind them, and a seemingly endless supply of well-paid Leftist and Islamic supremacist operatives eager to repeat them.

But perhaps the difficulty of sustaining this irrational charge over the long-term has caused some concern to this propagandist cabal, as this new Obama initiative would supposedly give that propaganda a better footing.

The new race initiative is advancing amid additional propaganda about Muslim victimhood. Khalid Beydoun, a law professor at the University of Detroit, struck an appropriate victimhood pose when he explained that the new race:

… just aids and facilitates the state’s ability to know where these communities are in a very specific fashion.

As if the point of the new race was to persecute Muslims and other Middle Easterners. Digging even deeper, Beydoun added:

My inclination is to think that individuals who might identify might not check the box for fear of retribution — especially if Trump wins.

Nonetheless, Beydoun acknowledged:

In the grand scheme of things, it’s really a progressive stride forward. But in the broader landscape, it’s taking place in the context of greater animus against Arab Americans, and really, Islamophobia.

In reality, this new designation would be the impetus for Muslims in the U.S. to receive a basket full of perks.

MENA would allow an incoming Hillary Clinton administration, among other things, to enforce “the Voting Rights Act … drawing congressional and state legislative district boundaries” – i.e., to gerrymander districts to exaggerate Muslim voting power.

MENA would establish “federal affirmative action plans … evaluating claims of employment discrimination in employment in the private sector” — i.e., expand Obama administration efforts to establish special preferences and accommodations for Muslims in the workplace.

MENA would help “minority-owned small businesses get federal grants and loans” — i.e., make sure that Muslim-owned businesses get a healthier slice of the federal taxpayer pie.

Those special privileges, and a bolstering of the spurious charge of “racism” leveled against those who oppose jihad terror and Sharia supremacism, are what this new MENA race is all about.

Obama came into office by playing identity politics, and he is leaving office in exactly the same way.