Why have some decided the only way to improve the party

[BainsBane]

65. Those voters of color voted for Democrats before too

and there are many more of them. The point is that voters are not being treated as equal. A small number of Trump voters have consistently been treated as more important than a million voters of color. What does that say about the values being promoted?

I did not reference Dixiecrats. I also specifically referenced the point about reaching out to both. That is only possible if people acknowledge that all Americans are important instead of relentlessly focusing on a small number of white Republicans while ignoring millions.

Lectures about identity politics are what white men--typically, and previously only, conservatives--say as a way of silencing the voices and concerns of people of color and women. That is not a call for inclusion but rather exclusion. All lives are not the same, and pretending they are ensures that women and people of color are not represented. Everyone is not stopped by police for being black or brown. Everyone does not face a government controlling their bodies. Everyone does not face discrimination due to religion. Everyone does not face victimization from hate crimes. Dismissing those concerns as "identity politics" demeans those citizens, placing them below the interests of white men deemed universal simply because they are white and male. That those comments came on the heels of an election that turned on the politics of white identity made those comments all the more disturbing.

I will not stand back while my party capitulates to discrimination. That those advocating for it claim it is progressive does not make it so. It is an effort to turn back the clock to a time when the privileged did not have to suffer the public existence of those they see as less than themselves.