The Whiteness of the Democrats’ Non-White Presidential Candidates

Chris Roberts recently asked readers to explain why the Left’s serious candidates are white. “It seemed certain that the party of the fringes,” he wrote, “the party of ‘the Squad,’ the party of immigration, etc. would run a non-white candidate, but now, it seems certain that a white man or woman will carry the banner.”

Here’s my response. The Democrats’ non-white candidates aren’t authentic. They mostly appeal to white liberals.

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang (Credit Image: © Jerry Mennenga / ZUMA Wire)

Mr. Yang is Chinese (or Taiwanese). He’s 100 percent non-white, but Asians are an outlier among America’s non-whites. Asian-Americans make more money and commit less crime than whites. Some Asian-Americans oppose affirmative action. Thus, many blacks and Hispanics don’t consider Asians part of the “Coalition of the Oppressed.” Whether it’s a fight over affirmative action in New York City, a low-level race war in Los Angeles, or a vote over racial preferences in the Pacific-Northwest, blacks and Asians often find themselves in opposing trenches.

Tulsi Gabbard

Tulsi Gabbard

Tulsi Gabbard is of partial Samoan ancestry and the first practicing Hindu in Congress. This is not a background many blacks and Hispanics can relate to. According to her DNA results, she is 25.6 percent “southeast Asian” but 24.6 percent “French and German” and 21.4 percent “British and Irish.” The only other non-white designations were: 3.8 percent “broadly Oceanian” and 1.1 percent “broadly east Asian.” She was also 0.8 percent unmatched. Everything else was European.

That makes Rep. Gabbard at most 31.3 percent non-white, hardly representative of the non-white masses.

Cory Booker

Senator Booker is quite light-skinned, what once was called “high-yellow.” His eyes are blue. His DNA results showed he’s 47 percent African, 45 percent European, and 7 percent Amerindian.

Cory Booker

His almost half-white heritage hurt him in a previous race. In the 2002 Newark mayoral campaign, incumbent Sharpe James spread rumors about challenger Cory Booker being white, Jewish, and tied in with the KKK. The documentary Street Fight covers this in detail.

Sharpe James

At the time, Newark was majority black. Many blacks believe these kinds of conspiracy theories. Mr. Booker lost to Mayor James. Mr. Booker can’t take black support for granted.

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris recently invoked “black girl magic” to help her struggling campaign. Yet to quote a recent American Renaissance video, “Is Kamala Harris Black Enough?”

Her mother is Tamil Indian. Her black blood comes from her father, the light-skinned Jamaican economics professor Donald Harris. She’s obviously non-white, but far from “black,” something which hasn’t gone unnoticed. Her Indian half is also not an advantage in dealing with blacks and Hispanics. Indian-Americans have a higher median income and lower incarceration rates than whites.

Julián Castro

Julián Castro almost ended his campaign recently, but raised enough money to keep going. Still, he missed the cutoff for the November debate. USA Today recently observed that the “sole Latino presidential candidate lags in Latino support,” trailing frontrunner Joe Biden by 24 points.

Julian Castro

Castro’s twin brother Joaquin is a congressman. Barack Obama appointed Julián to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2014 to 2017. In other words, Julián is a bureaucrat. He is not the activist pushing for more benefits from HUD, he’s the person who was trying to keep to a budget. Despite this relative lack of accomplishment, he’s already written a memoir entitled An Unlikely Journey: Waking Up From My American Dream. (I feel like I’ve heard that title before.)

Thus far, Mr. Castro’s biggest moment in the campaign is when he said a “trans female” should have the right to an abortion, a position that most blacks and Hispanics probably find bizarre or irrelevant. Another lowlight was when he accused Joe Biden of “forgetting” something he had just said, which some media analysts interpreted to be an attack on the former Vice President’s age. Mr. Castro has progressive policy positions, but so do candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom have far more legislative experience.

Mr. Castro comes off like he’s trying to win the votes of woke white liberals, not grassroots Hispanics. He doesn’t even speak Spanish fluently. Yet Raul Reyes writes in USA Today that Mr. Castro should stay in the race because “he’s living proof a Mexican-American can compete at the highest level” and might eventually secure a vice presidential slot. This is tokenism, not authenticity. It’s not surprising Hispanics want no part of it.

With these five as this cycle’s non-whites, is it really any wonder that blacks and Hispanics are throwing their support elsewhere? White liberals, defensive about race, are forced to deliver concrete benefits to their non-white voters to stay in power. It’s not surprising most black and Hispanic voters want liberal whites who can deliver concrete patronage, rather than non-white politicians who offer symbolic representation.