When was the last time someone talked seriously about courting the Italian vote, or the Irish, in a national election? Kennedy–Nixon in 1960? “Italian” and “Irish” are no longer considered in pollsters’ demography. They melted into a pre-existing electoral block, ineptly called “white voters.” Pollsters talk a lot about the “white vote” — but what they really mean is the Italian-Irish-Polish-Hungarian-Romanian-Jewish-Russian-Swedish-Norwegian-French-Dutch-Scottish-Welsh-English vote. That’s the nature of the American melting pot.
And before too long, that ethnically indistinct pot will include Latin-Americans too — Latin-Americans being the immigrant group that, after WW2, supplanted Italians as the largest. I don’t buy the idea that Latin-Americans are going to be separated by skin color. The fact is, the skin color of the average Hispanic is no more different from that of the average “white” American than the average Italian’s was in 1900. Remember that, just a few hundred years ago, the only thing a Swede or an Englishman named John Doe needed to be called “John the Black” was tan or tawny skin. Sometimes black hair was enough. The average “white” American’s skin tone has been moving from a British complexion toward the Mediterranean for 200 years.
Obviously, African-Americans have had an entirely separate experience, qua immigration. But I don’t see that Hispanics have. Sure, there has been, and is, plenty of anti-Hispanic bigotry. There was also anti-Italian bigotry, anti-Irish bigotry, anti-Polish bigotry, anti-Jewish bigotry, anti-German bigotry, and so on. Hispanic immigration is the latest chapter, but it’s part of the same story. Before long, Hispanic-Americans will overwhelmingly speak English as their mother tongue, prefer fast food to their ancestral cuisine, and talk about the Minutemen at Lexington using the pronoun “we.” Many do already. The melting pot works fast.
And that means, before long, the Democrats will — once again — have to find a new core constituency.
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