This is the twisted irony of the Shapiro controversy. It was Biden, not Shapiro, who implied that some people are ‘lesser’. The man who said he would be a ‘president for all Americans’ expressly excluded the vast majority of Americans from consideration for the Supreme Court. It was the same with his pick of Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate. He said he would only consider black women. And as one observer said, selecting someone for office ‘based on her identity instead of achievement’ is not good. It is patronising to the person being selected, and divisive for society more broadly, given it green-lights the idea that judgements on the basis of race are sometimes perfectly okay. The Biden administration seems incapable of working with black women without constantly saying to the country: ‘Have you noticed that she’s black and a woman?!’ So last month, when Karine Jean-Pierre was installed as the new White House press secretary, departing press secretary Jen Psaki formally introduced her as ‘the first black woman… to serve in this role, which is amazing’. Surely there’s more to Ms Jean-Pierre than her race and sex?

Identitarianism is central to the Biden project. He often comes across as a presidential version of a campus activist. One of his first executive orders stipulated that trans school students should be permitted to take part in sports teams on the basis of their gender identity. Perhaps worst of all, in January 2021, Biden said that when the government hands out Covid recovery funds, ‘our priority will be black, Latino, Asian and Native American-owned small businesses’. That was racial politics. It represented a coming together of the old ‘pork barrel’ race games played by sections of the American elite, where they tried to shore up ethnic-minority support through funding and favour, with the new woke ideology that says there are the Privileged and the Oppressed and that the latter must take priority over the former. There is something deeply disturbing about an American president openly saying that some races will receive government support faster than others, and that only certain races need apply for government roles.