Trump Administration Strikes a Blow Against Identity Politics

Americans who are sick of identity politics and yearn for a return to the unifying notion of “e pluribus unum” will cheer the Census Bureau’s recent move to reject changes to the decennial survey that were proposed by the Obama administration.

Briefly put, the Obama administration had proposed artificially creating yet another pan-ethnic grouping, for Americans of Middle East and North African descent. The administration also proposed reducing the choices of Americans of Latin American or Caribbean descent (the bureaucratically invented pan-ethnic group the census calls “Hispanics”) to identify themselves by a real race (such as black or white).

The Obama administration made this proposal in late September 2016, no doubt fully expecting an incoming Clinton administration to rubber-stamp it (pasted below is the balkanizing census question that was proposed). Then history got in the way.

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