The Patriot Post® · Ethnic Aristocrats Benefit From a Fossilized System

Victor Davis Hanson: “The New York Times made up an absurd category for George Zimmerman, classifying him as a ‘white Hispanic’ when it wished to gin up the Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin controversy along racial fault lines. But had Zimmerman taken his mother’s last name, Mesa, or Latinized his first name to become Jorge Zimmerman, then the New York Times might have had more trouble pulling off its racial gymnastics. After all, Zimmerman is as Hispanic as Barack Obama is African-American. But the Times would not dare dub the president, who had a white mother and African father, a ‘white African-American.’ In short, not only are racial bumper stickers sometimes cynical, but they are also hopelessly inexact. … Why continue with divisive racial self-identification? Too many of our ethnic aristocrats and politicians benefit from a fossilized system of a past century that is now largely irrelevant in 21st-century America.”