Since the election, there has been a chorus of leftist voices saying that Trump won because of the country’s deep and ineradicable racism.

To those people as well as NR readers, I commend this essay by Adrian Lyles.

Key paragraph:

What you are witnessing in the historic reelection of Donald Trump is not evidence that tens of millions of Americans are hateful bigots who want to exclude those who don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes. What you are seeing is the reflexive expression that the American public overwhelmingly rejects the idea that people should be chosen on the basis of their skin color. This is hard to see by many because race blinds and creates a thick veil, but the facts speak for themselves. Exit polls show that Trump did historically well among the federally recognized so-called racial and ethnic groups. . . . Trump lost share among men racialized as white but gained share among so-called Asian, black, and Hispanic voters over his previous two runs. This suggests that Trump’s victory owes to an increasingly “raceless” sentiment among Americans to the effect that presidents and parties should not be chosen out of any sense of racial loyalty, and certainly not “white supremacy.”

He’s right. For decades, the Democrats have figured that they owned the black vote, Hispanic vote, and other groups simply because they proclaim their compassion and offer a few tidbits like racial preferences at universities. That strategy has stopped working.

Read the whole thing.