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You've got it backwards. The open advocacy for voting for, nominating, or appointing people because they are black and/or female is what prompted this.
And where did that come from? Just happened for no reason? Or did that happen because of open discrimination legal and otherwise against black people in the US? The Civil Rights Era occurred for a reason. DEI and wokism is a response to what came before.
It happened because
Black people believe voting tribally is perfectly valid, just like pretty much every other racial group except white people and
The Democratic party's long-term strategy involves spoils for women and minorities.
And why do they feel that way in the United States of America? Why is the strategy that way? What formed some kind of divide between black and white people in the US of A? Any kind of situation or series of events that may have had some kind of impact on race relations? Something even the Founding Fathers thought might become an issue down the line? Might have caused a mild civil contretemps? Something that created a coalition of minorities? Something about discrimination being legally enshrined, one race being owned by the other?
The USA is the way it is because of the history of slavery and everything that came from it. Jefferson recognized it. So did many others from then until now. Saying Oh people prefer white candidates because Democrats push non-white candidates but refusing to go back the extra step as to WHY that coalition happened the way it did is probably the biggest frustration I have with parts of the right in America. You don't have to support how things are now (wokism etc.), to at least understand the chain of events that led to it. This didn't just spring up out of thin air due to racial spoils on behalf of black people. It was racial spoils on behalf of white people first, that was legally enshrined that then was overturned, over a long period of time. And the USA has been unable to escape that history. But ignoring that is not going to make it go away. And because Democrat's don't ignore it is why they punch above their weight. Like it or not, many white Americans do feel significant white guilt and that includes many conservatives who buy into the "All men are created equal" founding mythos. Whether they should feel that way or not is irrelevant, they do.
Wokism and DEI emerged in the US and not in say the UK because of the specific history of the United States. If you want to cut history off at a certain point and complain about how Democrats pushing DEI pushes you into preferring white candidates but without thinking about the extra cycle about what historical events caused them to push DEI in the first place, then you are going to struggle to attract people to your side, who do see those epicycles.
I can criticize old, white men until the day is dead on whatever policy they have.
I can't do that with black men and/or women. Unless I have a D next to my name, in which case I can call Ben Carson an Uncle Tom or House Nigger and not receive one iota of pushback.
Spare me the entire guilt on slavery and racism speil. I don't care. The past two decades have made it clear that every ethnicity will follow along tribal guidelines - so I will take that lesson to heart and move forward with that in mind.
I don't think it has shown that is the thing. Its shown that a group with very specific historical context in the US does so. But they don't outside of the US, black Africans have vicious intra-racial conflicts.
And yes, again in the US the historical context, numbers and forced nature has created an unusually close group that attempts to socially police its members to maintain safety in numbers (see also Northern Ireland) but that doesn't mean it will remain like some immutable law of physics, which your own argument illustrates, the very existence of people like Ben Carson et al shows that the group can and will fracture just like bigger groups as it becomes wealthier and more successful.
My wifes family are a good example, very mixed political views, wanting to moveaway from the city and obviously open to mixing with other groups. Add money, add success and you can get where you want to go. No need to move retrograde here. We have very clear examples that creating opportunities to make wealthier more comfortable people creates fractures along socio-economic lines instead which will solve the whole problem in the end.
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Black people feel voting tribally is perfectly valid because that's the general rule. No explanation is needed, that's how people normally act. It is white Americans who are unusual here. It's not slavery that resulted in anything different, it's the Civil Rights era which resulted in whites being taught it was not right for them to act in their own racial or ethnic interest (either "white" or their own particular ethnicity, though the latter took longer to fade).
And why did the Civil Rights era happen? Because of the after-effects of slavery and the Civil War.
White people are the ones who also ended slavery to be clear. Their feelings are not imposed from without, they emerged internally from the moral underpinnings of why they started to believe slavery was wrong in the first place.
But regardless of that, slavery is what led to the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Era led to DEI and so on. So I think my point is made.
White people do vote tribally now, it is simply made up of sub-tribes (Blue and Red tribe are notably primarily white) because even prior to the Civil Rights era, white people are not and never have been a single tribal group, unlike ADOS who were turned into one by default after the erasure of their pre-existing tribal identities (this is a bad thing!).
The mistake you are making is thinking that because ADOS in the US have a singular (well not entirely, but close) identity and given the history in the US that they are more likely to vote racially tribally that means that white people should do the same. But that is a result of their history, and it is not something to replicate, it is a negative outcome for them, and for everyone else. It is something to be accepted for now, given the history, but it is not in and of itself a good thing. It is an outcome of a (possibly warranted!) siege mentality. And there are signs that identity is fracturing, but that is going to take time, rising economical outcomes and so on.
My interest is not the same as a French white person or an Amish one, so there is no reason for me to vote in their interest rather than my own. And in Africa, the tribal grouping are not all black people or all Africans, they have sub tribes and divisions. The only reason black people in the US largely have not had this, is because they were forced together by circumstance and numbers and treatment and because for large swathes of time they were treated as all being the same "tribe" whether they wanted to be or not.
The answer is not to double down on that. It is to understand that given the sweep of history, we both need (in my opinion) be sensitive to their current tribal outcomes and what needs to be done for them to feel empowered as part of a larger polity that treated them so badly for so long AND be clear eyed that racial tribalism is largely a bad thing, but that white people saying that to black people in America carries the weight of a history that cannot be ignored. The lessons white Americans learned from the Civil Rights era are positive, but the ADOS black community is not at a point where it can trust those same lessons. Though it is I think getting there. There is a bigger and bigger internal divide as urban black working class and middle class communities break from the underclass (Divestment, black homesteading etc.) But it is hampered by geographic and economic realities. It is this divide that will signal a social split, where racial tribalism can be replaced by "factionalism" as it is in white Americans. And additions of more recent African immigrants is also contributing to this.
But if in the mean time people who are working for white Americans to forget the lessons they learned succeed then the whole project is in danger in a way that black American tribal behavior on its own could never do (due to lack of numbers and resources).
American Progressives are right in the short term, but wrong in the long term. But you can't get to the long term without going through the short.
You're demonstrating my point right here. I assume by "their" and "them" that you're not black. So why are you so concerned with their outcomes and interests, even when those conflict with your own, either individually or tribally? It's certainly great for blacks that progressive non-blacks will take black interests as a priority. It's not so great for non-blacks.
Non-progressives want the progressive project to fail.
I am a white Brit, living in America, my wife is black and I have a mixed kid. So I am certainly to an extent tied in with how they are treated. I am often the only white person at family gatherings ( though not always there is a white ex-marine married into the other side of the family). And of course my wife stands out when we have family gatherings back home in Northern Ireland in return. My experiences and situation make me an outside observer to both black and white communities in the US.
My overall point is though that long term the interests of blacks and whites in a shared polity converge. That is the project I am talking about. The US project. I think the progressive project will fail as well, long term and that is perfectly ok. I think the only long term solution is a much more liberal near race-blind solution, where factional tribalism will still occur (as that seems built in), but it is not race base (as we seem to deal really badly with that). But the black community (generalizing of course) is not ready for that yet. Whether you want to say it HBD, culture or racism, they are still doing poorly compared to those they see around them. So the siege mentality remains. Time and success seem to be the only exits, to get a longer term more stable franchise. So a thumb on the scale will help. Or even just the appearance of a thumb on the scale.
There are plenty of black people who are not terribly enamored of what the Democrat's have managed to accomplish, but just as with Trump and his white rural working class base (a group which also needs significant help) the people who at least say they will help you, even if they don't seem better than those who don't say it at all.
I don't think they do, and black people don't seem to think they do. Up to some point, an America where blacks get special privileges and spoils is better for black Americans than an America where they don't but is better off as a whole.
Then other communities should treat the black community as a tribal enemy, or at least rival. Appeasement doesn't work, it only feeds more demands for special treatment.
Blacks aren't any more hostile to Trump than they were his recent Republican predecessors, when the rural working class was largely a Democratic constituency. Trump got 8% and 12%, about the same as GWB who got 9% and 11%. Reagan got 14% and 9%, and GHWB got 11% and 10%.
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For exactly the reason we are seeing here. Once one side is, the other will follow suit. Short term it is useful, but when you are in a minority, encouraging everyone else to do the same is a problem. Which is why long term I think it is a bad solution. It just needs to be long enough to get by. Which is a tricky balance to be fair.
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