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I had been thinking about this whole shebang and wanting to formulate a comment on it, but I was struggling, probably because my brain secretly felt exactly what you write, but wasn't able to put it into words as well as you. Ultimately, I'm torn between this and what I was originally feeling/wanting to talk about.
...what I was originally feeling/wanting to talk about was that this really is prime "JUST TELL ME HOW THE FUCK RACE IS SUPPOSED TO WORK" territory. I got a feeling of that from what Trump said, and I wonder if it is at all plausible for the right to just triple down and constantly just demand that leftists actually explain how it's supposed to work. Because everyone knows it's broken. Everyone knows that it doesn't work. The emperor is truly naked. Just constantly point at the naked emperor and openly remind everyone that everyone can see that he's naked. There is example after example after example (Dolezal, Warren, the entirety of the definition of 'hispanic', etc.) Hell, I'm still remembering Trevor Noah making basically exactly this same point WRT Obama. Just over and over again say, "Why don't you tell me how this is supposed to work?" Don't tell them how you think it's supposed to work. Just ask them to explain.
They won't. They can't. They know they can't. So they're just going to go to the columns of places like the NYT and say how aghast they are that anyone would even ask the question. So ask it. Again and again and again. If Trump and however many high-profile Trumpists that he can control can bring a version of this up (hopefully a milquetoast version like, "Why don't you just tell me how you think race is supposed to work?") basically every time they have a mic in their face, the pressure of the question remaining unanswered will be glaring. Honestly, a sustained messaging campaign of, "Why don't you just tell us how you think race is supposed to work?" could be the single best... or single worst... thing to happen to race relations in this country in a while.
I think that's a tactical mistake, because it puts them in the position of authority. It makes you look like you're a student asking teachers to the professor, begging them to explain it to you more simply because you didn't do the assigned reading.
The stronger tactic is do your research, and then be unafraid to speak up with your own views on the subject. Don't back down, debate with them. Let the viewers at home decide who was right. Of course this only works if you both have the power to not get cancelled, and also enough rhetorical skill to debate a hotly contested issue on camera under pressure. Trump is one of the very few right-wingers who can do both of those things.
Possibly so. On the other hand, if the people "in authority", the "teachers" and "professors", are constantly and visibly completely unable to muster even the tiniest shred of plausible explanation, it eats away at any perception that they do, indeed, merit those descriptors.
Maybe if you have some power to really hammer them with questions for a long time, like a senate hearing. But most journalists don't have that power, politicians will just dodge whatever questions they don't like and end the interview or move on to a new subject. It was actually quite unusual for someone like Trump to sit down for a long form, hostile interview like he did with the NABJ.
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What do you mean "How is race supposed to work?". Normies don't think about such things. Everyone knows AADOS and native American identities get special privileges. Everyone who actually looks into it knows that Kamala and Obama are neither, but not enough people have looked into it to make common knowledge the same way as for Liz Warren and Meghan Markle. 'Black' to normies means culturally African-American and with a minimum(often literally one-drop rule) blood quantum. Not 'reliable democrat voter'. Everyone except the extremely online acknowledges Clarence Thomas as black after they look into it(he's literally Gullah- and contrary to @SSCReader below, there are differences between different kinds of blacks, even if they have the same assimilatory pressures towards each other that Southern White culture exhibits in the broader red tribe. Gullahs and Creoles and black belt Blacks and NOI and great migrators are different from each other).
If this is how you think race is supposed to work and that 'everyone knows it', then it would be highly productive to move this statement from the category of naked emperors that 'everyone knows' to the category of actual common knowledge that cannot even be implicitly denied on the pages of NYT.
Yes, it would, but that’s not going to happen.
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Just to point out, I didn't say there are no black sub groups. Just that overall one of those groups is a much more dominant slice of the pie compared to any one white group to a pretty major extent.
Edit: Though I agree with your main point.
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