Amity Shlaes in her excellent history of the Depression, The Forgotten Man, outlines how FDR in his admitted goal of “unimagined power”, begin the process of cutting the American electorate like a sausage and appealing to each groups individual interests. No longer was the public asked to support what was good for the country as a whole, but the interests of labor, senior citizens, farmers and union workers were systematically offered rewards for their support.
During the 1930 Census, when “Mexican American” was classified as a race, leaders of that community protested so that they could be classified as “white”. In this excellent essay by Mike Gonzalez he traces the history of how the term “Hispanic” came about in a scramble for funds flowing from Washington D.C. The Great Society of the 1960s created benefits for “meeting quotas in government contracting, electoral redistricting, and affirmative action”. Instead of “out of many one”, today we have “out of many, confusion”. https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-invention-of-hispanics/
