Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson's latest concoction is a toxic brew of cynicism and projected malice.
He joins in the trashing of West Virginians that is all the rage this week:
In Appalachian America (the heart of which went to the polls yesterday in West Virginia), as Mark Schmitt notes in the forthcoming issue of the American Prospect (which I edit), a disproportionate number of people write "American" when answering the census question on ethnic origin. For some, "American" is a race -- white -- no less than a nationality, and it's on this equation that Republican prospects depend.
I am not familiar with the study cited by Meyerson. Based on his reference, it has apparently escaped his notice that many people put "American" as their national origin in a small protest against the divisive and increasingly untenable racial and ethnic categorization imposed by the Census in recent years.
I am among those who routinely writes "American" on such forms. That's not because I view it the way Meyerson represents. It's because I think "American" is the correct--and most important--appellation for every one of us, with our remarkable, shared ancestry from every part of the planet.
