Everyone agrees that Hillary Clinton’s losses among white workers in the North and lower turnout among African Americans, Hispanics, and young people cost her a very winnable victory.

Given our identity-determined culture, these demographic groups are boxed into separate categories. We speak of Rust Belt whites who need jobs, but blacks who need police justice. When discussing Baltimore, we forget that a huge Bethlehem Steel plant and satellite industries that offered blacks good jobs no longer exist. While African Americans need police justice, in the end their situation is not so different from the Rust Belt whites.

It is our ideology that blinds us to these connections: the idea is that one of the highest items on the black agenda must be something uniquely for blacks, and that racial disparity is the only disparity that counts.