Matt Yglesias notes the malleability of whiteness. Adam Serwer nods:
[O]ne of the problems with a related set of trend stories predicting a browner and more post-racial America is that the definition of whiteness in the U.S. is hardly static, and shifted dramatically less than a century ago when we began to consider Jews, Italians and Irish people white. Before then there was a lot of ethnically charged pseudoscience about the inborn, immutable tendencies of each group that today sounds really idiotic. But the point is, as U.S. gets browner, many of the people who were once considered brown are going to start considering themselves white.
'Tis true. But the white will be a lot more mottled than before. And the ethnic categories seem surprisingly resilient in voting patterns.
The Dish 