Racism lost in this election, and that’s something the country should be proud of. When all was said and done, the election was largely predicated on the vote of several racial, ethnic and religious demographics in the Midwest and other key voting grounds that spoke loudly either in full support of Donald Trump or in protest of Kamala Harris. Perhaps the most influential of these was the vote of Latino men.

After the election, Democrats are left wondering to themselves what could possibly have driven Latino men — and most critically young Latino men — to vote so drastically against their own interests.

The answer is simple: They didn’t. But Democrats are having a difficult time coming to terms with this because to them, Latino men are just that: Latino. And it is true that Donald Trump is the leader of harmful, and at times even malicious, rhetoric against Latino immigrants. Moreover, his campaign has actively promoted his intention to deport undocumented immigrants en masse and to limit access to this country for people from Latin America. Because of this, it is impossible for Democrats to see how Trump could possibly feed the interests of Latino men. This is the case because Democrats are fundamentally incapable of doing the one thing Trump is: to look at the cohort of Latino American men as rational political actors first and Latinos second.

Only Democrats lumped Latino Americans and their social political interests into the same group as that of undocumented immigrants from Latin America. In doing so, Democrats sent a very clear message to the Latino population of the United States: No matter what you do or who you are as a person, you will always be just another one of “them” to us. This is perhaps the most blatant and abhorrent case of latent systematic racism in American politics today.

Latino men distanced themselves from the Democratic Party precisely because race and ethnicity meant less to them than they were being told it should. Racism drove Democrats to lump a wildly diffuse group of Americans into a manufactured cohort called “Latinos” and expect that being a part of the group would mean the same to the members as to those standing on the outside looking in. Democrats expected that race and ethnicity should be at the forefront of Latinos’ identity because it is at the forefront of theirs when they think of them.

Democrats have a fundamental misunderstanding of identity politics on 2024 because they are inherently, although perhaps not maliciously, stuck in a racist paradigm that the broader community is largely evolving out of. It’s time to rethink what race means for identity politics and perhaps this absolute failure of racism on a national scale will help us move toward a future where both political parties can come to realization that Latinos are certainly more than just Latino. They’re American.

J. Antonio Molinar is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he specializes in the intersections of racial and ethnic politics, religion and politics, and generational cohort political behavior. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Texas.