10 February—The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston announced yesterday that University of Michigan provost Susan Collins has been named its next chief. Great. Assuming we need the Federal Reserve, that is. And that point isn’t worth arguing.

But it’s the next part of the announcement and its treatment by the press that’s disturbing: Susan Collins is the first black (the release capitalizes the color word, of course) woman to lead a regional Federal Reserve bank and signals a measure of new diversity in U.S. central bank leadership.

Was the bit about Susan Collins’s color and the newly realized racial and gender diversity really necessary? I am sick and tired of reading and hearing about race, ethnicity, gender, and anything else that goes along with those categories of identity that we find in news about virtually everything these days.

Identity politics is an insult to everyone. No two ways about it.

And it’s not just liberal politicians and media that are guilty. I don’t ordinarily follow entertainment or sports, among other things, but even conservative commentators have been going on and on about the Academy Awards yet again this year recognizing whomever it may have been but not someone else—with color, ethnicity, and gender a prominent part of the commentary. Same with the Winter Olympics.

Then there’s Joe Biden’s promise to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court. Of course, Joe made the promise to get the black vote. But that’s just practical political whoring. And right here in Connecticut there’s a Muslim woman running for the House of Representatives. That made news only because the candidate is a Muslim woman.

At the risk of appearing to be politically correct, who gives a bloody damn about any of that? Rather, who should give a bloody damn? Evidently too many people and institutions do and think they should. On the other hand, it appears to be politically incorrect not to consider race, ethnicity, and gender among qualifications for jobs, college admissions, and anything else these days. So it’s good to be back in the PI camp.

Whew, that was close . . .