With all due respect to Blow's sincerity and eloquence, I hope the national Democratic Party doesn't run on this platform in 2018.
11
I'm a white male. I despise Trump, and wanted Bernie for President. When Hillary elbowed him aside for the Democratic nomination, I voted for her. Obviously.
Yet I am the first in my family to attend college, and so am no trust fund baby. People like me also need to work, and that's where the rubber meets the road. In academia, as a member of faculty search committees, I have watched for decades as female and minority graduate students with little or no teaching or publishing experience have been hired over white male PhD's far more accomplished on both accounts. The mindset is that "we are entitled secretly to get away with whatever we can get away with for women and select minorities, and we react indignantly when anyone questions us."
So, this is my lonely, centrist perspective. I want Trump (and Pence) gone ASAP and the Democrats to hold a national majority. Yet I know first hand what Trump voters who condemn sexist, racist left wing elites are talking about.
22
Charles, the studies you site leave out what I believe is the root cause White racial insecurity. It started during the slavery era when Whites lived in fear of slave rebellions. Then when the slaves were freed the Whites used Jim Crow to instill fear in the Black population in order to "keep them down". Now the same attitudes persist with mass incarceration being used as a racial weapon.
46
Wow it must be rough living with that much resentment. You're only a nationally syndicated writer working for the Times. But hey, don't let the man keep you down.
9
Someone please explain to me how the claim that young white males are explicit or implicit racists is less of an improper racial generalization than the one that young black males are thuggish gangsters?
18
As LBJ knew well (and as verified by snopes):
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Donald Trump, the short-fingered pick-pocket.
25
Anyone familiar with Mr. Blow's obsessive writing on this subject must know that pervasive racial resentment - in his case anyway - is very much a two-way street.
11
Trump is an easy target for people like Blow, since Trump is is an incompetent . But a more difficult subject, which Blow never deals with, is why Hillary Clinton was unable to motivate a segment African Americans to vote fro her. see https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/clinton-votes-african-americans-...
Some African Americans concluded that a Clinton presidency would have no more of a positive impact on the economic issues facing them than a Trump presidency and that some anti-Trump white Americans are also uncomfortable with racial minorities. In New Yrok City, gentrification is reestablishing segregation by income and most white parents prefer to send their children to private schools, in order to avoid both public and charter schools which are predominately non white.
By all means , we should get rid of Trump. But at some point, we will have to start talking about how to actually fix problems like income inequality. And that discussion will be painful, since it will expose some profound differences in the anti-Trump coalition.
8
I have no rebellion, I don't think much about it, but I certainly don't hold myself not 1% responsible for any other race not living up to where they like to live up to.
Sorry
I lived up to what I wanted to live up to, and I'm happy.
I guess I missed the point
4
But Charles, Kanye likes him. Why are you being so difficult?
4
In my company a huge majority of new employees are Asian migrants. When both white and black males are losing seats in the executive room and are replaced by Asian females, the reality is way more complex than this oversimplified split between whites are 100% racists and sexists, and blacks are 0% racist and 100% feminists.
10
Mr. Blow is nothing short of one of the great New York Times Columnists. Trump is white rage and racism defined in all its obese gluttonous glory.
But the reality of the beast and his administration is to cement the oligarchy in place, enriching the very rich at the expense of everything and everyone. And, yes, ideally, that oligarchy is white.
But let me clarify one more thing. Trump is too stupid to simply even be a white supremacist. He's after wealth. He is after gold. He is Midas. His soul, if you want to disgrace the word, is made from bitcoin. He is pure speculation.
Yes- the vote for Trump was pure racism. Trump himself, however, is pure sickening conman.
15
David Kesler,
Maybe these articles will change your mind. The Trumps, Donald and his father Fred are life long racists. Woody Guthrie wrote a song titled 'Old Man Trump' about his experience with Fred Trump. DJ Trump knew exactly what he was stirring up during his campaign.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-governments-racial-bi...
https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/25/woody-guthrie-sa...
9
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1
This article elaborates on what, to me, is an obvious fact. In my opinion, some or much of the Trump support phenomenon is racist, exacerbated by the election of a black president for two terms. Another basis for Trump’s support is what I see is subconscious concern (fear?) by whites, mostly white men but not always, that American culture is losing its whiteness. For white men, there’s the additional fear for the loss of white male control. When this subject comes up in conversation, to a person they deny all of this. The problem for them is that, no matter how they feel or what they do, whiteness will still lose its cultural dominance. It’s just a matter of time.
6
'Trump was incredulous of his own comment, notable from the way he began to smirk as he mouthed the words...It wasn’t sincerity but sarcasm. It was a way of making a point, not about jealousy but about resentment.'
My goodness you draw a great deal from a facial idiosyncrasy it is almost 'Comeyesque' in remembered detail and as it was some time ago, Proustian in its recall.
Name calling is so easy, Trump is a 'buffoon' what school of buffoonery do you think he emanates from the Italian school or the French school of buffoonery? I hear they are as different as red and blue; and what school of buffoonery does Hillary emanate from? A juggling school based in Switzerland. One is well advised to look up the etymology of words especially before employing them as an insult.
By calling someone a buffoon you are employing your pen in the possible, not the actual. I hear the raucous response, 'so what?' from the Comments chorus who have got 900 recommends for towing the line. There should be a requiem for the certainty that is dividing America; 'he is that, a buffoon and I am, well, not Byron, but you know what I mean. Indeed a requiem for the certainty that currently fractures the USA that they the 'deplorables' are like that and we the 'talkers' the secular priests are like this, might do well to be shunted off and laid to rest with a Mass for dead thought.
3
What's sad is we need to stop the blaming of others for our failures we're all human we make mistakes. Judging others on a shear incident or mishap violent situation ,statistics or your own personal observation, shows your character and who you are as a person. Never in my life have I ever just disliked a person, for there race. It's simple minded and if you truly thought about it, a sad excuse for you. It only shows that you lack something, love. How can you love yourself, knowing you hate someone? Let It Go Let It Be because you can't change that person. Note person! We deny ourselves daily beautiful human experiences because of what we fear.
If you truly thought about it, what you hate is you. You hate you because your life is based around what's around you and not what's in it. You need Jesus man God and a whole lot of faith.
What's truth, truth is blacks were enslaved, beat whipped and women raped this can be proven historically. Truth is the American Indian were robbed, murdered and now on reservations. This before our eyes. Yet Hitler was a madman? A single man killing Millions but here in this country thousands not only enslaved murdered prosecuted others legally as they made it. To make the wrongs, right and a lot of us do that. So what makes us separate from Hitler. Its funny cause of Neo-Nazi groups use the Twisted cross as Hitler did his views were twisted as a lot of our views are twisted
Brilliance is a fantastic color. Trump is only the color: Dull. Trump needs to go back to School and become better, more educated. That is why the call it: "Higher" education.
Edit: They call it:
“Should i give up on Whites”, the “White Rebellion” and snap shot study exposing white swing voters as racist elitists.... gee A poor Presidential candidate blows an election - blame the voters........ good way to lose the mid terms.... pure genius.
2
Nothing more to say. Charles has articulated the
unarticulatable again. Charles explains what we don't
want explained. Thank you CB a true American treasure.
4
Mr Blow is correct, and the behavior he describes is PERFECTLY NATURAL, considering how ALL other minorities/ethnic groups of any size now advocate for their own tribe FIRST.
Wanting your country not to dramatically change its demographics from the time you are a child to the time you have children is natural.
Also, most proponents of mass immigration (the real subject, Mr. Blow conflates the race issue with mass 3rd world immigration, a tactic common on the left) dont have to live with ANY of the displacements or negative effects.
4
sadly, the comments section below appears to be just another liberal/Democreatic soundbox, with multiple iterations of the same views that readers of the Times have been hearding/saying for decades, going back through all Republican presidents, Reagan to Nixon (no Eisenhower so far) .... Republican tax cuts are only for the wealthy, why do regular people KEEP voting for them??; rural/regional voters are fools who cannot see their own interests (we in New York will interpret that for them); the election process did not get these views strongly enough through to backwoods GOP voters; and the whole race/class/gender filter is harmless can be used relentlessly in everything from book reviews to municipal hiring decisions, and no citizen should be bothered. All of the above was seen clearly by 2016 Trump voters, in fact it is what MADE them Trump voters. But NYTimes readers/commenters remain blissfully in their silo, congratulating themselves on their worldlines. --What is wrong with this picture??
8
I forgot......to mention it in my "several" previous posts.
Mr. Blow you are genial--you hit it right on.
I will print and keep this commentary for years to come.
3
I believe this is true however its not new. Trump taped into the resentment of people who saw there status and economic position diminish. To get them worked up he had to place the blame on someone and he chose people of any color and it worked. Even as he has done nothing for his hard core base and even taken away from them they still love him and will to the end. Hitler used the same approach blaming the Jews for all of the problems in Germany.
3
Racism in this country has perhaps never been more obvious than it is today. As a Caucasian who reads and respects history, the white uneducated voters who supported George Wallace are the descendants of the Trump base today.
“Make America great again” is a dog whistle for “make America white again” which speaks volumes about the base’s fear of “the other” who may racially displace them. They need a scapegoat to blame their economic woes on and their geographic isolation from anyone who does not share their skin color adds to their fear of being displaced as the majority culture. They fear that which they have not known due to their ignorance and lack of social mobility.
When Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables”, she referred to their bigotry and hatred.
She called out their support of a candidate who claimed to lead “the Birther movement”— a contemptible smear campaign motivated by racism and lies about President Obama’s heritage. Those who took up this morally indecent fraudulent campaign, did so because they couldn’t bear to see a highly educated, eloquent and powerful black man sitting in a seat of power once only reserved for white men. Trump is the racist’s hero as he gives a voice to their racist beliefs that they hope will “save” them from the inevitability of being part of a pluralistic society they spend their lives resisting.
6
Do whites own racism alone? Is it only practiced by whites?
I do not agree with racists but believe that not only whites have cornered the market of racism. Also, historically whites were not the only race that had slaves. Just saying, not promoting racism.
5
I remain astonished & revolted by the number of racial hate groups that spoke out, & bc of the growing acceptance of their views, continued to spew their vile garbage about pretty much everything in our society. But what hurts me more, what makes me so much more upset are the people behind them who (for whatever reasons they allow themselves to believe) gave these hate groups a majority. Through America’s Constitutional process.
While waiting for a bus a while back, two elderly women were speaking nearby, & the gist of their conversation was that while they (supposedly) despised the words coming out of Trump's mouth, they simply had to accept that for (I will assume) the tax package they mistakenly believed would change their lives. From the neighborhood in which we stood, the tax package was in no way a “boon” to them. And even if it was, they certainly did NOT need to “tune Trump out” bc they felt other objectives were more important to them. Do they truly not care how the leader of the Free World sounds & acts in front of the next generation of kids? Do they think it’s best for racist, misogynistic comments to become commonplace so that they can finally afford a new car, nicer clothing, possibly just braces for their grandkids...? Is it truly worth the beautiful straight teeth for those kids to spend at least 4 years listening to that filth while their grandmas politely turn their heads?
Those woman, to me, represent all who silently allowed this abomination to occur.
4
You speak to us of being white and voting for that whom ye have labeled evil.
You speak to us of being less than human, because we do not fit within your defined space of goodness.
You anoint one as a Saint, because she was female and could have been president.
You denounce us as being less than your expectations, yet you change the game, the goal lines move, yet when we still win and play, you take your ball and go home.
You call us out for being different, for being politically conservative. You denounce of for our opinions, yet don't acknowledge in the mirror your own faults.
You seek to disenfranchise us, to establish us as being anti-American for our belief structures and systems.
Despite all of this, Trump won. I may not like the President personally, but he has managed to do quite a bit despite the NYT and most other media outlets denouncing him.
The evil that hath no name is labeled a Nazi, an alt rightist, when really we are centrists. We simply want balance to life, yet you keep tipping the scales.
....I've used you quite a bit, in reference to the author and the political -other-, those that expect respect for their opinions and beliefs, but don't hold the same esteem for those that oppose us.
---- I'm an expat, have been for 10 years, I've watched the American political sphere change and expand, retract and harden. Being American overseas, I find that you're simply a mirror of the otherside, and both sides are equally terrible.
--Fix it.
4
Lowest voter turnout in history. Many Trump voters were ex-Obama voters. Mr. Blow you remain willfully ignorant or conveniently amnestic about the issues that gave us a Trump. Until you start to articulate those issues, you know, the systemic corruption of our political system where both political parties are bought and paid for by consultants and lobbyist, then we will continue to have the choices we had in the last election, and people will stay home in disgust.
9
I think that Paragraph nine hits the nail on the head as to what happened, but not why it happened. Republicans have always trafficked in overt and abstract racism, because it has always been a useful political trope for turning out the vote. There are a lot of people in the USA who hated, really, truly, hated Barack Obama, simply because he was black.
I think that simply having a Black President was too much for a lot of people, especially rural white people, who the recession hit very hard. And then Fox News just builds the fire up for 8 years, and now we have a generation of racist, free market fundamentalist ideologues who are registered to vote.
I don't blame racists though for being racists. I just write them off. People have all kinds of stupid beliefs for stupid reasons. You can't expect them to be part of the solution. Democrats, on the other hand, punted the election by nominating Hillary Clinton (back room power plays and all), when she had been the target of nearly thirty years of Republican propaganda. Republicans were showing blitz, and the Democrats ran a hail mary.
3
Interesting column from CB. He gets to attack two of his favorite targets -- Trump and White people in general. Infer that they're racist. Too bad he couldn't work in something about white cops stalking and killing Blacks because the cops are racist. Now, that would a CB trifecta.
4
Speaking as a straight white guy and all, I am beginning to have had quite enough of white folks bewailing how picked on they are by anybody who notices history, has read books, can think their way through a wet paper diaper, and have done a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.
There was a time in this country when plain old folks sometimes thought about what they owed this country's people's hope, history, hard work, struggles, failures, heroism, and triumphs.
Those of you who cheer for a manifest greedhead and fool betray all that.
And you have already lost.
3
If there is such a rebellion, then sign me up! Thank you.
3
My sense is that the people who blame others for their troubles will look for excuses to put their losses and failures on someone else. Then there is the whole profit motive that spawned bigotry against dark skinned people. Enslave the Africans, wipe out the Native Americans, how many pogroms in Europe were the result of royalty owning too much money to the Jewish money lenders? The list is endless. The moral rot that is becoming so obvious is no surprise to those of us who study history. I hope, by being honest and respectful to and with anyone I meet, I am in some small way making a better world.
4
Your claiming that all whites who voted for Trump are racists is neither justified nor helpful. People are different, especially when it comes to their political standings and social perceptions. As a columnist at NyTimes, your commentary should be expected to have positive societal impacts, but a highly subjective one without comprehensive analytical backing seems not to serve that end responsibly.
3
My view of Charles has never included "positive societal impact". Between he and Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post, I'm always aware that my skin color is the root of all evil. Blame the white folks for everything, it's working well.
2
For the "non-racists" that voted for trump, his racism wasn't a deal breaker. It should have been.
4
Blow's piece highlights an important theme running through our nation's narrative. Trump knows how to capitalize on fear. He's become a master at it schooled by the likes of Fox News and it's unrelenting and non-stop crisis mode. We see white male fear manifest itself in the gun culture, anti-immigration, and even the big loud trucks driven to intimidate (ironically) adorned with the ubiquitous and telling "No Fear" stickers on them.
3
What we are seeing today is the gradual winding of Jim Crow soft wealth. The Civil War and declaration of emancipation did not make white and black equal - it only caused a reaction. The Jim Crow over the years created the white soft wealth - prestige, respect, previlage, entitlement, and a sense of pride. Obama presidency is the first time this whole package is challenged by the non whites including blacks. Like Jim Crow was not supported by all white population, similarly the current Tea Party and Trumpism is not supported by all whites. This response is exactly like Jim Crow, there is no economic cause for this. Nor there is correlation to education and family background. Only parameter that affects this support group is the individual soft power type - positive soft power like compassion, self esteem, fearless, honesty, knowledge, and hard work did not support it, negative soft power like anger, jealousy, ego, crudeness, ignorance, and sensitivity actively supports it.This problem is a psychological and social problem and nothing to do with economics. Let us understand, like dismantle grip of Jim Crow by civil rights movement, it will take gradual and pain staking effort to change this social evil.
2
Mr. Blow speaks the truth. And he brings out the predictable range of indignation and skewed statistic manipulation responses in his white readers. No surprise. It is presumptuous to think we have control over our deepest fears and insecurities. One thing for sure: Trump rallies have the unmistakable sound, tone, and feel of a lynch mob. Want proof? Just turn the camera around to the crowd at his so called "campaign rallies".
4
This is sad. I know Charles Blow means well but - like many people on both sides of the political divide - he seems to be tragically mired in racial hysteria.
He talks, almost off-handedly, of the "petrifying fear young white men feel about the erosion of their privilege." Characterizing white men as people desperately gripping on to their privilege? Terrified at it's erosion?
I'm sorry, but these kind of sweeping statements have a lot in common with the kind of racial stereotypes that Blow claims to be victimized by.
And the article is chock full of these kind of not-so-subtle racial jabs at white people.
This doesn't belong in the New York Times. And the fact that it's being published here is a sign that even great newspapers are prone to being swept away in times of social hysteria.
8
Perhaps another perception could be that President Obama, as the first black president, chose to be the president of America's minorities and not the president of all of Americans. Some believe that the Obama Administration tilted towards minority policies to the detriment of working class whites who were neglected by those policies. Without Obama there could be no Trump since the election of Trump was clearly a reaction to the Obama policies, both foreign and domestic. At least this is the perception that many white voters held when they cast their ballots.
It will take a different kind of administration from either the Obama or Trump administrations to implement policies that will enable all Americans to benefit equally and positively. Right now it is important that we refrain from denouncing each other for following policies with which we disagree. Some level of bipartisanship must overcome the dangerous divide than now separates us.
3
If only more White Americans would travel abroad they might lose some of their entitled outlook. There's nothing like being in a foreign country, in a room full of people, and not understanding a single word being said. Or, being in a restroom in Mexico, looking in the mirror, and finding yours is the only White face in the room. Traveling can change your worldview so much and help you realize that Whites may be a majority here in America, but Asians and Blacks vastly outnumber Caucasians around the world. It's important to learn that your closed world is not all there is. Travel can open up possibilities, understanding and empathy for others. It's a shame that so many Americans are afraid of those experiences.
60
Whites currently make up approximately only 18% of the world's population.
6
Yet white tourists visiting subaltern destinations are vilified: one example, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid.
2
I could not agree more! I spend alot of time in Mexico & recently spent time in the South. Being a "minority" gives perspective and appreciation of other cultures.
10
I guess in a time of great technological disruption and transformation through digitization, AI, robotization, etc. and the corrosive effect of social media most people are concerned about facing the future, irrespective of gender, race or color of the skin.
1
". . . Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy."
We can only hope!!
6
What do you call people who behave like racists, talk like racists, and support racist policies? You call them "racists." Please stop dancing around the term. Call it what it is. Racism. I see way too much of the political correctness that Republicans complain about being used by Democrats to describe racism. It's called "RACISM."
6
The USA was built on land taken by force from its original inhabitants; in the Louisiana Purchase, the French were paid more than the tribes ever were. The economy was built on the backs of Africans ripped from their homes and brought here in chains. The slave trade touched all American cities and enriched Americans throughout the original states. Georgetown U is still making gestures at amends for its sale of slaves who built that U. For all that, the prettiest flowers sometimes grow on dung heaps: humanity en masse is rarely an attractive sight. But great good has been done by many Americans, and not only by whites. Education is a long slow process, but it cries out for a bigger place in American life. And I mean education, not job-training. Anyone met a young male doctor or lawyer recently who seemed to be a good example of a well-rounded individual and not just a thrusting ambitious lout?
4
It is wonderful when an article blows away all the fog and gets to core truth. Calling and clarifying the question is a critical first step. When I became the legal guardian for my mixed-race grandson, I received a gifts and a challenge. The gift was the opportunity to work my own residual issues regarding race, which became less conceptual and more visceral. Now I've got blood and bone (as well as skin) in the game, and I can tell you it is a whole different way of being. There is another gift, which I still haven't figured out how to wholly unwrap and is hard to describe. My grandson has given me a small window into the reality and richness of black life and culture that I would never have had otherwise.
So, how does this related to the subject at hand? I think that until older white people (and I do think age is a factor in this) begin to understand that our country and society depends on building bridges of mutual respect, not a whole lot is going to change. Easy? No. Comfortable? No. My pulse rate was elevated when I took my grandson into a black barbershop. I was received with grace - and oh, what a world that opened up!
One final point - race may be the dominant factor in all this, but I think gender has an important place at the table as well. Trump's "going back" sure doesn't appear to have much room for empowered women of any color.
9
I’m a white man and I don’t think we’ve done the greatest job, unless you count constant wars, racism, misogyny and imperialism success.
Let someone else take over.
5
Take a look at cities that are run by the Democratic party, whether the mayor be black or white, and tell me that's doing a better job.
2
Or, you could move to somewhere that "someone else" has already taken over. I hear South Africa is nice this time of year...
1
Trump is the embodiment of a European archetype dating back well before Columbus. He plays the role of the conqueror, the conquistador, who just comes in and takes whatever he wants and is then lauded for it -- a jerk, all through history.
7
I met that hate head on during a cruise when a couple from another state answered a Scottish couple's innocent question about President Barack Obama. The American husband began to spew nothing but invective about Obama, who was running for a second term. No reasons, just hate.
That's what turned the tide in 2016 was anxiety that white privilege would be overturned by colored masses that sought payback for bad treatment. Add that to misogynistic fear of a viable woman candidate for president. Overall, you are correct. Trump ran as the Great White Hope.
The only statement from a Trump I remember from the 2016 campaign came from Melania: "I'm a very strong person."
Deconstructed, that means [I need to be] a very strong person to survive this husband on a daily basis.
5
What you describe from your cruise is only described that way because YOU ARE AN IDEOLOGUE. A tribalistic partisan who can't feel the empathy of someone you disagree with.
What you describe is EXACTLY what Mr. Blow sounds like in his nonsensical anti-white screeds (like this one) that pop up on here at least 2x per month.
1
There ought to be a better word to describe the type of voter who comprised the core group of Donald Trump’s supporters in 2015 and 2016.
As Charles M. Blow points out, the profile of the Trump supporter was and is a white male who is not rich, but who believes that he has been denied economic benefit and status because of preferential treatment which he believes has been granted to black men.
The twin racial drivers for these supporters are fear and resentment. The attraction to Donald Trump was his willingness to speak in more than just dog whistles and codewords. Trump made it acceptable to speak aloud the long-harbored thoughts of the angry white men (and, usually, of their spouses).
We could call these white voters closet racists, but they are very open about voicing a belief that a white dominance of black folks is the natural order of things in America.
They know that their views are offensive to black people and to well-educated white people, but they do not feel that their views are intrinsically and morally wrong.
Maybe we should call them racial fundamentalists.
Nope. That gives the members of the white rebellion a patina of respectability and legitimacy. Let’s just keep calling them racists or white supremacists.
3
Charles Blow, have I told you lately that I love you?
5
Right on, as usual, Mr. Blow. I was born in Argentina and moved to the US when I was 5 years old. I am quite white and have benefited greatly from white privilege. As an undercover brown person, I even shock Latinos when I speak to them in Spanish. The same opportunities would not have been available to me if I had darker skin, or an accent, or had I been a woman. The white male is still supremely advantaged, especially in the US. Those privileges have been eroding during my lifetime but not fast enough. There is still a long way to go before the playing field is leveled.
6
In business, an innovation is made by a company and it becomes the leader in that product or service. Often, he develops a huge market share and commands premium pricing in the beginning. He is doing very well. Let's call that business "America".
Competitors soon start chipping away at his advantages. They improve upon his quality and service and undercut his prices. Soon there are three or four competitors and his market leadership is no more.
Here, white guys have owned America Inc. for 250 years. Through laws, customs, practices and, in some cases, reprehensible acts like slavery and institutional racism, kept themselves the market leader.
But like in business, the competition began catching up-- African Americans, Mexicans, Central Americans, Asians. And these competitors began to get better educated and work harder, longer and more diligently, White guys began being out-competed in the market.
So if you're a white guy in the Deep South, you've pretty much been relying on your whiteness as your big market advantage for a long time. This competition is a big shock to you. You're angry about it. You want your market advantage back.
In business, nimble market leaders learn new skills, evolve, change and work harder to compete with their new challengers. Here, these people are either unable or unwilling to do so. So they want Trump to fix things so they keep their market share. In this way, they are no different than Big Oil or Coal, for example--only more racist.
6
The idea that the primary motivator for Trump supporters was economic anxiety was a false narrative swallowed and regurgitated by a gullible media.
Well finally the media is beginning to get what many of us have been saying for decades. It's about time they figured it out.
2
There is no one cause for the election of Trump and to claim there is says more about the claimant than the voter. The primary motivator for some Trump voters was indeed economic anxiety. How else to explain their two previous votes for Mr. Obama? His failure to deliver on economic issues set the stage for those people to vote to try something else. And Trump is certainly something else.
3
There is no doubt that xenophobia fueled a lot of Trump support. Xenophobia, not racism. Anti-immigrant fervor has nothing to do with skin color. Mexicans are not “brown” (what an insulting way to speak of a people)! Islam is not a race. I recently heard a blue-eyed hijab-wearing Arab woman complain of religious discrimination. And what color are Jews and Chinese? Xenophobia needs to be fought but Mr. Blow’s racial hysteria does nothing except deflecting society’s attention from this issue and alienating supporters. I, a granddaughter of victims of genocide, should feel guilty because of my blond hair and blue eyes? Not going to happen.
4
Trump's unique appeal to the ignorant and fearful lies in his willingness to stoke racial resentment with a bullhorn rather than a dog whistle like his GOP counterparts.
5
What do you call a person who doesn’t reach the height of race hate but who nurses a deep racial resentment?
What do you call a person who doesn’t openly endorse racism but nevertheless knowingly benefits from it?
What do you call a person who endorses broad racial progress in theory but in practice is strenuously opposed to disturbing the racial status quo?
What do you call throngs of people working in concert, consciously or not, to defend racial primacy?
What do you call these people, among Trump’s supporters, whom studies keep identifying as racial actors, whether they view themselves that way or not?
Charles, this sounds just like you!
4
I’m relieved to see white nationalistic stirrings on both continents in response to forces challenging white supremacy and white, liberal western culture everywhere. About time.
It’s laughable to entertain that the purported benefits of “racial diversity”, “Islamization of Western Europe” and “economic equality” will carry western society together to a higher civilizational plane. It’s equally laughable to believe that the misguided whites from the enabling Left on both sides of the Atlantic won’t jump tribal ships when the reality of selling out their tribes becomes clear to them. It is already clear in Western Europe.
Our human future is written in our history and our history in our genes. Today’s touchstones are tomorrow’s forgotten ideals. Life is competitive. On our desperately overpopulated, resource depleted and degraded Earth, the violent, tribal conflict for supremacy over what remains will be breathtaking.
5
"White supremacy" is a bankrupt ideology. Frankly what's "laughable" is the pathetic attempts to lend it any legitimacy by people who should know better.
It's not just racial animosity Charles. Resentment of women played a huge role in getting you know who elected. A woman president was actually less palatable to a lot of people than a black man. An admitted sexual predator was preferable to a woman. Shirley Chisholm once said that as a black woman the hardest to overcome was being a woman.
White male resentment has murdered at least 14 people, mainly African Americans and women this week alone in domestic terrorist attacks here and in Canada. The more women and minorities succeed the bigger the pushback. I can only hope this is the last gasp of the white male patriarchy. The rise of Me Too and Black Lives Matter give me hope that maybe I will live long enough to see everyone at the table.
8
I've no doubt that there will be a female President in my lifetime, but thankfully, not Hillary Clinton. Perhaps you should investigate qualified women, not people that believe "It's my turn".
This fear and resentment belongs not just to white males but to Republicans who had traded on this idea for political gain for decades. Trump is a crude expression of this theme. And wealthy white Republicans whose understanding of racism and white privilege is something they delude themselves that they understand voted Trump into office.
3
If America is the world leader, that assumes its people are fairly smart. And half here voted for a man grossly unqualified based upon TV antics.
Imagine how dumb this planet truly is if the US is its leader. I shudder to think.
3
Each and every Billionaire in the US is MORE QUALIFIED than Pres Obama was at the time of his election. He had ZERO experience in the actual workforce.
Well said, Mr. Blow, as you clarify the root of Trump's rise: 50 shades of resentment. Racial, ethnic and sexual resentment enable divide and conquer politics to undermine the best interests of the vast majority. Tax cuts for the few rich folks cuts help for the resentful as well as for the resented.
2
I am going to disagree with Mr. Blow's analysis. I am not saying that the race card is not a part of those who support Trump, it is, but I do not believe that it is the primary reason that millions voted for him. That is too simplistic a reason and lets too many people off the hook for their poor performance.
I think this goes back to the recession. That recession was fueled by predatory lending practices by the investment community and by greed and stupidity by the American consumer. When the recession hit, the banks and the powerful were bailed out and the average person was left to rot.
The American voter tried to change the system with Obama, and he was sucked in by the power elite and proved unequal to the task of protecting the average person. By the time the 2016 election came around there were still millions of people who were looking a real poverty in their old age while those in Washington were saying that things were looking up.
The Democrats nominated Obama part deux with a side of greed thrown in - Hillary. On the Republican side Trump out foxed all of his rivals. He may not be the smartest person in the room but he knows how to push all the buttons to get the crowd roaring.
Faced with a choice of more of the same which had already bankrupted millions, or someone who promised to wreck the system and remake it in their favor, the voters went with an outsider - Trump.
Mr. Blow is right that those folks who are extreme will support Trump no matter what.
4
Enough white males thought making America great meant bringing back semi skilled jobs with decent benefits allowing for a middle class lifestyle. Trump's victory would not have been possible without the support of former Obama voters.Clinton was seen as the establishment Wall Street backed candidate.
3
I honestly think we all get along much better than we are told we do. Daily, by the media and other sources, we are being divided by racial politics.
I think the race wedge issue is a great distraction from the economic disparities that are occurring.
It is a wedge issue thrown to use like a bone and like mad dogs we will growl and fight over it.
In the meantime the plutocrats continue hoarding their gold.
And like feudal lords, they enjoy seeing the peons screaming at each other rather than at them. Claiming racism is a diversionary tactic. Not to say it does not exist, it's just exploited, too often.
3
With no doubt whatsoever, the good ole white USA is headed to the trash heap of history ; it all started when the first boat of African slaves arrived on the Eastern shore. Nothing has stopped this inevitable downward slide. Not "all men are created equal," not the Civil War and emancipation, not the pushback of Jim Crow Law, not the Civil right's movement, not the pushback on lynchings, not the public outcry of the recognition of Police profiling and subsequent brutality, not even electing a black president. White Supremacy is fueled, just as Mr. Blow eloquently states, by the obvious White power structure's unfounded but so real anxiety that they will be replaced by an entity they think is inferior. Brown, red, black, yellow- it's all about the inherent feelings of inferiority by the very White people in power projecting their own poor self -image onto the rest of the populace. A very large mirror might help solve this blindness.
2
The post-modernist twinged Marxism is STRONG with this one.
Racism has long been the only logical, sensible and remotely reasonable explanation for the election of DT - for even a close election, for a victory even with any election issues.
Nothing else has ever made sense or been believable. It's good to now have evidence and studies and proof - but no other explanation was ever credible.
1
As a matter of history the Trump election will make more sense - it was a reaction to the election of the first African-American President.
Barack Obama stunned the world and horrified certain Americans with his historic election in 2008. Reactionaries never seriously considered the possibility that Obama would actually win, and after their initial shock, spent the next several years inflaming their base against the forces of diversity, modernity, and intellect. This produced the rise of the older, angry whites of the Tea Party variety. Although they took Congress, they failed to remove Obama with a standard Republican in 2012 - this led them over the edge. By 2016 they were so frustrated by the obvious quality of Obama and the dramatically improved economy, they were ready to nominate and support the most politically incorrect, angry, old man they could find.
In sum, a significant motivator of a large number of Trump voters was and is to stick it to Barack Obama and those who support him. What is still confounding is how many Obama supporters did not realize his legacy and all he worked for was on the ballot in 2016.
4
You are correct, Pres Obama did stun the world, just not in the way you think. Pres Obama stunned the world by convincing a portion of our part time voters and non voters to participate in his election.
The evidence for this is how thin his support was. The only Pres in the modern era to get less votes the second time he ran (while also winning re-election).
Pres Obama won in 2008 at a time of financial crisis and prolonged war without an apparent victory, yet he only managed to win 53% of the popular vote. This is a very small number considering the times we were in. His re-election in 2012 matched Bush 43's re-election tally with only 51% of the vote (he actually grew his total). Further evidence of this is how soon his support nose dived, and how he was routed in the mid terms of 2010, a historic landslide loss for Congressional Democrats.
Pres Obama's base of support started to erode, rather than grow, on election day 2008. Getting the uninterested to participate turned out to be Pres Obama's greatest accomplishment.
1
Perhaps those of us that voted for President Obama realized that a President Hillary would be a terrible mistake.
There is no need to sugar the pill, Trump is a 'white supremacist' for sure, and likely a 'racist', anxious to segregate colored folks so 'his class' may go on dominating the picture and exploiting the minorities, as 'nostalgia for better times' is key to understand the belittling of blacks in a not too distant past, deemed inferior and destined to serve their white counterparts. Trump's behavior is despicable in that regard. This hateful prejudice must be fought against now and in the foreseeable future, by educating ourselves and recognize our subconscious biases for what they are, pernicious.
The difference between me and you Mr. Blow, is that I refuse to characterize people based on the color their skin. You see Charles, I am not a racist, and that too has nothing to do with the color of my skin. Whether I was born white, Asian, African-American, or Hispanic, I would still be capable of being a racist. I would still be capable of making broad generalizations about people based on superficial physical characteristics. I would still be capable xenophobia and otherizing people. The point is I choose not to do any of those things. In fact, I utterly reject the usefulness of your racial categories. Dressing up racism or any prejudice in statistics does not excuse it. If I were to make general statements about African-American propensity toward crime, I would be wrong, despite the statistics, because I would be making gross generalizations about individuals who happen to have certain superficial physical characteristics. I know you think you are doing good, dressing up your racism, in words like "diversity" and "overcoming oppression." But the bottom line is you are willing to keep Asians out of colleges where they would have earned entrance, but for their race and ethnicity in the name of "inclusion," which euphemism for discrimination.
6
Mr. Blow,
This is not illuminating. You have dug much deeper and exposed much greater. As a now middle aged white woman I’ve know Trump as a fraud and a racist since I was old enough to read the New York Daily News as a kid in 1970s Jersey. There is no white rebellion. This hatred has been simmering on a low boil. Trump didn’t invent it but Trump does know how to exploit it. Trump scratched the underbelly of America and found all the racists yearning to be free, not unlike a Trojan Horse. His goal is to undo all the good President Obama did. He may succeed in the present but history will favor Obama.
Race wasn’t on the radar for me until I was 12 or 13 years old. A cute boy lived around the corner from me, my first crush. He had a really great dog too! He was showing me his family’s new boat. We were in the cabin and he was pointing out all the cool stuff. Then everything changed. We heard his mother frantically ask his father - I’m crying even now - where is _ and that little _ girl? His father tried to calm her, tell her not to worry, but even as a kid I could hear the fear in her voice. He and I froze, staring at each other. That moment is etched - frozen in time for me. You see, he was a young black teenage boy and I was a little white girl. That was my introduction to skin color in America. I’ve seen him now and again but we’ve never talked about that day. I wonder if he remembers it like I do?
2
The fear in his mother’s voice still resonates inside me as it did then. In that moment I didn’t understand why she was afraid though I felt it to my core. There are events in our life that inform us, that we can easily see a “before” and an “after,” this was a defining moment for me. I began reading everything I could get my hands on about race relations and the history of slavery in America. I started listening to people’s stories. It is a journey that continues.
There is another New York Times article “A Lynching Memorial Is Opening...” Read it. Then read all the associated articles. Then ask yourself how many young black boys died, were lynched, because they dared speak or look at a little white girl? Then visit and pay your respects as my husband and I will.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/lynching-memorial-alabama.html?com...
1
When over 50% of white college educated women vote for Trump, it's not just "white male anger and anxiety,"
it's white racism.
It really is as simple as that.
It really is as awful as that.
Of course not all whites are racists. But the percentage who are, is appalling, horrifying and horrible, for our country, and through its policies, for the world.
4
Was is racism when 90% of blacks (whether male or female) voted for President Obama? Or do blacks get a pass on this?
1
The sad fact is that white conscious and unconscious racists don’t fear their loss of privilege as much as they see dark skinned people as inferior and as such an existential threat to the long term health of the country they falsely presume was built on white norms and culture. To them, all dark skinned advances represent illegitimate progress not based on merit, but apologist liberal policies designed to make it easier for dark skinned people to succeed at the expense of whites. The birther argument was the latest public face of this racial rationalization. Instead of celebrating the classic American success story Obama represented, they saw it as a sign of dangerous decline. There is no latent sense of privelage. It runs deeper and stronger as a sense of hard earned success threatened by those who have yet to earn it. Trump welds this success narrative with a savior image that is lethal.
3
Another column by Hillary supporter Blow that purports to explain the reasons Trump was elected without once mentioning the main reason, his opponent was Hillary Clinton.
2
“economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment. Racial resentment is driving economic anxiety.” It was about racism, primarily. And the perceived erosion of top-of-the-food-chain dominance of white Christian male in America.
2
Many Trump voters are racists, no doubt, but Trump is more opportunist and con man than racist. Wouldn't surprise me if Trump actually got suggestions from Putin and Bannon about how to use racial divisions in the US to win the election. Trump isn't smart enough to have figured that strategy out himself, Even he was stunned that it worked so well. Trump didn't think there were enough racists in the US to make him president.
2
The study Charles Blow refers to is faulty because it is based upon perceptions of the unemployment rate. Working families know what their economic condition is and whether it is getting better or worse and that has little to do with the so-called unemployment rate. Just to bring some reality, the labor participation rate for males ages 25-54 indicates that over 10% of those most likely to work are not. A far better indicator is total wages as a percentage of GDP. If this had been used, the study would have shown that economic conditions do exacerbate racial tensions and bigotry.
I am a believer in the tribal instincts that have been instilled within us over the past 300,000 years. In good times, our perceived tribe grows in size and we are supportive of the weakest among us. In bad times, the perceived size of the tribe shrinks and we consider "others" our mortal enemy.
The single most important thing we can do to calm racial tensions is to ensure that working families earn a bigger slice of the economic pie, just the opposite of the Trump Tax Cut which takes $2 trillion including interest from working families and gives most of it to corporations and the wealthy.
3
Tax "cuts" (rate reductions) don't "take" anything from anyone. The Federal Govt is not entitled to anyones income.
White supremacy has many forms. Like DNA, its favorite is a double strand of spiraling beliefs--a degenerate form of DuBois' famous “double consciousness” of “two warring souls.” “searching for a truer self.” That division in the black psyche is informed by a culture of oppression, a culture of systemic barriers often invisible and loudly denied even as they are revealed—every dead black kid shot by police is a victim of this denial, an imagined threat that occurs in the minds of those who have the power of deadly force (name the last black kid shot who had a gun), Even the limited, unjustified use of that power affects the whole and changes hope.
White supremacy has structures in place to protect its privilege and power, from voting restrictions, to judges sentencing, to inferior education, to isolation and the absence of community development, but white supremacy also implements a racism that depends on single decisions hard to reverse. The denial and poisoning of Flint's water was one such structure; Dylan Roof's single act of mass shooting of a black church affected a historic city and a state.
The new forms mirror the old, from the plantations. Then a society protected by Black Codes, special laws systemically denying rights and putting in place restrictions (blacks couldn't testify or move freely), also installed single acts of intimidation and cruelty (brutal beatings, rape, even branding). These later intersected in sundown towns (out before sundown!) and lynching.
4
Part Two.
White supremacy continues to have structures in place to protect its privilege and power, some created by legislation (voting restrictions), by criminalization (arrests, judges sentencing), by inferior education, by the absence of community development (food desserts, transportation). But white supremacy also implements a racism that depends on single decisions hard to reverse. The denial and poisoning of Flint's water was one such structure. Dylan Roof's single act of mass killing in a black church's bible study affected a historic city and a state.
Now white supremacy is broadening its reach. Our era is witnessing a change in narrative, The new forms no longer use stereotypes (they still exist), or bias (it remains), or hatred (thank more popular than before!)--the new narrative is built on denial. Racism is a reversed. It exists only in the minds of victims—also in the minds of women and children who want to dethrone white men--who are now victims themselves. White supremacy is protected by free speech, by good citizens, by wrong on both sides, by employment that ignores the wage and wealth gap, by higher rents on the poor to pay for tax cuts to the rich.
Its special privilege is denied, but blacks and others should be “thankful” (especially sports pros and actresses) for their success (not earned but given). Its denial is seen in an all-white White House whose cathexis has become a beckon for a racist reclamation.
2
The above is an excellent analysis if one is a marxist also schooled in Post Modernism.
For those asking "what about Obama—doesn't his election prove that whites aren't racially resentful?" a few facts are salient. Obama lost the white vote in both his elections by wide margins, getting just 43% of it in 2008 and only 39% in 2008. Democrats usually lose the white vote significantly. Obama's 43% in 2008 was, it's true, a slightly better showing than Kerry's 41% or Gore's 42%, but a one or two point uptick for an inspiring candidate running in the wake of a very unpopular opposing-party president hardly demonstrates a great surge of white support for Democrats. Four years later, white flight from Obama resulted in a 4 point drop in his support. White flight from Democrats continued to 2016, when Clinton got only 37% of the white vote.
The most interesting studies I've read, though, are those that were limited to just GOP primary voters. These studies show that the one characteristic that consistently distinguished Trump voters from voters of other Republicans in the primary was racial resentment. Among GOP voters, high degrees of racial resentment correlated strongly with support for Trump. This shouldn't surprise anyone who observed the primary campaign, where Trump's popularity surged after his comments about Mexicans and again after his attacks on Muslims. Race-based dog whistles work for Trump and he uses them often. It's helped secure the fervent support of 80% of GOP voters.
Race has always been a winning issue for the GOP—but today more than ever.
10
Your first paragraph doesn’t support your conclusions. The second just reaffirms that Hillary’s rainbow identity politics strategy while neglecting offshoring jobs and illegal immigration was a dismal failure.
2
Over decades you see gradual improvements in accepted norms within our society. The frustrating thing about it though is that the improvements wax and wane depending on who is in political power at the time. I can think of numerous examples here in Australia where this is and has always been the case.
And in the US I think I am now witnessing one of the worst setbacks in western society that I have ever experienced in my lifetime. So many summarily executed changes for no obvious good reasons. Just really arising from the uneducated whims of Donald Trump.
I wish I was in my 20's or 30's so that there could be plenty of potential time for me to see permanent recovery from these terrible times. However I am in my late 60's and sadly I think unlikely to have prolonged enjoyment of those better societal times ahead that we all hope for post Trump.This is because I think it will take a generation to truly recover from all of this.
13
I'm not the first to point this out: Trump claims that his appeal is economic, but actually it is tribal. Instead of "Make America Great Again", his slogan should be "We Were Here First".
5
Here first? I never imagined he was a Lakota Sioux tribesman!
2
What country did the Lakota Sioux tribesman live in?
Did they have 2 story buildings?
Did they have a written language?
No? Then it wasnt a country...
Thanks, Charles. As you indicate, the real issue is waning support for accepted hierarchies. It’s the sunset effect of racism and traditional patriarchy. We have reason to rejoice.
8
Charles Blow, thank you for your courage in pointing out uncomfortable truths -- in an articulate, insightful and thoughtful way. Thank you.
12
Hate to be a stats nerd, but the commentariat & CB should understand statistics don't indicate whether a difference in a sample is meaningful. Stats only tell if a difference found in a sample (like men vs women) is likely to be true for the population. Not if the diff is important.
Say you sample 10k men & women and ask -- rate the colors, red and blue on a 7 pt scale? Men rate blue 4.01 and women 3.97. Men rate red 4 and women 4.1. Lo and behold these differences -- given a large sample size -- are in fact probably representative of how the population of males and females rate these 2 colors. Statistically significant - but meaningless. You can then (given a large enough sample) find men and women differ on a number of other issues that can be theorized to be related to, or even causal (if you are a colorist) to predict how gender influences color preferences. Or how other factors related to gender influence color preferences.
But stats only tell the probability of whether a sample represents the entire population.
Not whether the difference is important. And unless you have a controlled experiment using a random sample, you can't say anything about causality. And then you must replicate. Given a large sample, you can find differences between 2 populations that are significant. Because the question stats answer is whether the result found in a sample is likely true for the population.
Not whether the difference is meaningful. End of story.
3
And your point is?
Where have you been living Charles?
Didn't you ever listen to Rush or Ann Coulter for past 10-15 years? I remember hearing Rush in 2006 lamenting about President Bush daring to suggest giving amnesty to illegals.Ann Coulter went ballistic and called for impeachment for Iraq war lies. Bust got the message loud and clear. He never uttered the word amnesty again.
It will always be about skin color.
Malcolm X said it eloquently sixty years ago"I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don't believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn't want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn't know how to return the treatment."
6
If trump is the Great White Hope, then frankly all hope is lost.
17
It seems Mr Blow sees everything--and I mean EVERYTHING--through the spectrum of race.
That is too bad. He is missing a lot.
20
When the president of the USA is a known racist put in power through a party that has used the "Southern Strategy" since decades (Reagan's "Welllfare Queens in Cadillacs" anyone?), and endorsed by the KKK and (neo)Nazis and Fascists nationally and internationally, it is absolutely correct to see EVERYTHING through the lenses of race. It's you who doesn't see and hear the Big White Republican Elephant Trumping in the room...
Pure unfiltered hate. It is sad what a proud, important, impactful movement has become. We all seek a society that is invested in enabling the fulfillment of all its citizens. This racist screed has no place in that vision.
5
I worked under any number of black supervisors
for many years.I found some of them kind and
tolerant and others,quite frankly, acting as if
they wanted to settle scores with their white
underlings.I suspect my experience is not
unique and that both races produce pretty
much as many decent people as tyrants.
I was resentful at times of those African Americans who had been put over me,but
that is a struggle that each white man must
work out for himself.I did not vote for DJT,
but for Mrs.Clinton who ran a bad campaign, in spite of my paltry vote, and did not lose because
of white males,many of whom supported
Bernie Sanders and resented how the primaries
were rigged against him.
16
Personally, I think you may be going a bit far in your interpretation. Of course, he wasn't wishing he were a black man--it's Trump. I get it, and you're almost certainly right there.
He was, I believe, trying to point out that there was a real need for minority applicants in NYC at that time because there were requirements for hiring minorities. So, in that sense, perhaps there was an advantage for "educated" blacks. At least--in that narrow arena. And he probably did not like it.
And Trump is a boor. Anyone not enamored by him gets that, but aren't you going far by accusing entire populations of now being like how Trump was back then. It's quite an accusation say so many people do not endorse practices that benefit them yet knowingly benefit from them. Except, you can probably say that about anyone with such an opportunity, actually.
But how are individual whites supposed to understand that in their own narrow arena, they are given little privilege about speaking openly of their disadvantages, or even the fact that they are lumped in with the non-white anger overall historical privilege of whites, despite their personal situation?
If you started the column stating all the privileges you've had that led you to have such a large megaphone, maybe it would come across less a one-sided race argument, and more universal, and you may open some minds.
I don't think the world is as black and white as you wish to make it.
6
Mr. Blow—I’m only on this earth for a limited time, with, insofar as I am aware, only this one time around.
That being the case, I REFUSE to allow you to attempt to force me to live in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of my life as a consequence/apology of/for my accidental birth into a white skin.
Because that’s what it’s really all about, isn’t it? Turning the accident of my birth—my “whiteness”—into the new Original Sin—for which I must “atone” for the rest of my life.
Sorry, but I’m not buying it. As I said, I have just one life to live, and I’m not going to spend it trying to “fix” yours.
You might take a look at John McWhorter’s article, “Black People Should Stop Expecting White America to ‘Wake Up’ to Racism:”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/black-people-should-stop-expecting-white-a...
I’m not “ rebelling; like the Democrats, I’m just “resisting.”
Get used to it.
21
WOW!
Amen brother
3
No one thinks it's a sin to be white. No one is asking you to atone for anything. All we want is your support in fighting racism. You have nothing to atone for as long as you are committed to reducing the evil of racism.
Of course, if you are promoting racism or denying it exists, well then maybe you do have something to atone for. But that's not because you were born white. It's because you are actively or passively abetting the evil of racism. But I'm sure you're committed to the fight against racism, right? Nothing to worry about if you are.
1
I cant support you in your attempt to "fight racism". We don't agree on the definition, and you don't argue from principles.
If you want to fight poverty, wemay be able to join forces. If you are willing to operate from principles...
I really wish someone would help explain these results from the Washington Post exit polls.
Clinton lost support from every Race/Ethnicity vs Obama, why is this still being painted all these months later as a whitelash?
I will be the first to admit I am not a genius, but it looks to me like every race shares the blame for Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/exit-polls/
7
One thing for sure is that voters weren't upfront about voting for Trump on those exit polls you referenced. Exit polls are no longer to be relied.
10
I had not read the article completely. Yes. There had been a lot of arrogance "in general" in the white population for a long time. And I have been a victim.
I want to relate what happened to me in this country--I am (an Spaniard from Europe). I know in scholar circles I am a White person--in the US popularly, I do not know and, frankly, it does not concern me. What I am "nobody" can change.
When I was hired -the 2nd employment. I took up a job that had a backlog of 3 months. As a new employee, I had the desk current in about 3 weeks--by the way almost error free.
My supervisor (an Armenian) said I do not how the other person could not do it (the previous employee as an Anglo-Saxon female.
Despite doing more work than the other employees--I got an average in my performance report.
The grapevine told me that the reason was "it made them look bad if I was doing a better job than the former employee." "that it could be interpreted as they did not know how to manage."
Also in this job--about 8 years later (I was studying for a BS and did not want to move because I could do the job practically "sleep" which I was most of the time due to y 16 hour active day and usually around 5 hours sleep). Anyway, I did submit a recommendation for improving a portion of the job, going over the chain of command--because the 2 white people ahead of me I would have never thought they would approve---who was I to their eyes.
1
Truth.
3
You guys just make up whatever you want. I mean, this is utter nonsense and you just spout it without a shred of embarrassment or shame.....
13
Given the thrust of your comment I can only assume that when you say "you guys" you are referring to the President and his reality averse base.
Or, as I posted elsehere a couple days ago:
"The wealthy, powerful, entitled white men of America are telling us:
We rid the White House of the pesky black Muslim Kenyan who set a standard for moral rectitude.
We can pollute the air and waterways if we want.
We can bring corruption to the WH….and call it “draining the swamp.”
We can engage in crooked business practices if we want.
We can defile women and debauch your children if we want.
We’ll use our money to get what we want.
The Constitution was written to give us complete power (only white male property owners could vote) and we’re going back to those days.
We will not protect you from gun nuts.
We’ll use U.S. economic and military power to achieve imperialistic ends beneficial to us, and the masses are canon fodder.
We now have all power, we’ll do anything necessary to hold that power, and there is nothing you can do about these things."
11
Unless Charles has a plan for re-educating these racist whites, the Democratic party needs to focus on the fact that many Democrats who voted for Obama switched to Trump.
I doubt these are card-carrying KKK types, since they voted for a black man in 2012 or 2008. Why did they decide to try another flavor?
And how about all the people of color who stayed home?
Are the Dems trying to answer these questions? Are they working to protect voting rights of minorities and students?
No, they're busy suing the Russians and Wikileaks.
16
Why aren’t you asking if Republicans are working to protect voting rights of minorities and students? Why aren’t Republicans suing Russians and Wikileaks for interfering in USA elections? That’s what you should be asking!
1
So explain why all these white 'racist' voted for a black guy with a Muslim sounding name. Twice. Or do we have Trump because a one of the lowest voter turnouts caused by an unbelievably smug candidate who wrote off her base and geared her campaign toward suburban Republicans? But go ahead and blame it racism. But just remember, the black guy in office for eight years and the black guy running the DOJ did nothing-nothing- to reform the criminal justice system that has been so destructive to the black community.
20
There is a continuum. The least racially motivated, somewhat fearful white folks, we can put on the left side of this continuum. The most vile, hateful, racists go all the way to the right. There are many spots on this line if you will. We don't have names for all of the specialized places this continuum covers. Does the left side start at slightly prejudiced and as we move to the right we get to slightly bigoted? Where to next as we move to the right? Racist?. KKK member? Nazi? It's very complicated, but one thing rings true...Fear. Fear of losing or falling behind "those people". The blacks. The Jews, The immigrants, The gay or lesbian person. Women. There are plenty of scapegoats to go around, but fear drives everything whether or not it makes any sense at all.
4
Trump's great secret is to ape a simpleminded White male attitude towards everything. If simpleminded White males thought transgender issues were the cat's meow, so would Trump. Who Trump really is has been lost to the sands of time. All that remains is a famished rat running through a maze for its next tasty reward.
11
Wow. Never thought of it this way -- I think you nailed it.
2
As a self loving white male, I can confidently say that Donald Trump disgraces all white people. Every day he spends in office, whether golfing, destroying the environment or supporting his "fine people" who march with neo nazis, he diminishes all of us in the eyes of the world. His love of confederate statues shames us. He is a stain on our being, our soul and the soul of America. We will all be elevated when he is gone from public life.
24
Absolutely.
Except, I suggest, Laurie Anderson:
"From the land of sky blue waters
Led by Freedom's sons...
And daughters."
I had a friend who moved to Arizona. He was on permanent disability and, after a life drinking and delving and dealing in illegal drugs, was on a waiting list for a kidney transplant. He was on welfare. He had weekly dialysis treatments paid by the US taxpayer.
He felt no qualms about telling me that he was voting for Trump because he was, "Sick of seeing Mexican criminals crossing the border to steal his job".
Such is white privilege.
29
So, voting for a white woman over any white man, even a bufoon, would have pushed too many people over the edge? Instead of "The White Rebellion", the title of this op-ed piece should be "The White Male Rebellion". Come on media, let's call it what it is. Don't sugar coat it.
10
Unfortunately, the majority of white women voted for Trump too. Not as many as white men, but still the majority. If it was up to these women, we'd still not have the right to vote, need a husband's signature on our bank accounts, be required to stop doing paid work upon marriage, be slut-shamed after being raped, have to endure spousal abuse without complaint, and be denied access to higher education except "feminine" fields like Home Economy, Nursing and Childhood Education.
I think Trump (and Charles Blow) are talking about affirmative action. I don't know why the term isn't mentioned in the article. Yes, less qualified blacks get an advantage in college admissions and certain job placements due solely to their skin color. And yes, blacks are very likely to be less qualified solely because of their skin color (and culture to some extent.) I don't what the big secret is?
Is their white resentment about the above phenomenon? Yes, of course there is. There are exactly just as many losers as winners in the affirmative action game- all the winners are black and all the losers are white and Asian.
Is it fair? Probably is fair to some extent, but after a few generations, blacks are going to have to step up and compete on a level playing field.
11
At some point, people are going to have to accept there are millions of us educated blacks who did not benefit from affirmative action at school or in our careers. We simply work hard and excel without fanfare. There are also millions of us blacks who do not fit the lackluster stereotypes about marriage, childbearing, and laziness. Kudos to those who keep offering them, decade, after decade, after decade.
All us blacks demand is quality public education, fairness within the criminal justice system, and access to safe, valuable housing. We blacks comprehend many people think we are inferior, and do not want to live near us, or have us as part of their families. This is meaningless to us however, as we no longer value the acceptance of such individuals.
Our country is strengthened when we are all looking out for one another. Let go of the racial animosity, it serves no honorable purpose.
2
One of the very best elucidations of the Trump phenomena I've read. My compliments to Mr. Blow.
5
When you view everything through a racial lens, then everything will be “suffused with race”. The real tragedy: you clearly believe it.
Consider the innocent casualties of racialist group-think:
Recently, schools in NYC made headlines because the administration wants to reserve 1/4 of all seats in high-performing schools for kids who score below average; this in the name of “diversity” (the implicit -- insulting -- assumption being that those children will be minorities, an assumption which, presumably, would be brought to fruition by ensuring that the spots so reserved would not be taken by under-performing “whites”.) This because, like the author, school bureaucrats are “suffused with race.”
Racism isn’t much of a thing any more, but folks like Blow need it to be, as it is essentially to their poor-me, I’m-such-a-victim world view.
If you're annoyed that your kid is denied an earned place in that school, in the interests of “diversity”, is that “racial resentment”? When someone else is handed a benefit expressly because of his skin color, is that not racism?
No, neither you nor “studies” get to define “racial actors”; it’s utter bunk. There is precisely one powerful group of “racial actors”, and the beneficiaries are NEVER “white”.
But if your only tool is a racial hammer, everything looks like a racial nail. When you're obsessed with race, you assume everyone else is, too.
News flash, CB: they're not. But keep it up, and they will be...
15
My guess is that black people don’t want affirmative action in education—they just want quality public education for their kids and for some reason, we whites are just not going to give them that. We have all sorts of excuses why we force black kids to go to terrible schools, and affirmative action programs are just a gesture to the black population reflecting our guilt or whatever about continuing to foist bad schools on the black population in general.
38
You could have just said “HAIL TRUMP” and spared yourself a lot of extra keystrokes.
5
Newark, NJ, spends more per child in its public education than almost anywhere else. The last time I saw a number it was well over $20k per student. The schools are absolutely terrible. The problem is not money- it's some kind of social breakdown.
Just like poor (white) districts in England, the majority does not think 'book learning' is worthwhile, and woe betide any fellow student who disagrees, and tries to get some. Here he's 'acting white', there he's trying to betray his class or get above himself.
Thomas Sowell identified this as an attitude Souther black slaves absorbed from the white indentured labourers they replaced. He may well be right.
It doesn't help that the fathers of the kids are often not around, and so positive male role models are in short supply.
First generation black immigrants do well in the US- they bring with them a different set of social attitudes and want to get on. One of my bosses came from Jamaica. Education had been his ticket out. He had a PhD in a STEM subject from a very good US university. He earned his position and promotions.
It will take time, but the only way for black kids to escape is the opportunity to escape their peer group, as it was for working class children in the UK. Whether it takes selective schools, such as magnet schools, or perhaps some kinds of charter schools, I can't tell, but the numbers of parents choosing to escape the public school systems is telling us all something.
As usual Mr Blow, you see everything in black and white.
Yes, some supporters of Trump are out and out white racists (and also bigots, anti semites, women haters etc.). He intentionally made it safe for them to come out of the woodwork.
I estimate though they are only about 7-10% of his vote.
Just like 7-10% of Obama's vote were black racists. He unintentionally and innocently made it safe for them too to come out of the woodwork.
Roughly 35% of Trump votes were die hard republicans who would vote for Donald Duck if he ran (ditto for democrats).
Trump successfully demagogued the small group of independents and democrats in the rust belt type states who saw their blue collar jobs go to slave labor countries.
Coupled with an identity obsessed, establishment liberal like Hillary who never met a war, wall street banker, trade agreement she did not like candidate, it was enough to put the ego maniac demagogue Trump over the electoral college top.
Learn from History and Pres. Obama Mr Blow. Pres. Obama ran as an American and not a black and served two terms. Hillary ran as a women and not as an American and was relegated to the dust heap of history...
11
Everybody voting for Trump knowing Trump propagated the Birther Lie is a racist, which pretty much sums up all of Trump voters. One cannot be a little racist, just like one cannot be a little pregnant.
1
Do you find it surprising that Hillary Clinton is the original purveyor of the "birther" lie? Look it up. On the upside, she and Bill dropped it, which makes me confident that there wasn't anything to it, otherwise she would have pushed that theory as part of the 2008 campaign.
President Obama was educated at Punahou in Hawaii, Columbia and Harvard Law - institutions that don't get any more privileged or 'white.' In fact, and I recall this accurately, the one issue many African-American pundits had with Obama: he wasn't 'black' enough. You just can't win at this stuff - much less believe it keeps getting ink. Forget 'if it bleeds it leads.' Now, if it divides it rides.
12
The same people voted for Obama. Twice.
8
Trump as Great White Hope is every bit as pathetic as the original Great White Hopes who also were supposed to reestablish dominance for the white race. Let's hope the next Jack Johnson or Joe Louis in the political arena delivers a knockout blow soon.
I have to laugh. All our country’s problems will be solved when all the racist old white men (and women I suppose) finally die off.
Okay, then what? Wait, I know! Problems still persist? Blame your predecessor! That will work for a year or two.
Then what?
6
Can it really be called a "rebellion" when 68% of the nation's voters are white...despite the left's endless prognostications and conclusions about the inevitability of "demographics"?
Maybe it's simply all about the will of the voters.
Try to leave the bubble at least occasionally, Charles.
6
There must be something wrong with me. White dominance just never EVER crosses my mind. I don't give a rip what color a person's skin is. I care what they are.
3
Today in the USA the bad man is black, or followers of Islam. Yesterday it was "Communists", Irish Catholics, Italians and Jews. Before that it was Mormons and Slaves. Before that the British government and King George.
The Fascist elements in politics will always find someone to blame the problems of the masses on, it diverts the blame from the Wealthy Elites that are making them "Wage Slaves" and controlling their economic lives.
What will it take to wake people up? In France and Russia it took bloody Revolution, will we go there, or will we find another Roosevelt or Martin Luther King... The suspense is already killing hundreds, and destroying our youth.
3
95% of Blacks voters voted for Obama. Can you imagine if Latinos worked to be voters? That is one reason Trump does not want Latinos in the country. They'd vote him out
Blacks: "We were slaves. You owe us." Whites: "That was a long time ago. It's time for you to step up." Blacks have to ask themselves "can we thrive in America?" And whites need to admit that racism will persist as long as they choose.
1
You're ok when you stopped bashing Bernie Sanders and begin concentrating on the real evil in America.
Well said, to a "T" a brilliant piece. Way to go Charles.
3
Excellently written Mr. Blow:
“Trump is white anguish encapsulated”.
He is the symptom of a disease. The disease is caused by ignorant born fear. It is spread via the propagandist media with fear.
If we want to rid ourselves of the symptom we must cure ourselves of the disease.
We all get to choose:
Do we feed our fears or do we feed our hope!?
5
This is what some people tell themselves to explain that nothing is really their fault, they are accountable for nothing, it’s because some people are racist. Keep telling yourselves that, and we will have a two term Trump presidency.
3
Thousands of pages, nee gigabytes, have been written on the racial metaphors in Melville’s classic American novel. Is it too early to label the DNC “Ahab democrats “ for their pursuit of the great white males who deserted the party for Trump ? Blow points out that study after study shows they will vote in direct opposition to their own economic welfare because of race. Yet Senator Manchin asks Trump to nationalize the coal industry to protect it from closure and is praised for “ fitting his district” ignoring any millennial voters who worry more about the environment than race. Meanwhile the DNC refuses to come about and aggressively pursue the many registered minority voters who stay home as many did in the 8th CD of AZ. The DNC spent almost no money and sent no big names to energize these voters. Call me…. Frustrated.
If you are a white person, why worry about your diminishing status at all? You can’t do anything about it so you might as well embrace it. It’s so much easier. And it feels good, too.
Signed,
White female baby boomer.
2
It's only because you believe that you are a white person that you do not recognize your proverbial blind spot. 'White' is the presence of all color. 'Black' is the absence of all color.
Neither of the two are actually colors. "Blackness" is a causal effect of societal racism spanning hundreds of years.
The Birther Movement led by Donald Trump since 2011 should have been a deal breaker if we didn't still have mostly racists in the Republican Party.
It wasn't.
Case closed.
13
"What do you call a person who doesn’t openly endorse racism but nevertheless knowingly benefits from it?"
Every white person in the United States of America.
4
Unfortunately, it is one of Mr. Blow's best! When a man is insecure of his own intellectual, physical, or economic dominance, the first response is to debase those around him in a sad attempt to appear superior.
3
Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out quite as his base might have hoped - Trump has become 'The White Man's Burden'.
3
Can we please remember that not all white people vote the same way? Please don't lump us all under the Trump umbrella.
4
There is an element of truth to Mr. Blow's article but keep in mind that the biggest vote getter in the past generation was an African-American named Barack Obama. A more likely reason for President Trump's victory is a corrupt ruling oligarchy that choreographed bail outs of the Wall Street Welfare State, idiotic wars where poor rural whites and urban blacks and Hispanics died needlessly, and an economy that transferred wealth to corporations that moved jobs overseas while CEOs made salaries 400 times higher than their workers. The snotty arrogance that oozed from Hillary Clinton's campaign -culminating in her berating middle America as a "basket of deplorables" while attending a tony Manhattan fundraiser of like-minded people - was also a contributing factor.
3
Hillary Clinton did no such thing. You deliberately misquote her.
5
You be the judge. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/sep/10/hillary-clinton-ha...
Why is it the media has been talking to Trump for over 30 years, providing publicity and a platform for his brainless blathering? When did he ever have anything useful or valuable to say? Clearly, not in 1989, and certainly not now. Yes, now we can see how he is a spokesperson for a group of fearful people. But how much of that fear has been stoked by pronouncements like “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market,” which is still not true? Maybe I should give him more credit than I have done for his ability to plan long-term - he's been building his base for decades.
5
Have we reached the point of honesty about November, 2016, yet? Are we still diluting ourselves in trying to explain that anything other than racism put this clown in the Whitehouse?
Very simply, many voters are still unconcerned that he will not improve their lot, as long as he stems “the advantages that minorities have enjoyed for decades.”
I don’t know where to look, because Mr. Trump is a daily embarrassment, but his constituency is perhaps more ignorant.
2
Why is it inherently wrong if Whites vote to support their own self interests? People are tribal by nature and will side for policies that further their causes and beliefs.
You cannot have identity politics with minorities in America and not expect it to go the other way.
5
Because the whites you refer to vote for retaining their interests over minorities’ interests, while minorities vote for equity.
5
We haven't seen such overt racism in the political arena since George Wallace ran the most successful 3rd race since Teddy Roosevelt ran on the Bull Moose ticket...and lost.
I am a middle-aged White man, well-off, married, and, obviously, a father. My younger is not Black but Brown--born in Central America, but brought home to NJ when he was less than 6 months old. Now as he's gone from being a cute kid to being a handsome teen, whose voice has dropped and stands taller than his petite mom, my wife, I worry terribly about him, that strangers and police won't see the straight A student, the boy who NEVER has trouble in school, has friends of every color, is liked by other kids, and makes us proud every day. But he's Brown and that means....racists only see the color and so...I worry.
9
One need to read Mr. Blow's piece at the same sitting as the NYTimes article on the opening of National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the fulfillment of the effort of Bryan Stevenson.
The horror of mass lynching of blacks that the museum depicts stands as a validation of what Mr. Blow is saying. Can you, white Trump supported, imagine a mass lynching of innocent white folks? Until we teach who we are and where we come from we will continue to have ignorant denial of our latent racism and be victim demogogues like Trump.
3
It was very revealing to see on social media how many white people were offended when Starbucks indicated that it was taking the recent racial bias matter seriously.
1
I'm one of those educated brown people you claim to speak for. Registered as a Democrat as till as recently as a few months back, I doubt that I will be voting for a Democrat in November precisely because of this kind of navel-gazing identity driven nonsense that people like Blow have been spouting. Whether you like it or not, the Trump Republicans have a rather clean and elegant economic argument that is both race neutral and egalitarian. If your response to that is they are racists/misogynists/xenophobes, then sooner or later, it won't just be white people who stop listening, it will be people like me as well.
3
Sorry to break it to you, but that "clean and elegant" economic argument is bunk.
1
Loss of advantage, privilege and "dominance," is at the core of white angst regarding race. But it doesn't stop there. Skin color advantage is just one column of the great Dominator Hierarchy. It is not just African Americans that conservatives wish to keep down... it's basically everyone else on Earth... plus all of nature! There is the dominance of gender, of wealth, of religion, of language, of sexual orientation, of attractiveness, ability and age, and perhaps worst of all from a standpoint of a viably livable planet, dominance of man over nature. All depend upon locality and circumstance, but each of these columns of the Dominator Hierarchy can be crushing in their own right, each fiercely defended, i.e. "conserved," by conservatives who perceive such advantage and privilege their birthright. Selfishness, prejudice and fear are its fuel; subjugation, domination, oppression the output of these multiple planks of the Dominator Hierarchy. Conservatives cynically define opposition as "political correctness" and seek to denigrate and destroy it. During the 2016 Republican primary, every candidate agreed that "political correctness" is the No. 1 problem in America. Trump's "genius" (calculated or stumbled upon) was convincing the defenders of the Dominator Hierarchy into accepting him as their champion. His loud, lewd, crude, bullying vileness in support of their hierarchy became a strength to his devotees, not the weakness anyone with a modicum of moral bearing perceived.
2
My 90 year old mother when told that Mr. Trump discriminated against black tenants, her reply was “they all did”.
And as she says to us, just because everyone does something, doesn’t make it right!
4
There's plenty of racial resentment among Trump supporters,
but there is also a good deal of anti-women ideology as well.
While the Trump base plays a kind of inverted PC game about their racism- and sexism - it is clear what they really think. If you ever read Breitbart, etc., you'll see how readers lash out at Michelle Obama, but they embrace Melania Trump. How many times have I read about Melania; "Finally, we have a First Lady with class!" No one mentions how much more educated Michelle Obama is, or how Melania cribbed her speech at the Republican convention from none other than -Michelle Obama. All that seems to matter is that we have a white First Lady who was a model. I have nothing against Melania except her choice of husband, but it's noteworthy that Trumpsters compare the two First Ladies based on the color of their skin and their fashion sense.
Everyone sits around wondering how Evangelicals could support Trump with his debauched sexual history, but maybe it makes more sense if we consider that they almost always believe that women should stay in their traditional role. Maybe they're not interested in Trump's infidelity ( a nice, prim word for his whoring ways) because it does''t bother them nearly as much as the "Feminazis" do( as Steve Bannon likes to call independent women) If you're most interested in tax cuts and keeping the country white dominant, you can compartmentalize anything about Trump.
Even Trump U. and money laundering.
7
Same Trumpster element spent eight yrs. hating on white first lady Clinton.
1
I was brought up short by the same study Mr. Blow cites, but it seems to explain a lot.
One thing it explains -- and I hate to say it -- but the land of the free and the home of the brave and the spirit that led America to greatness remains intact in many shapes, sizes and colors, but there's a ton of white male sissies out there and Donald Trump is one of them. They are, apparently, lacking in work ethic, native intelligence, common sense and belief in hard work and persistence.
I am a white male, now 60, and I welcome competition from all corners -- it makes us all better, improves outcomes and diversity is a blessing.
Why not make America greater by actually embracing what we all claimed to believe in all along?
Or, admit the American idea was a sham from the beginning and let it slide into irrelevance, led by President BoneSpurs.
4
You have a pulpit few have. To waste it on fire and simplifications is a shame. Help lift us up. Think bigger than Trump to what we all share. We are all fathers and mothers. We are all workers. We are all children. We are all Americans. In an us-against-them scenario, Trump wins.
5
Yes, Mr Blow, you have expressed this view of the unObamaizingv of America and the preservation of white supremacy in your previous columns, and as have we your readers in our discussions with the left and the right. It is a prime underlying dynamic that got Mr Trump elected, with sufficient strength for Mr Trump to maintain his base support no matter what. I don’t believe Trump realized this on a conscious intellectual level when he proudly commented he’d be supported even if she shot someone on a NYC street. His base came out of the woodwork apathy emboldened on the subliminal promise of eternal whiteness, and will not crawl back until the UnTrumpizing of America, with minimal self awareness along the way.
1
How do you explain President Obama’s election victory?
5
The polls suggest it was better turnout among black voters. Obama lost the white vote 43% to 55% in 2008 and lost it 39% to 59% in 2012. Clinton lost the white vote 37% to 58%. Kerry and Gore got 41% and 42% of the white vote respectively, so Obama really didn't benefit from any great surge in white support. He got typical support for a Democratic presidential candidate from whites. He won because he had strong support of non-whites.
2
You may not believe this but there's also a new anti-racism. Trump's (Frankenstein) presence as national leader gives new meaning to the old slogan, "None of us is free until all of us are free." The more he reviles his scapegoats and enemies, the more We the People experience a fear of him that turns us toward one another with new eyes seeing sister/brotherhood beyond difference and the passionate hope that our unity can get us out of this destructive phase of what has become our national horror story.
2
I’m a moderately successful first generation white man who sees his “white privilage “ as having finished high school, not fathering children until I got married and having been self supporting since I was seventeen. It’s a simple road to travel and one that too many young black men ignore.
31
Thanks for sharing your casual, off-the-cuff, racism with us, Bill.
41
I think there is a growing number of brown and black Americans who enjoy having a disruptor in the executive office, a person with "dragon energy" as it were. I also think and hope these same people are realizing that it is counter productive to divide Americans into categories, especially melanin content categories.
1
"..nurses a deep racial resentment?" Damaged goods.
"knowingly benefits from it?" Opportunists.
"strenuously opposed to disturbing the racial status quo?" Financiers of class distinction.
"throngs .. to defend racial primacy?" Mobs, courtesy Tea Party organizers.
"Trump’s supporters .. identifying as racial actors" Contagions of hate.
"Five Shades of Racist", if you will. Unfortunately, most will fight-on. They hold conscious / subconscious 'birthright' identity. Conservative media constantly prods their fears and showcases the theft of their opportunities / values / financial footing. That narrative further emboldens their 'white' identity.
Who has something to lose? Donors. First, the financiers' resources are constantly being foraged. And, the disgusting forays of their (white privilege) advocates leave an imprint on a demographically shifting workforce / consumer. Long-term memories ARE long-term risks.
It's slow, but some corporations are improving on several fronts. Is it solving racism? No. While many donors are already re-fueling the Trump spectacle of racial animus, I believe that it's members of the DONOR CLASS that will blink first. They want NO MEMORY of Trump's stain.
1
In the weeks after November 9, 2016, I remember speaking with and e-mailing friends about my stunned reaction to Trump's election. After I'd kicked around all the other possible analyses to rationalize the unimaginable - I'd invariably conclude with some version of the following:
"But despite theories "X, Y and Z" - the bottom line is that Trump completely dropped the 'dog whistles' and campaigned openly as a bigot and racist. That means that even if voters were taken in by his over-the-top demagoguery on every other subject, they KNEW they were voting for a virulent racist. That should have been a TOTALLY DISQUALIFYING factor for all but the KKK and neo-Nazi voters."
For weeks afterwards in my dazed waking hours, my mind kept coming back to the same stunning realization: After eight years of a dazzlingly urbane, sophisticated, nuanced and compassionate black president (better even than Morgan Freeman), America had just time-traveled back half a century and elected George Wallace.
I listened for months to all the alternative explanations from the pundits - the neglect of "regular Americans" by the out-of-touch "coastal elites", the decimation of the manufacturing base (and consequent loss of good-paying jobs), the opiod epidemic, etc.
But in my soul, I could not (and still can't) shake the unmistakable logic of Occam's Razor: Trump won because half of Americans are fundamentally racist.
Trump's racism isn't a "bug", it's a "feature". And it worked. Welcome back to 1968.
6
This sounds like a rant against all those horrible conniving whites, but without many facts or practical solutions.
Those awful racist horrible whites. Especially the males.
The lot of them who rub their hands together after getting a job, knowing somewhere in the back of their mind that if they did not take the job, someone not white could have maybe gotten it.
Maybe that's the solutions. Whites should think before taking jobs (I'd say the solution would be to look at hiring and promoting practices, but most whites are not in a position to hire or promote--so, let's figure out how to solve the solution via most of those whites).
But I'm not really versed in these matters, so when I read an article like this, I think "All those horrible mean-spirited conniving whites" After all, not much subtly here.
But, if Blow offered some actual solutions, and not just a rant, perhaps I could walk away with some food for thought, without thinking about all those hand-wringing whites.
2
The majority of people prefer to live among their own people. Nobody wants to be a minority. It's called common sense. This is true whether you are white, black or any other ethnic group.
3
I live in a large city, and like most residents of large cities, I see people of color every day of the week. Yet my city, where the African-American, African immigrant, Latino, and Asian populations have grown noticeably since the 1980s, is reliably blue.
Although urban whites are not immune to racism, it seems to be strongest in areas that have been all white until recently, and the attitudes include a lack of self-awareness, such as the ways in which the poor whites of their own communities display all the pathologies falsely described as purely Black problems. If Latinos turn up in their town, they rant about "illegal immigrants" as criminals who should be deported immediately or even killed instead of wondering which (white-owned) business in town has brought them in.
3
There is a glaring hypocrisy studiously practiced by academics and unquestioningly repeated by pundits. Namely, that the great uneducated masses too readily accept simple explanations while mindlessly following authority.
You can easily spot this signpost indicating a detour from rational thought when practiced by liberal pundits. It invariably begins with the words "A new study published ..." Although a great many scientifically valid papers are published each year the vast majority of those which make it into the OP-ED and Editorial columns are very far from scientifically valid.
-- These studies are not and generally cannot be accurately replicated.
-- They are almost always retroactive in their explanations rather than predictive.
-- They claim to "measure" unquantifiable variables like "trust" for which there are no units of measure.
-- They most often use dramatically over-simplified 5 or 7 point Likert opinion polls to generate their data.
And the list of problems with Social Science research goes on and on. Although this crisis of validity within the Social Sciences has been (under)reported, they still garner the validity of a Scientific Fact when reported in the press.
Perhaps the press should have learned its lesson when "scientific" polling dramatically erred in the last election.
And yet Mr. Blow predicates this column on: "A new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found ..."
8
So what are you trying to say?
2
Mr. Blow believes, as a result of the referenced study, that racism rather than economic factors was the primary motivating factor for Trump supporters. This is a plausible, but unproven, single factor out of what had to be myriad others.
When Republicans in Congress announced that they would make Barack Obama a one term president by opposing everything he proposed, I laughed. The American people would see what a competent and principled leader he was, I thought. But, of course, they didn't relent, and they limited his presidency, although the failed to thwart his re-election.
Barack Obama was just that well educated black man Donald Trump despised— brilliant,witty, physically fit and good looking, a dedicated husband and father with two Ivy League degrees. On the merits, Trump couldn't compete. But on the uneven racist air waves and internet, Trump had a leg up, and he pulled out every stop.
Now that he has the power, he will punish every one who isn't white and male and wealthy just like him. He and his supporters feel they have it coming to them, and if they can con a few lesser folk into signing on as well, then they'll welcome them too. Anguish sells.
18
Desert Dogood: Don't recall c-in-c's saying he did not like people of color, and on the contrary received more African American votes than he was expected to get. Employment in the black community has also increased by 10 percent since Trump has been in the WH. Attack policies and not the man.Fear that I am writing to a tenured academician, a "nostalgique" who can never forgive our c-in-c for his victory over the former FIRST LADY. To deal in personalities as 99 percent of liberal commenters do is an admission that they have no viable alternative in terms of policy. Mr. Blow also specializes in ad hominem attacks on Trump and his millions of supporters, which is why it is hard to take his opinions seriously. Trump remains the vox populi, the tribune for tens of millions of Americans, and since he is the chief of state, duly elected,you should support him as a loyal American, or give sounder reasons than you have not given for not doing so!By the way, has The Donald ever said that he despised well educated black men? Supply the quote!
As a white man, I can attest to the reality of white privilege. I have never been passed over for a job on account of my race. I have never been disrespected by a police officer when stopped for a traffic infraction. I have never been the subject of suspicion in a store. I have been admitted to universities and awarded degrees along with other students of other races. I have had numerous interactions with non-whites and have never been subjected to an ethnic slur. And of course no one has subjected me to sexual harassment, This is simply the way it is for us white men who choose to pursue a middle class life, avoid criminal behavior, and escape serious illness. So all I can think about my younger white brothers who are so fearful of losing this automatic status is that they must be either very lazy or very stupid, or both. It really doesn't take that much in our society for a white man to attain a reasonable success.
15
You were lucky. My husband is a white man and he's been passed over for promotion because the companies he worked for wanted to promote a black or hispanic or woman. Not once -- many times. And he knows of numerous other examples that did not involve himself directly. I am a whtie woman and I've been disrespected by police, pulled over, given tickets for minor things (cracked tail light), followed in department stores by security -- all of those things. I have also been passed over at jobs for the last 40 years because the employer wanted to have a black or hispanic in a management job. Most white people have experienced this. You are an extreme outlier. BTW: I hope your brothers know you think they are lazy and stupid!
2
I shutter to imagine what presidential politics would have been like in 2016 if Trump's Democratic opponent was a black candidate. The reeking misogyny, accusations of criminality, and outlandish viciousness directed at Hillary was disturbing enough. His campaign would undoubtedly have descended into a modern historic low of racist provocation and divisiveness if Trump was facing a non-Caucasian. The election, and its aftermath, would have exhibited aspects of a tragic return to the 1860's for the nation. We should be "grateful" for little favors.
4
I just looked up the statistics and it looks like 58% of white votes went to Trump. That's not even 6 in 10. So while you make a good point about white racists, maybe don't call it a "white rebellion" or make the assumption that all white people support Trump. Far from it.
5
Can you please site your source?
Yes, but nearly 60% of whites supporting Trump is shameful. Nearly 60% of whites are racists...
Hi Paul, here is the source: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/grou...
CB -- another point. Ever heard of affirmative action? In 1989 (and now) corporations have been desperate to hire Blacks and have given them a preference. Ditto colleges and universities when admitting students. Anyone who denies that it has been and is true now that this occurs either has never worked for corporate America or is delusional.
Now -- how do I know this? At one time part of my job responsibility was to analyze EEOC data, personnel ratings, compensation decisions and other forms of personnel selection (hiring and promotion) decisions in a huge corporation -- to see what the impact of race & sex have been. I've also listened as recruiters bandied about strategies for attracting "diverse" employees.
Further -- because I've had access to the complete employment picture at a company of over 150k employees -- I can say for a certainty that this particular corporation deliberately created staff and support jobs (i.e. non revenue related), hired as many "diverse" candidates into those positions as they could, gave them big titles, big pay (not as big as rev generating jobs, but nice) in order to make their corporate "diversity" goals.
So, Trump spoke the truth in 1989. You ascribe it to white resentment but as usual you have no proof. Why would Trump be resentful? He was simply saying what anyone who has worked in corporate America knows.
6
Continuation of my post.
So my submittal for a job improvement--took them a year to complete.
Also, I have tutored. Any time I tell someone they retort--Oh you are tutoring Spanish. No, I reply economics, accounting and other disciplines related. I want to add--that people who wanted to promote me or encourage me--have been a
Black female supervisor and a business law teacher (a Mexican from LA).
There are other anecdotes where I have suffered discrimination.
1
Charles you are correct. I have heard people in my own family (we are white) spouting off this kind of nonsense. Of course they are the trump voters. How are we going to survive this time? In my family we just avoid discussing it...after many arguments. It has permanently damaged the family though.
6
Hi Charles, The Great White Hope. Man, did you nail it. Congrats for telling the truth .
6
Be nice to the people on the way up, because you'll see them all again on the way back down.
Yes, many white men feel "racial resentment" -- but why? Why is the possibility of no longer being the one to decide who gets how much of the pie so threatening? Could it be because deep down, those same white males know that when they were on top they (or their forebears) treated others horrifically? So now they fear, not just lower economic standards, but the possibility that if those others gain dominance, they will seek revenge, and it will be the whites being incarcerated or lynched. Had the powerful treated the powerless better, they would have far less cause for fear today.
2
Trump, the King Birther, the bald-faced liar. Somehow, tens of millions voted for this person of the lowest character. I am still surprised when I think about it.
5
The problem with the phrase "the erosion of young white male privilege" is that in truth it's a double whammy: the young whites (and not only men!) who believed this were for the most part wrong to begin with.
That is , their privilege was a mirage. They were sold a fantasy by those purveyors of racism who were in control in this country politically and economically. They were bamboozled, taken for a ride, generation after generation. In that sense, they had already been left behind long before they knew it.
3
Let us put race aside for the moment Mr Blow. Do you condone or support the measures that the outgoing administration used against a duly elected President ? If you do beware, the tiger does not care who it eats when it is hungry.
1
EXACTLY RIGHT. Thank you.
2
If Obama had not been president, Trump would not be president. This says all we need to know about Trump.
3
Dear Mr. Blow,
Nice of you to treat all whites as racist and praising Trump as the Great White Hope. As with most liberals, you conveniently forget that President Obama's mother was white. Even Obama downplayed that during his presidency, along with almost the entire liberal press - why? How much better off would the country be if Obama had celebrated his biracial roots publicly? Unfortunately that was not to be - for liberals it was always about his skin color, not his heritage.
Many whites gave Obama a chance in 2008 and again in 2012, hoping for a change from Bush 43. They didn't get those changes. What they got was another step closer to socialized medicine. No matter that Obama and the Democrats repeatedly lied about lowering costs and keeping your doctor and health care plan. And we were still mired in never-ending wars in the Middle East.
You also ignore what a terrible candidate the Democrats had in Hillary Clinton. There were much better candidates available (O'Malley and Webb come to mind) but the DNC and HRC colluded to make Hillary the inevitable nominee. Trump, for better or worse, was able to connect with many disaffected voters who didn't get the promised "hope and change" and managed to flip some key Democratic states for an electoral win.
You can cry racism all you want, Charles, but that's not what drives most people, regardless of skin color.
2
Sorry to be blunt, but you're simply lying or ignorant of reality when you claim that President Obama never spoke about his biracial roots publicly.
1
Trump never really meant his motto of *Make America Great Again* What he meant was *Make America White Again* We live in a global community now and share the planet with all of our neighbors. Trump refuses to learn this fact.
2
Keep it up Blow and there will be a race war, stoking these simplistic dichotomies is not constructive. While there is certainly an element of truth to your argument, progress lies in a more holistic outlook.
I'm white and have plenty to resent. I'm an ex-Californian who can't afford to live where I grew up (see Douthat the other day, without the Latino resentment or scapegoating). But perhaps more than anything, I resent being lumped in with redneck Trumpistas (which Douthat gets wrong too).
Whites have a diversity of their own. Color types are worthless social-analytical categories.
5
The most appaling thing about Trump's winning the presidential race is the fact that HE LOST
He got almost three million (3,000,000) votes LESS than the democratic candidate.
He would have not been elected president in ANY OTHER major democracy.
For a country that starts its constitution with the words WE THE PEOPLE, the fact that some voters are worth less than others should be almost as problematic as people being considered less because of the language they speak, whom they sleep with, or... yes, the skin color
6
What do you call a person who...?
I'm sure the one thing you don't want to call them if you want their vote is "deplorable".
More than emails or FBI directors, this is the reason that we have this scourge of a president.
Racism is a disgusting pernicious creed, used to manipulate and foster hate, but calling ordinary people out for it can backfire. I'm not saying we shouldn't address the issue, and thank you CB for continuing to point out how America falls well short on this front, but we need to focus on the race-baiters and ones who put the fire under racism (including DT) rather than alienating and invigorating a large section of the voting block.
Oh dear. We're back to 'Poor White People' again. And just in time for the opening of the opening of the new Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama -- the scene of so many clashes during the nascent Civil Rights era, and in recognition of a shameful racist past this country is trying so hard to forget.
It's no surprise.
Guilt is a burden that doesn't get any lighter the longer you carry it, and America has been carrying this ugly burden for a long time.
So it's no surprise, that after showing a small sign of progress by twice electing its first Black president, and holding him up to impossibly high standards, America has opted to vote in an unapologetic bigot endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups with the claim of making "America great again" -- even though he's forgotten America wouldn't be where it is now, were it not for the slave labor that built it up from the beginning.
Apparently some things don't change, and history repeats itself ... and the mind boggles.
4
Mr. Blow, thanks again for calling a thing a thing: "Support for Trump was largely motivated by white fear of displacement from dominance."
So true and tragic. A fearful, resentful and racist white minority brought this curse down upon us all. Trump gave voice to their alternately whining, sneering fabricated sense of white male victimhood tinged with rage.
The racism so deeply rooted in our society has reached its full flower in the odious and malevolent person of Donald Trump.
1
Trump's racism is obvious. The claims about his supporters have to apply to all who knowingly voted for him and willing say so. While most seem to be older white men, there are also African American, Hispanic, and Asian men as well as women of all ethnicities. That requires explanation. The most recent reports from those who have studied Trump voters assert that loss of relative social position or the fear of it is the common motivation, which accounts for whites who resent loss of white social influence as their proportion of the electorate diminishes and for people of other ethnicities who also feel that pressure with the great changes taking place. Thus racial resentment surely is a factor but not the only factor relevant to Trump's supporters.
2
The most egregious part of it is that those who enjoy the benefits of white skin privelege and power in this country, deny that It exists.
Most are quick to embrace the self serving fallacy that oppressed minorities just don’t work hard enough or smart enough to maximize their potential.
There are so many instances, big and small, that demonstrate that many whites take for granted their privilege as the normal way of things by merely waking up with white skin every morning,
How else, for instance, to explain a common, entrenched occurrence that plays out in New York City? A Black person is first to step to the corner, and hail a taxi, but is passed by and watches the taxi driver pick up a later arriving White person.
It is clear that the white person had the comfort of knowing that he or she would get that taxi. If not, why hail the same taxi knowing that the Black person was there first?
I have seen this play out for years in the city, and noted that the white personnel pretends he or she doesn’t see the Black person. This is an example of many whites enjoying white skin privelege, but denying that it exists.
2
Charles, your observations are perceptive & invaluable. Trump is not the only "White Male" in power clinging to his perception of endowed power due to race. Three other factors played an powerful roles in the perilous outcome of the 2016 Election and they can not be ignored. First, white males control the wealth of this nation. Like a raging cancer, their greed is overwhelming them as their power diminishes. Second, white males like Mark Zuckerberg & Peter Thiel control the data mining of American's personal information. They are using this power not to "connect people" as their messaging claims but to gain wealth and control technological power. Finally, the last election was not just the result of White Male Racism. Misogyny was a huge factor. Many white males just could not tolerate Hillary Clinton, a woman -albeit a white woman advancing to the Oval Office. They were willing to elect a spoiled trust fund brat who lies incessantly and has the emotional intelligence of fruit fly to stop this from happening. The election of Hillary Clinton was even more intolerable to many American White Males than Obama's election. White Oligarchs rationalized colluding with the Russian Government to insure that Hillary Clinton wasn't elected. I still have hope. The tide is going to come in again and the racism and misogyny in this country is going to drown. It isn't going to be pretty, there will be turmoil but we will overcome the roots of hatred.
3
"Trump voters were likely to believe in something we call ‘white vulnerability’ — the perception that whites, through no fault of their own, are losing ground to other groups. Second, racial resentment was the primary driver of white vulnerability — even when accounting for income, education level or employment.”
The problem for many "whites" is that they feel they have been pinched on both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. For example, affirmative action and college admissions. Many whites have complained that black students have been given admission preference due to their race exclusively. While there might be some truth to that idea, the same whites will ignore how affirmative action actually helps most of Them.
When my son was interviewed at an Ivy League University several years ago, the admission counselor told us straight out,
" we can't use meritocracy exclusively for admissions, because the university would be nearly all Asian". Yes, that is a true story. Whites may in certain instances , be overlooked by racial preference, but they also benefit greatly by the lack of meritocracy.
My six figure income neighbor openly declares "everything is being taken from white men", yet he has yet to enumerate anything he has lost. Although he is also quick to note that Obama was and is responsible for the (fictitious)decline of the white man.
Racism is indeed behind most of what we see today. But whites adamant refusal to acknowledge it means ongoing strife.
2
Mr. Blow's column is a follow-up to a story that was in the Times the other day. That story reported on a study that found many of those who voted for President Trump in 2016 did so out of a sense of white resentment. But this has been translated into the simplistic belief that EVERYBODY who voted for Trump is a racist. Well, this isn’t what the study said. And this belief opens the door for the Democrats to repeat the problem that led to the election of President Trump, the attitude that the only people who could vote for such a person are, as Secretary Clinton said, “deplorable."
But here’s the math. About 35% of Americans continue to support President Trump, for a variety of reasons. Yet another 13% of Americans voted for him but expressed disapproval of him starting the day after the election. This 13% were Republicans who had a tough time voting for a Democrat but also independents who were members of the disaffected middle class. And Secretary Clinton absolutely failed to appeal to these people—only 9% of her ads had to do with the economy—and so Trump won by a hair.
What scares me about Mr. Blow’s column is it sets the stage for a repeat of this disaster. Again, the failure in 2016 to appeal to the disaffected middle class—of all races—set the stage for Trump’s narrow victory. And as bad as Trump is, failing to understand this is one of the few factors that could open the door a crack for his reelection and four more years of this total disaster.
6
Charles I believe the answer to your questions is "they are dishonest". As a 69 year old white guy I had to ask myself the question "Was I a covert racist".
The answer was yes. I wanted people of color to succeed to achieve equality just not at what I viewed as at my expense. I do not have much money or social status but I have my whiteness. I can walk into Starbucks and generally expect to be able to sit down without ordering coffee and get the key code to the bathroom.
I am grateful to the NYT for hiring a well educated black man journalist. You are helping people like me confront our pettiness and recognize how all of us benefit from well educated people, people with ethics, people with equal status and opportunity regardless of their color. Your honesty and insight is much appreciated.
The last great white hope is just that. He too shall pass.
1
For several years I've been telling friends that I see the "new" racism as part of the death throes of white supremacy, and I am happy to see the understanding spreading, along with the realization that the core of the anxiety, the anguish, is existential. The underlying issue, to my mind, is whether/when a critical mass of EuroAmericans come to base their self worth on their own selfs, instead of on the denigration and control of people by gender, race, class, religion and any of the multitude of distinctions that this culture seeks to erect.
1
As always, absolutely brilliantly and scathingly honest, Mr. Blow! Your prose feeds my soul, especially the last line.
I would only add that it was racism's evil twin--sexism--that ensured we'd have a Trump presidency. Racism may have been enough to elect Trump whoever opposed him, but the fact that his opponent was a woman sealed the deal.
6
Mary Kirk
What do you mean by "racism?"
Humanity originated in Africa. Check with the Smithsonian and elsewhere.
I once spent time over a couple of days with a middle-aged black woman from California visiting Sydney - showed her around my town, had coffee and a meal, and listened to her. Just chatting.
Afterwards she wrote it was a life-changing experience.
I guess she'd never felt treated as an equal before - by a white guy.
2
Hold on a second. We're confusing correlation with causation. Economics and racism are inevitably intertwined. Racism has an economic component and economics has a racist component. The two things are linked through society, cultural, and politics. That doesn't mean the two things are discretely causal. You can feel economic anxiety without feeling racial prejudice in the same way you can experience financially security while being a racist. How strong the current is moving in either direction is an open question. The answer always depends.
I've never supported Trump and I agree with this assessment of his intents. You're subject to bias though if you narrow Trump's rise to a duality of interpretation. For some people, he is the intersection where economics meets racism. However, this misses all the strange interwoven interconnections that brought us President Trump. The answer, as always, is a little more complicated.
4
As a white man, I am always surprised how personally so many other white men seem to take the suggestion that racism and white privilege exist. The common defensive response I hear from these other white men is something like: "Don't try to assign blame to me. I'm not racist. I'm not privileged, I worked hard for what I've earned, and I'm not going to be made to feel guilty about it." To which I want to reply, Who's assigning you blame? Who's making you feel guilty? Who's claiming you didn't work for what you have?"
To me, it's blatantly obvious that racism exists, that blacks are disadvantaged by it, and that whites are privileged simply because, regardless of what other challenges we may face in our lives, we are free of the burden of race. As a white man, I don't understand why other white men seem to get so angry about this simple observation. Recognizing a problem is just the first step in solving the problem, and getting to solve a problem is empowering. The only reason to get angry that I can see is if you really don't want to solve the problem and resent being asked. In that case, the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
4
Go visit West Virginia if you want to experience white privilege first hand. They’ll be asking you if you want fries with your Big Mac. And thankful for a paycheck.
3
Yes, Trump and many of his supporters are racist to their core and they are abhorrent. We can never accept their views in a civilized society.
But it also needs to be said that the term white privilege has become weaponized. Meant to shame, diminish and criticize white people as a whole no matter what their personal actions, views or beliefs. There is inarguably justification for the term. Yet it doesn't bring people together, but pulls them apart. The divisiveness it fosters exponentially strengthens Trump and his ilk.
3
How right you are. But the rage against “white privilege” is only going to get more strident.
What’s next?
1
Mr. Blow's conclusions seem a little too pat. Of course they sound plausible in the vacuum of the dominant progressive liberal narrative.
Too much of what Mr. Blow is saying seems concocted to fit that narrative. Too many studies along similar veins come to similar, predictable conclusions, and each invents a new term for it, as if to lend legitimacy.
"Fear of displacement from dominance"
Sure. Right. Just one more made up "thing" that fits too conveniently into a narrative that's lost all accountability. Rather, too many people have accepted the narrative, and having done so, go on to passively accept each apparent corollary.
3
If nothing else, the election of Trump has been an eye-opener for this white person. I actually thought we were moving forward. I actually thought we had made inroads against institutional racism. I actually thought we were becoming more inclusive and moderate. Now I just feel stupid. I admit I was shocked by the numbers of gleeful racists celebrating Trump's election. And now I'm shocked that I was shocked. Because of Trump, I understand racism is pretty much encoded into white DNA. Because of Trump, I understand that whites with all sorts of advantages who don't make it will forever blame people of color for their own failures, a script which has been played since this country was founded. Thank you, President Trump, for opening my eyes to reality. And thank you, Mr. Blow, for speaking truth.
2
Excellent editorial, Mr. Blow! A quote from Thomas Jefferson regarding slavery, this is a paraphrase.... "I tremble to think of the future of our country when I consider slavery." This from the author of our Declaration of Independence. A man who had a decades long relationship with a black woman, Sally Hemings and who fathered several children with her. We are facing our own centuries of racism. Embodied in Trump's victory. "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children" etc. So here we are at this pivotal point in our history.
1
There really isn't any question about racism: it exists, deeply embedded in our society. Ditto for male privilege. I think Mr. Blow knocked it out of the park with this one. I'm white and I like to think of myself as egalitarian, but I'm aware that, deep down, I see non-whites differently. This doesn't mean that I think non-whites are less valuable or deserve a lower status than whites, nor do I behave less courteously to non-whites. What it means is that, despite my best intentions, I see differences, due to color. I don't like thinking this way, but it's stained into me and all I can do is make sure I treat people of color with as much consideration as I do white people.
There's also the financial aspect: our society is built on unequal socioeconomic rungs; the poorest people generally do the hardest jobs for the least money. Wealth is so highly prized in the U.S. that we kowtow to it, even when the individuals became wealthy through corruption or without earning it (inheritance). Through the same lens we view the poor as contemptible, regardless of why they are poor. Money's a zero-sum game: for me to have a lot, you must have little. This plays into white fears; no matter how little we have, there's some comfort, knowing that others (non-whites) have less and can't compete with us. Instead of fearing the greedy capitalists who actually take money from us (tax cut, anyone?), struggling people fear that those with less would take our precious resources, if they could.
1
Trump is by no means the "last gasp of White Supremacy." The latter is far too well-entrenched across a number of institutions. Trump is the perfect embodiment of his generation's expression of White Supremacy, though. Only George Wallace, Pat Buchanan, or Strom Thurmond could do better (and Judge Roy or Sherrif Joe, if only we would let them).
You're part of the problem Charles. You also may be part of the solution. As one of the privileged members of our society you can encourage the seething resentments, or you can encourage tolerance and gratitude by being tolerant and grateful. We still live in the greatest country on earth, and most of us want to be better human beings. What do you want?
2
You're right, Mr. Blow. Other than the fear you describe here there's no possible explanation for the self-debasement that has been committed by the Republicans and Evangelicals, and their willful submission to Donald Trump.
I’m not sure, but I think explaining Trump and his supporters as a result of racism may be overly simplistic. Perhaps its more about a broad diminishing of opportunity and upward mobility that is a result of evolving income inequality. Racism may be just a convenient handle for political exploitation as a means to continue shifting wealth from the many to the few. Maybe its being used as a distraction to keep us from seeing what’s really happening.
Certainly we’ve all seen diminishing American influence in the world, reduced economic opportunity, decaying infrastructure, poor eductation, limited upward mobility, etc. All these things may be the result of unsustainable concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few. Racism may be an easy way to keep us from understanding the fundamental problem here - power and greed by a few.
2
"When one is used to privilege, equality seems like oppression."
I don't know who said this, but it explains many historical upheavals and tragedies.
Over time, I've grown more comfortable with the term 'white privilege.' It's not that I ever denied it exists and that I benefit from it. Rather, it implies the problem is that whites have privilege, rather than that people of color often don't.
I'm not sure how many other whites, especially conservatives, respond favorably to this term. Or are even able to understand that recognizing their privilege doesn't require a sense of shame.
Unfortunately, many of the policies enacted by liberals (which I consider myself to be) just reinforce white defensiveness. Identity politics, which accords certain advantages to specific groups, mostly for very laudable reasons, has had the undesired consequence of further dividing our populace by race.
I think Trump is despicable. I'm quite sure racism is alive and kicking in this country. (Sadly, I've seen my own racial prejudices, more than a few times.) And I agree with most of the points Mr. Blow makes in this essay.
Still, I cannot help but look at my own party and ask, What role did OUR policies play in electing such a pathological leader?
I'm sure we can do better than repeating the same old chants, over and over, hoping for a better result at the next election.
2
This isn't an entirely fair or honest account. Affirmative action has in fact largely excluded the white petty bourgeoisie and working class from elite institutions of higher education, which have increasingly abjured pedagogical rigor in favor of social engineering. It's very natural in such circumstances for the resulting ressentiment to take on a racialized cast (given that race is actually one of the operative criteria of selection).
More to the point, many minority protests and demands, especially in recent years, have not been altogether just or proportional. Dissenting opinions -- I want to say especially the most empirically grounded, rational, and measured -- have been met with vicious slanders and a tendency to ostracize. Authoritarianism has become a much greater problem in leftist dominated institutions than anywhere on the right. There has been a marked increase of intolerance, mobbishness, and violence, from the streets of Dallas to the quadrangles of Yale University. You can write this out of the story and present the support for Trump as simply motivated by basic status anxiety (rather than concerns for freedom and truth), but you're lying to yourself and your readers, and only aggravating the racial divide. Shame.
7
The notion that Trump voters were driven largely by bigotry, hate, ignorance, and hypocrisy is not exactly a revelation.
1
While this analysis is interesting, it misses one critical point.
Donald Trump narrowly won this election because he ran against Hillary Clinton, a candidate who was extremely unpalatable to a wide spectrum of the voters. As late as October 2016, CBS News was reporting that its polling revealed that 64% of voters felt that Clinton was untrustworthy. There were many white men, and women, who voted for Donald Trump simply because they despised Hillary Clinton. White power did not elect Trump; Hillary Clinton elected him.
5
I am a white male who would sooner slit my wrists then vote for Mr Trump, but I didn't vote for Ms. Clinton either. I have voted for Democratic and Republican candidates in the past but now I find myself far right of the present Democrats (who I might still vote for) and far left of the present Republicans (who I can't ever imagine voting for again ). Am I a racist or misogynist ? Are the folks who voted for President Obama then switched to Trump suddenly racist? I am greatly tired of yet another one of these silly generalization pieces. Perhaps the Democrats lost because they are concentrated unfavorably geographically, fielded a poor candidate, and the party organization doesn't seem to be able to concentrate on anything other then the presidential races - maybe their leaders could occasionally leave the coast and visit the country.
3
Excellent opinion piece. When I try to distill the influences that got Trump elected and keep him afloat, I keep coming back to one principal factor: race. It seems to me that it is mostly about (not entirely, but mostly about) many white folks believing that white dominance in America is waning (perhaps for those white folks that is what Obama fundamentally represented) and they don't like that idea; and, perhaps, these folks are willing to support Trump regardless of nearly anything he has done or will do in order - from their perspective - to save white America.
1
That Trump voting was above all driven by racial anxiety and economic anxiety substantially driven by racial anxiety are very plausible claims. However, not to view economic anxiety as a force in is own right that exists and has consequences quite independently makes little sense on terms of the opioid epidemic: it's hard to imagine folks giving up on the future and diving into the downward spiral of drug addiction because of their scapegoating fabrications.
1
This is a powerful, beautiful article. As a white woman in a small Upstate NY town, as a Jewish woman, this article brought me to tears. Every day we wake up to another "situation," another "bombshell" or stupid tweet. It never stops and I wonder, when it will end? And when Mr. Trump leaves, how many years will it take to repair this magnificent country? I always look forward to Mr. Blow's columns because they usually speak to the heart of what so many of us are feeling. That feeling is frustration and desperation.
1
Donald Trump said in the 1980s:
"“A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market."
What really gets people the maddest at Donald Trump is not when he says something untrue, but when he says an uncomfortable truth like this.
1
I think its a bit simplistic to assume racial resentment was the biggest vote driver out there.
Misogyny played an enormous role. The villification of Hilary Clinton was astounding, and the willingness of the American people to believe insanely negative things about her was remarkable.
Also many many of the Trump voters were not resentful of Blacks because they were dismissive and disdainful of Blacks. Lots of very very wealthy people out there voting Trump. They were not worried about their position in the American power structure. They just didn’t care if Trump was racist because so were they.
The interesting thing about the election to me was the genuine shock (and I felt it as well)that white women felt when it turned out that the majority of people out there were exactly as dismissive of them as of any black person. We perhaps have walked too long in a little bubble of relative economic security. That a man could say racist things and be elected was not as surprising to black people as the fact that a man could brag about sexual assault and be elected was to white women.
1
Trump is the natural culmination of GOP policies. Nixon, Reagan and the Bush Family were all complicit in the creation of Trump.
The nation should be nauseated.
1
I think fear/anxiety coming from the uncertainties of the modern work world (i.e., declining wages, fewer opportunities for those without college education, rising costs of health care, fewer benefits, including good retirement plans, e.g., pensions) make scapegoating easy. Those who see minorities, immigrants,welfare recipients, etc., as reasons for declining economic opportunities and security blame what they are told to blame. The real causes of economic insecurity are often hidden --- it's hard to land a punch on, for example, Trump's MAGA apparatchiks who hide their greed and grasping behind shouts about draining the swamp, the evils of "takers" (welfare recipients), the evils of immigrants out to steal taxpayers' jobs but in reality are lining their own pockets and dealing kickbacks to lobbyists, e.g., Scott Pruitt (lover of very expensive sound proof booths and lobbyists but hater of mixing with the public he is supposed to serve), Mick Mulvaney (lover of those who gave him political contributions and hater of those who didn't) Steve Mnuchin (lover of foreclosures during the housing collapse and military planes travl), Ben Carson (lover of fine furniture but hater of affordable rents for the poor). Trump hid his own money grab behind calls for scape goating desperate immigrants, minorities, illegal voters (most of hwom are Demorcrats), Muslims. But all that scapegoating has increased wealth only for Trump and his sidekicks.
1
White people do not worry about white dominance. We worry about ourself as an individual and as family and as neighborhoods. We want successful Blacks as neighbors and friends, even relatives. Black success makes us happy. More friends, more neighbors, more family. Black success is wonderful. People are people and we love them. We don’t want hate, enemies or dangerous neighbors. We want love.
2
Maybe you don't, but many whites do care that black people are moving in or getting jobs where they work.
The key phrase is "well-educated," and in that sense it might be true. After all, Obama did win the Presidency, twice.
I live in a neighborhood of the nation's capital which, in my experience, is chiefly characterized by multiracial harmony.
I believe that if you took a poll of all the people here, you would find that the great majority are justly proud of the little community that we've created.
Not by coincidence, we are very largely Democrats, as our ballot totals inevitably reveal.
It's a good feeling, knowing that we've slipped the 'mind-forged manacles' that trouble so much of this nation, a nation which in many ways is still fighting the Civil War by other means.
How strange that whites are making themselves miserable over race, which, as our geneticists and anthropologists are eager to tell us, is a false construct based on illusions about our evolutionary past.
And how ironic that whites insist on grievances that have been planted in their minds by people like Mr. Trump. I am sure that the mental anguish that results is real, though its causes are not.
The losers of the future are the ones who hobble themselves with dated views of American society that they embrace out of fear and ignorance. Their punishment falls due when their sense of disentitlement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The rest of us, having overcome, will rise together, delighting in our new America.
2
Charles is right. Is there any other way to explain Trump's obsession with reversing or obliterating anything Obama did, regardless of its actual content? Or Trump's obsessive mentioning of Obama "failures" even now? Or his supporters' fervid endorsement of these, and of their equating this with making America great again? Hello, world! This is America, the America we have refused to admit, even to ourselves.
17
"Is there any other way to explain Trump's obsession with reversing or obliterating anything Obama did, regardless of its actual content?"
Because Trump is basically clueless, trying to fulfill campaign promises, and building a record to run on in 2020. None of that necessarily means Trump's a racist.
2
Recognizing white fear of losing their dominant role is important. What can be done about it, is a different problem that Mr Blow did not attempt to address.
Trump is the consequence of what has been growing for some years. When President Johnson signed the civil rights legislation, he thought he had lost the South for the Democratic Party for a generation—he was wrong about the time span. Or was it when President Eisenhower ordered soldiers to enforce school integration? Little Rock may come immediately to mind, but don’t forget about places like Boston.
Growth of private schools. White flight. Universities’ teams that do not reflect the racial make-up of the student population. Grab the cross, grab the flag, grab your gun.
Will the success that Trump and many Republicans have had playing the fear of losing control ever be eroded?
Will studies and presentations convince the fearful that they do not face extinction should the scales be balanced?
Will talking and reasoning with people make a difference?
Contrary to the optimists, I do not see the white fear overcome by facts, reason, or conversation. The deep divide which cuts through our homeland due to racial issues may be as old as the first introduction of slaves to the New World, and certainly one of the issues that troubled us at the very birth of the USA.
11
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - LBJ - (A Democrat explaining the Republican Southern Strategy in 1960 before it was officially adopted by the GOP in 1968)
In a 1994 interview, John Ehrlichman,Richard Nixon's chief domestic advisor, said the Nixon administration launched the war on drugs to go after the "antiwar left and black people."
"I believe in states' rights." (translation: local white male supremacy rights) - Ronald Reagan, kicking off his 1980 Make America Great Again campaign at the all-white Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi.
Reagan then skewered blacks as 'welfare queens' before passing a giant tax cut for 1% welfare queens.
"My dad, as you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico… and had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this. But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico. He lived there for a number of years. I mean, I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino."
And now of course, the great Birther-Liar-In-Chief & Mexican-Muslim-Hater-In-Chief proudly carries the torch of religious, right-wing racism for the Republican Party as the nation is flushed down a feculent Trump Toilet.
Whites R Us: GOP 1968 - 2018
50 years of modern white supremacy.
Nice GOPeople
119
Charles, you should learn statistics. The survey differences -- even minor changes from 2012 to 2016 -- are almost all statistically significant. Why? Because with a huge sample size, even minor differences in means, correlations or reg coefficients will be significant. In this study, most effects are so small that to suggest they are meaningful requires a large leap of faith.
2nd -- participants weren't randomly selected. They volunteer & self-selection sometimes affects surveys.
3rd -- test - retest reliability. Never perfect. In short -- I take a self report survey & again 4 years later -- there will be some differences in how I describe (my attitudes, traits, preferences) regardless of actual change. People don't remember over 4 years how they responded to a survey. Even if you re-test the next day you won't get the same response.
4th -- there is a possible confound in the study in that both candidates were known to survey respondents. So it could be people's attitudes were driven by feeling warmer toward Trump than Clinton, not the other way around. A voter prefers Trump. He listens to Trump on trade, immigration, economy -- and that preference shapes how they feel on certain issues -- not the other way around (& Trump was warmer than HRC; Obama > Romney as well).
5th -- wasn't it surveys that said HRC would win?
In short -- I don't buy the research.
12
It was analytics that said HRC would win. You know the same thing MLB believes so strongly in they use it to choose players for their billion dollar a year industry?
You might want to take a look at your skepticism and recognize something else was in play on election day 2016. It's highly unlikely the models were so wrong.
15
The polls correctly predicted the popular vote. They were not designed to consider the Electoral College.
2
How are the Oakland A's doing? How many World Series have they won playing billy ball?
In any event, baseball stats are much harder data than surveys of any kind. They aren't necessarily predictive of future performance at the individual leve though. Nor are surveys.
I'd like to ask the whites to define what they mean by "losing ground."
Also, I point out that regardless if it is in the form of the intellectual verbosity of a William F Buckley or the avuncular charm of a Reagan or the bull horn of a Trump, race today is THE motivating factor that underpins conservatism in this country.
It may be gussied up as an economic issue or a cultural issue or a states rights issue, but at its core for conseractives, it is always about race.
When I say this to conservatives, even though they resent it being pointed out, they tend to agree with it.
Liberals, on the other hand, are not so open minded and think making this claim is useful in solving issues or reaching across the aisle or being the adult in the room.
29
I think you're wrong. I think for Democrats, it's all about race. Democrats (and you just did it) accuse Republicans/Conservatives of making everything about race, but the problem for conservatives is that we can't talk about anything that Democrats and liberals won't try and make about race, whether it be the ecomomy, jobs, climate change, whatever.
You ask "the whites to define what they mean by 'losing ground.'" Why don't you ask Charles and liberals who push these narratives (as if they are conventional wisdom) what THEY mean. It's a little too convenience resorting, as you have, to the notion that whites (and those dastardly conservatives) are speaking in code (racial code, that is) whenever they bring up the economy, or any other issue. A little too convenient, indeed.
2
Sorry, I disagree. What we're seeing is the dying throes of ethnic "diversity" and the new age of blindness to race, ethnicity, gender, physical ability, visual ability, sexual preference etc etc. Racism is so passe. Please!
1
"...race today is THE motivating factor that underpins conservatism in this country."
Not for the vast majority of conservatives. It may be that many whites prefer the Republican Party because the Democratic Party appears to coddle every other group under the sun except them. And liberals aren't open-minded about anything if you disagree with them.
1
We should keep in mind that the definition of 'whiteness' has expanded in the past and will likely expand in the future.
I am Irish and there was a time in the history of this country that I would be seen as an outsider, perhaps not 'fully white'.
By constantly saying that "America will soon be a nation of minorities" the media ignores the fact that we are already a nation of minorities. We have been ever since the Puritans didn't make up a majority of the people in the Massachusetts Bay Colony hundreds of years ago.
28
Michael
I also have an Irish background. My Great-Grand Parents on both sides of my family, immigrated here from Ireland.
However, humanity originated in Africa. Check with the Smithsonian and elsewhere. That fact is certainly something to think about.
1
Very thoughtful comment, Michael. I’m part Irish and part Italian, so I would not be white a century ago. I did not vote for Trump and I desperately want the Republicans out of power. I feel that opinion pieces like this will not help reach those goals — just not enough perspective.
I agree with you, Charles, and yet, here is an observation: with few exceptions, most of the comments on this page are from people who live on the east or west coasts, or abroad. The outrage over the Trump presidency needs to extend to every state and every corner of our country. One of my husband's family members shrugged his shoulders when I shared how offended I was about Trump's trip to my native Puerto Rico. Our POTUS has shown through his example that it's okay to not worry about "the others" as long as you're fine. We have lost our moral compass as a nation.
68
To REM ...40% of us have. And those people are my fellow citizens. I believe they are responding to fear of "losing ground" (racism), and their feudal economic situation. I am concerned for them. How do we bring them into the present? How do we usefully talk to Trump supporters?
1
Lost "our" compass?
When did "we" have one, exactly?
The dearth of an "our" and a "we" is the problem, simply put.
And how upset are you when people kneel at the National Anthem saying "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. " My son served in the Marines and two of his friends came home under that flag. I find that choice to use the hallmark of national unity as a divisive protest, irrespective of if there's any validity to the claim. Bad treatment of dogs is not an excuse to kill cats in protest.
If you want to know why there's a divide, it's because there's a big divide of what's offensive to whom. People get what they give.
Whites are under attack by the democrat party and it is a racist attack. When it is pointed out that whites will not be the majority in the future, the racists cheer. Why the cheers? Whites: we do not have to put up with this.
28
How are whites under attack? What indignities must whites endure today that comes close to approaching what minorities in this country have suffered for hundreds of years?
185
So, obviously you are implying there is a reactionary response to a perceived dilemma you feel faced to confront with your statement “we don’t have to put up with this.” I’m curious as to what that would be?
1
The whites who feel so disenfranchised have no empathy or even acknowledgement that others should have a seat at "their" table. They are blind to the suffrage of others. And this is why they hate that "others" are advancing on territory they feel entitled to - that an intelligent and articulate biracial man made it to the "White" House, twice. I'm sure it burned my father's soul every day Obama was in office, that he bought the "birther" thing hook, line and sinker, and had he lived another 3 months, he surely would have voted for Trump.
There are at least two types of Trump fans: The under educated, dumb-as-a-stick white guys and that other crowd, the affluent, more-money-than brains whites who may be just a little insecure about not getting automatic points for being white.
Look at a map of where Trump won the election: It's a map of Easy Rider America, where the violent, angry, Rednecks live.
It's really as simple as that.
Without Obama on the ticket, Blacks did not turn the tide as they had for Obama. Maybe they agreed with Trump--so how much worse would Trump be for them?
Fact is, it can always get worse.
The Troglodytes won. Now they are smirking.
Ironically, Trump's anthem is "Proud to be an American."
For some of us white folks out here, it's anything but right now.
84
Claudia. You are entitled to your opinion I just don't view it as helpful. I guess one can say there are two types of Clinton voters. One group who voted for her simply because she has a double X chromosome. Then there is the other group the liberals who are all for equality as long as someone doesn't construct low income housing next to their waterfront estate in the Hamptons. I don't particularly like Trump but it is going to be great in 2020 when he has four more years because the Dems offer nothing but attacks and sound bites
2
Me: white; 99th percentile on GRE; 96Th percentile on LSAT. Honors at a Top 10 liberal arts college; top quarter at a top 10 law school. Trump voter. Explain that.
2
I love the last line: "Trump is white anguish encapsulated." Narcissistic, boorish, self-important, persecuted, inflated. Trump really does embody white anguish.
103
Okay, I'll bite. So who embodies black anguish and latino anguish and asian anguish? Compare them and you''ll likely find the same template: angry male blaming everyone else.
4
I so well remember the night of November 4, 2008. The euphoria was something that I had never felt before. I really believed that in our country racism was a thing of the past. There would be a few minor battles ahead but the war was almost won. So many of us were so naive and credulous as the the intervening eight years have cleary shown. Racial resentment appears to be more entrenched now than it was on that miraculous night. White supremacists and neo-Nazis savor their ascendance and empowerment. And Donald Trump is the president. A racist thread runs through the psyche of a large minority of the white population. It is not simply in the minds of whites who suffer from economic anxiety but also in the minds of many whites who are economically secure. Children very readily imbibe the views of their parents. So the next generation will grow up viewing our society with the same race-tinged glasses. Is there no hope? We will have to wait and see how the future unfolds. But the action should start now at grass-roots level and in schools.
83
RajeevA,
This change has to start at home, with the parents instilling in the children the view that we are all family, that all of us are due respect until it is shown otherwise (hard to respect a mass murderer, for example). End of story. Cheers for your open POV. That's what is needed.
6
While recognizing the continuing strain of xenophobia and racism, I hope the American mosaic will ultimately triumph. I spent my career working with teenagers and have always been and remain inspired by the idealism of our young people.
2
Here's how that one ought have gone, if only Democrats could stop counting on their toes and figure out the long game, which Republicans have played so very well since 1980: Clinton/Obama. Four years of the enormously qualified Hillary Clinton would've led to re-election of the same ticket in 2012 and then an Obama presidency in 2016, when he actually had some political credentials and qualifications for the job - instead of a phony Nobel after only 9 weeks in office due solely to his skin color.
3
The term "privilege" is frequently misused. It is NOT a privilege to be afforded basic human rights and dignity - including the right not to be shot down in the street (something we don't even do to dogs anymore). But this doesn't mean there are not advantages systematically offered to those who can pass as "white" so the term "privilege" is sometimes useful even when "whiteness" is not associated with even a modicum of inherited wealth or social capital - a condition which is likely to become more common as the former "middle class" continues to be attenuated. And, in that context, the "privilege" meme will probably generate ever more heat than light.
And then there's this:
"What do you call a person who doesn’t reach the height of race hate but who nurses a deep racial resentment?
What do you call a person who doesn’t openly endorse racism but nevertheless knowingly benefits from it?
What do you call a person who endorses broad racial progress in theory but in practice is strenuously opposed to disturbing the racial status quo?
What do you call throngs of people working in concert, consciously or not, to defend racial primacy?
What do you call these people, among Trump’s supporters, whom studies keep identifying as racial actors, whether they view themselves that way or not?" -- Charles M. Blow
3
Mr. Blow, as others have commented it would be wrong to group all whites, young whites, old whites etc into any one group. While some people who are white may exhibit the traits you write about, I do not find it to be either universal or anywhere close to a majority. It is not to say the problem does not exist or that the problem is not being seized by some to gain power. But I do not find the majority of white males, and particularly the younger ones, to want anything less than an equal society.
20
The key word is younger.
It's far worse than Mr. Blow suggests. White resentment and racism elevated the absolute worst example of white privilege to the most powerful office in the world. A man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who squandered his riches, destroyed what his Father had created, bankrupted himself over and over again, stole, lied, cheated, disregarded the law, was a woman hating husband and a scoundrel so indecent he would collude with a foreign enemy to quell his unquenchable thirst for power was entitled to the office because he was white and for no other reason. And his white racist supporters delighted in this most extreme and grotesque example of what they believe in the deepest recesses of their beings - that whites are entitled to power and privilege for no other reason than the color of their skin. The fact that Trump is such a blatantly obvious example of the extreme distortions of white privilege in this country today delights his racist supporters even more. It empowers them to emulate the behavior of their standard-bearer and believe that their behaviors are perfectly acceptable. Look at Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Mulvaney, Price, Ryan, McConnell and basically every other Republican in Congress and this Administration. Whites can do whatever they want with impunity and garner every privilege society offers. It is a far worse time in our history than many recognize. In many ways, race relations today are worse than they were in the 1960's.
544
Actually, the other reason was because he was white and male.
27
Evangelicals elected Donald Trump. Those 63 million were mostly white, but many were also black and brown. The #1 group think qualification was misogyny.
26
Amen to everything you wrote!
23
All my direct managers from first level to VP are white males. In a company of 15,000 you don't think there is a single qualified minority? It's a boys club out there and they want to keep it that way.
309
I handle all of the proxy voting for my firm (that's the annual election of directors for publicly-held corporations). I vote carefully - I research for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and length of time on the board. Why? because the corporate structure in this country will never change otherwise. Sometimes I am voting for thousands of shares, sometimes less than a hundred. But when I vote AGAINST a director, it doesn't matter how many shares I represent - someone notices.
31
That is not true where I work.
2
Bingo, Mr. Blow, once again. One of the most disgusting aspects of this is the gall of those white commentators who just love to accuse African Americans of claiming victim status [a variation on the tired "playing the race card" complaint], even as they, like Trump, portray themselves as the real victims [the white race card has to trump any other, right?]. No doubt some portion of them think you, as a columnist for the NYT, ought to spend more time being grateful for this and for all those fabulous gains Blacks have made, and less time criticizing those who have been shoved aside to make that possible.
21
Charles, maybe you can explain how Barack Obama won the votes of these white racists. Maybe you can explain how these white racists voted for Obama instead of McCain, Obama instead of Romney. The black Democrat wins, twice. The white woman loses the Democrat primary to the black man.
Maybe the difference is that the black men didn't call his white voters "deplorable," whereas the white woman did. Obama campaigned in Wisconsin and the other battleground states and won. Hillary did not bother campaigning in Wisconsin and the other battleground states, so she lost. Obama oozed honesty and decency, while Hillary oozed slime and corruption and dishonesty.
And maybe, just maybe, Trump did not win because he was Trump. Maybe Trump won because he was not Hillary. Simple, very simple.
47
You missed this line:
"Simply put, Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy. "
HC's loss was also due to misogyny. Simple, very simple.
1
Barack Obama won because he energized the electorate, was an extremely intelligent public speaker and also in 2008 it was still bad form to admit you wouldn't vote for a black man, it could get you labeled Racist and that was something people avoided out in the open. You've already witnessed the Republican reaction to his Presidency from scheming to "make him a one term president" to calling out "liar" while he was addressing Congress, with no repercussions to the caller. He would never have been allowed to get away with a fraction of a percent of the heinous things the current squatter in the oval office has done, I mean if they lost it over a tan suit, I imagine impeachment proceedings were drafted and sitting in Boehner's desk just waiting for the first misstep.
1
Nope. Sadly, he won because he is Trump. He is the symptom, his supporters the disease.
1
I must be missing an important component of being a white male, as I have never in my life experienced apprehension over losing whatever special status my whiteness and maleness have given me.
Further, in my career as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I've taught pretty much only students of color. I've worked under nine principals, of whom one was white, one Hispanic, one Nisei, and six black. Some were good, some not so good, and one or two were horrible, but race had nothing to do with it.
Whatever else ails me, I'm grateful for one thing - aside from being white and male, I have nothing in common with Donald Trump.
54
I salute you, neighbor! Thank you for being a male teacher in a public school system - something we do not have nearly enough of!
2
You're right -- you are missing an important component. Because you're from a very multicultural place, you didn't have the experience of growing up with the expectation that only white men really matter. You haven't built your career on in-group connections among white men. Many people's life experiences are different from yours, though. It's worth getting out of LA to learn about them.
3
this is the component. white people do not have to think about being white. the experience of most other people is that numerous situations in their life force them to think about their race.
3
Mr Blow, I worked for Wonder Bread starting in the 1960s in NYC. Over the course of my service with the largest bread baker and distributor in the country , I was aware of the intense pressure put on CBC, the parent corporation, by Operation Breadbasket and similar organizations. We underwent massive hiring campaigns aimed at employing and promoting minority (read black) personnel. As a sales manager I received intense pressure to promote minority supervisors to higher management positions, regardless of merit. I did not do so. In later years when discrimination suits where brought against the bakery for which I worked, other management personnel I worked with were named in several suits charging racial discrimination. I was not named.
In later years I attended national sales meetings and there were always a disproportionate number ( to total sales mgmt") of minority regional vice presidents and regional sales mgrs. Having observed American business practices in a large American corporation through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, I agree with Trump.
16
Wow, you just don't seem to understand that sometimes society has to take innovative steps to right long standing wrongs and advance. Personally, I am willing to make reasonable sacrifices when needed for the greater good. But, it's sad to see that others--in this case, Trump supporters-- are too wrapped up in themselves to be willing to make even small sacrifices for a better country and a better world. Come to think of it, that's also the definition of Trump as he has been incredibly self centered his whole life.
And that "disproportionate number ( to total sales mgmt") of minority regional vice presidents and regional sales mgrs" is now represented in the "disproportionate number" CEO's, CFO's. "Forbes top wealthiest Americans," major shareholders of American corporations?
Of course not. Wake up! They that have the money and power, are still white Americans. And the system that pushed those tokens of diversity, was a deliberate and obviously well done, ruse to inflame white men who had little and now have even less to blame minorities.
What conclusions do you draw from the fact that you were not named in suits charging racial discrimination?
It is important to include gender as well. Many men are seeing their primacy declining as women ascend in all aspects of life and society.
39
Maybe that is why the white man defeated the woman for Mayor of New York City. Maybe that is why the white man defeated the woman for governor of New Jersey. White men defeated women in one of the bluest cities in the country and one of the bluest states in the country. I'd love to read how progressives explain that, while explaining that Hillary lost because of misogyny.
1
It would help if our tv shows did not portray men as stupid, fat, useless fathers and husbands. Can we not have good, inspiring portrayals of both sexes?
A perfect example: rural Wisconsin, a place that resents cities, mostly because they are full of "those people".
13
And I had a friend , a former work colleague, who having moved back to Michigan in retirement deplored "those people" in Flint, MI who wanted everything for nothing. Yes, like simply that their state officials not poison their water!
On point. And who is really responsible for hollowing this country out economically and causing this uneasiness, this anger, this fear and instability? White men as CEOs and the religion of maximal profits, no matter if that comes at the expense of the communities and the country where the companies began. Yet they are somehow immune to real consequences because they are considered a "success" in the white narrative. If you get rich, you're special and have all the answers. Yet their success has moved the possibility of even middle-class stability and success further away for the majority of all citizens. And who gets blamed for the problems? Black people, brown people, Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants...again.
17
The U.S. doubled its population since the 1960s. More than a third of the current 330 million is here as 3rd world immigrants and chain migration relatives, not all of them legally. It does no one any good to refuse to understand the economics of those political choices and laws that upended the lower class and then the middle class. It is not a fantasy that immigrants, legal and illegal, lower the wages and income of Americans, especially in smaller cities where employment is tighter.
18
Actually it is the fact that wages have been stagnant for most americans of any race since the 80s'. It isn't the immigrants who caused this, it the economic policy that has made people poorer.
Businesses have gotten away with keeping wages low, there is no pressure on them to raise wages. Reagan destroyed the unions and their bargaining power.
The US is setting record profits and the money is going to the rich and not to those who need it. It is because there is no organized effort by workers to demand wage increases.
And corporate america has been very good at making workers fight amongst themselves instead of working together. And as long as workers keep fighting amongst themselves, the rich will keep wages down for everyone.
It's amazing that people think labor isn't effected by supply and demand. Keep bringing in people for whom $10 an hr is more money than they ever imagined, and act surprised when wages don't raise.
There is no getting around it. Trump has been playing the race card his entire life. His rise to the presidency was built on birtherism and the denigration of the Obamas. While Trump continues to stoke the flames of white resentment, the Obamas continue to take the high road. I'm following the lead of the Obamas. They exemplify the spirit of an America that truly is great.
18
The angry man in the photo -- the man pushing up a sign with a straightened arm reminiscent of a Nazi salute -- the man with his mouth shaped like Pavarotti singing "Nessum Dorma" -- what does he want?
My hypothesis is that it's not what he wants for himself.
It's what he doesn't want others to have.
He can live where he can afford to live, without fear of being denied entry due to being white. But it's OK that others can't.
He can walk into a Starbucks and wait for his friends to arrive before ordering, without fear of being arrested. But it's OK that others leave in handcuffs.
If he does get stopped by the police, he need not fear being mistreated, with or without cause.
And he probably thinks that he's earned all these advantages. Maybe he did work hard to do well in school, to earn degrees, and to advance his career. But I suspect that he did not learn that being born white in America comes with unearned privilege.
29
Cynthia, don't forget about being born a while male.
1
the thing isn't racial resentment, the thing is yet another example of white people, completely secure in their racism, putting the uppity brown folks of the world back in their place.
Yes, the narrative of anxiety is ridiculous, but resentment is not accurate either. these are people who believe that some humans are less than they are, and it's that simple. and dealing with that reality is something that Mr. Blow hasn't begun to deal with. it is too painful to believe exists, much less confront.
5
Didn't trump lie his way onto the Forbes 400 list? And then used that position to leverage loans and investments from the unwitting? And he thinks he's disadvantaged? A black person with a college degree and an 800 credit score would be thankful to get a fair mortgage rate in an un-redlined neighborhood.
23
You actually think you get a loan from being on a forbes list and they don't check your credit! I think you're the uneducated person who keeps propaganda alive!
1
"Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy."
I share your optimism Charles... we can only hope.
16
Sadly, blacks and browns are just as much the pillars of patriarchy as whites are. The fastest growing demographic of evangelicals is latino, with large swaths of blacks. This is going to end in a schism of the Democratic Party, which will split over women's constitutional right to birth control and abortion. Some of those evangelicals of color will walk over to the GOP solely on that issue. Buckle up, especially if you're female, unsurprisingly. Expect the Dems to cave and go all in for the people of color over women's right to choose their health and well-being.
2
This article makes so much sense. The irony is that Trump himself reading this would need a translation the words are way too big , the fact that it is based on facts research and and presented so logically would most likely confuse him he might not even complete reading it. But it is so true.
12
There's a refreshing willingness by various NYT contributors to start write honestly about what's tantamount to a nascent civil war. Call it reactionary struggle, a counter-revolution, an insurgency, whatever: it's been fueled by governments whose right-wing participants have - at local, state and the national level - purposely made it difficult or impossible for effective policy to be made that addresses the social, economic and political problems that impoverishes lower and middle classes (especially after the Great Recession), in the synergistic and realized hope that it will fuel anger and resentment towards government that, in turn, further solidify their position of power. Paul Krugman et al. have written extensively about the socio-economic side. Charles Blow et al. are writing about the racial/xenophobic side. But the big elephant in the troika of reaction remains to be addressed: religion, particularly those who have long resented that the USA is supposed to be a secular republic (separation of church and state), rather than a theological authoritarian dictatorship, much like the churches and local communities that they run particularly in the south. It's the embodiment of Dixiecrat counterrevolution and their northern/western sycophants. I hope it burns itself out soon...say November 2018. I'm not optimistic.
14
Why, oh why, are so many Democrats unable to simply read a middle school history book? The Dixiecrats were a failed faction of the Democratic Party that came and went with the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
2
The problem here is that it doesn't explain why Trump-like candidates have done well in countries with relatively small minority populations. It is possible that anti-immigrant sentiment takes the place of white racism in those places. But it seems to me an overbroad explanation.
7
Right-wing candidates tend to project an angry persona. If a voter feels put-upon but doesn't have the intellectual capacity or the willingness to analyze the reasons for his misery, he is likely to look at the angry candidate and say, "That guy understands me. He'll make it all better."
It can also stem from disillusionment with centrist parties. When Labour took over the British government after 18 years, they not only failed to undo Thatcher's worst policies but added new annoyances of their own. The voters turned on them in 2011.
This should have been a warning to the timid, centrist Democrats, with their propensity to just react to the Republicans instead of coming up with their own bold initiative (and no, the ACA was a Republican idea originally).
When people who were miserable in 2008 couldn't see what eight years of Obama had done for them, the result was a rejection of the Democrats.
There is always the other for them that they can blame. It doesn't have to be racial, it can be just some minority.
The jews for many centuries have been scapegoated. In Turkey, the Kurds are the oppressed minority, before then it was the armenians.
Putin does the same thing, he uses hate to have support. Even if he has to make up things to have someone to hate.
Hate and fear of the other is a strong motivator. Demagogues have many times been successful in using them to win power everywhere in the world.
Ah, Mr. Blow, if only the 40 percent who support Trump would read this superb editorial with an objectiveness they are unwilling to possess. Many Trump people would be appalled by the charge they are racist on one level or another, but they are because they support a racist and a demagogue. He constantly back pedals enough as president--North Korea, the missile strike in Syria, the cozy relationship with Macron--to make him appear to be legitimate when, in fact, he is inadequate as a leader and is a legitimate racist. I hope soon the 40 percent will begin to take a precipitous dive toward only those who are admittedly racist--10 percent?
11
Well written and right on target...as always! Thanks again Charles.
6
I read some detractors but I believe you have touched on something significany. I don't think it is all about black/white racism, though mostly; it is also about mysogyny and anti-Muslim beliefs. It is that quesy feeling some people must have felt when Jackie Robinson broke into Baseball, or Tiger Wood broke into Golf. It is the feeling a guy might get when he reads about a girl beating the guys in a wrestling championship. There is a cultural barrier that puts people in buckets and if you are in the top bucket with a champion you don't want to share it and you get misplaced vicarious self inflation from your "champion". Things are better but SOMEONE is trying to push us down the mountain we must climb.
3
Exactly correct.
Whites are not losing ground in the sense that they are falling behind minorities. They are losing ground in that they no longer have such a head start.
199
Of course the irony is that the competition should not be between black and white, or male and female - unity across race and gender would pose a threat to the most powerful and wealthy - division serves existing power and deprives all races and both genders - deprives the majority, weakening all when unity would make a powerful strong and huge group which if they supported each other could change the face of politics, economic justice and the world.
3
Mr Blow asks...What do you call people who nurse a deep racial resentment, who don’t openly endorse racism but nevertheless knowingly benefit from it, who endorse broad racial progress in theory but in practice are strenuously opposed to disturbing the racial status quo, who work in concert, consciously or not, to defend racial primacy. What do we call those people?
The Times has picked two comments by white men who have reacted very defensively to Mr Blow's questions. I'm sorry to see it. I hope more white people are willing to learn because the same answer applies to all of Mr Blow's questions. Those people are called racists and there are more of them than we white people had any idea. Let's stop denying a problem and start fixing it.
Any white liberal who is still in any doubt, conduct your own study. Wear a Black Lives Matter button and watch people react. It's interesting. It's also scary, and enlightening.
Thank you Charles Blow.
13
I remember all of the pundits and journalist saying that Hillary needed to appeal more to the white working class voter. They were neglected by the Democrats. However, many of these voters left the Democrats long ago during the Reagan era. The Obama economy primarily benefited whites and it was booming. So why all of the angst? I for one knew it was racism. There was a general feeling that with the Obama election, whites were losing ground. Despite the fact, whites had the lowest unemployment in the nation, occuppied mostly all of the positions of power and controlled the wealth in the United States. When I viewed three of Trump's rallies first hand, I was sickened by the sight of tons of Nazi, KKK, and other white supremacist paraphernalia. I was sickend that the media glossed over this and his appeals to all of the hate groups. I was convinced his campaign and supporters were all about racial superiority. When 53% of white women voted for a sexual predator and misogynist, against their own self interest that really made me frightened for my country. It wasn't the economy stupid. The median income for whites that voted for Trump was $70K. Also, Hillary won the white working class voter. It was middle and upper class whites who wanted to put POCs back in their place who voted for Trump. We didn't need a study to prove this. The information was out there from the start. Ask any POC.
15
More nonsense from Blow and the academics. The dems lost because Hillary Clinton was a terrible option. I guess times have changed and everyone would be even better if it was not only for those "whites" in the red states. Priceless! Why does the asian american community do well in the US? When will identity politics stop and we can focus on the real issues? Education, job creation, broken families and $21T of debt. By the way unemployment is the lowest since 1969! Why?
16
Trump was a terrible option also given all the negatives he had.
Unemployment was the lowest under Obama, Trump had the luck to inherit what Obama didn't inherit from Bush.
As for the issues, the republicans have fought against education, job creation, broken families, and the debt (in which they just added a trillion and a half to it and are planning to add more with another tax cut for the rich.), etc.
When are the republicans stop helping the rich and help the rest of us? So far they show no sign that they will stop enriching the wealthy.
1
You must have missed the point of the article he's saying economics had nothing to do with why people voted for Trump.
This election was all about white identity politics.. get it?
1
The "white rebellion" that I see happening now - slowly, but powerfully - is the change of attitude by individuals who will transform our world for the better: the #MeToo movement, #BlackLivesMatter and the youth protesting gun violence in schools are fueling that internal awakening - call it crusade, Jihad or a neo-Zionism (a la Bernie Sanders) - within the so-called "white" people of the USA. If it manifests itself in this years interim elections the dynamics of how we self-govern will change.
1
All of this seems to me undeniable. And of course it's terribly sad that so many voters are unable to see past the superficial differences among Americans and embrace a sense of common purpose, especially since this weakness has now made us vulnerable to foreign interference. That some Americans have more allegiance to Vladimir Putin than to non-white fellow citizens is deeply depressing, and it obviously isn't because of Russian living standards! On the other hand, it is hard to believe that we would be where we are now if the living standards of working-class Americans had not stagnated or declined in recent decades. The decline in life expectancy among working-class whites is not due to their racial attitudes. These voters would probably not see themselves as losing some imaginary competition with minorities and immigrants if they had not in fact lost anything. The problem maybe be racial animus, but the solution may still be economic. Of course that solution will not come from the Republican party, which is clearly determined to increase economic inequality. Witness Mulvaney's gratuitously cruel proposal to increase rents for people in subsidized housing.
7
Mr. Blow is pretty oblivious of everything but his racist notions. If you want to get a job, and guarantee your continued employment as a black male, get a Ph.D. You will get plenty of offers, and if you are minimally competent, you will get tenure. I have worked with several black males, one of which was competent. All got tenure. All had good careers. Several were marginally able. The black male is a prized commodity in academia.
13
OK, now take a look at your white male colleagues. How many of them were "competent," and how many were "marginally able"?
Try living one or more majority black city and not be disenchanted when those majors and their staff do the perp walk for corruption and graft - as black voters elect the same crooked tribe of thieves again and again.
1
That's the point. White males must be more than capable, brilliant even, while black males get tenure by breathing on a consistent basis.
Please, please, somebody explain in specific legal language what Trump has done that is unconstitutional...then explain how it is that white people have such advantages and others don't. Anybody?
8
Okay, how about this. (This is admittedly not a legal description.) Imagine that you want to hire a secretary. You have in your mind an image of a secretary. Is that imaginary secretary male or female? Pretty, plain or ugly? Straight or gay? Young or old? White or black, Indian, Native American, Mexican or Asian? Buff, thin or fat?
At what point have you started imagining what you would like to see on that person's resume or do you even imagine looking at his/her resume? Imagine the job interview. What characteristics are you looking for and what kind of salary would you think of offering your potential secretary? Do you foresee offering that imaginary secretary a promotion? Why or why not?
Now, do the same assessment when it comes to imagining hiring a doctor, a lawyer, a banker, a nurse, a wait-staff, a janitor or a gardener. The image that you have in your head about the race, the gender, the weight and the other superficial qualities is what shows your bias. If you are willing to put your innate biases aside and hire the person based purely on their character and qualifications shows the willingness that you have to rise above your biases.
1
Different examples of obstruction of justice: 1. Asking Comey to drop the Flynn investigation. Twice.
2. Firing Comey for the Russian « thing. »
3. Attempting to fire mueller last June. WH counsel threatened to resign if he did.
4. Taking part in release of house Intelligence cherry picked memo
to attack FBI, mueller.
And these are just a few.
Wait till we see the money laundering, bank fraud, Russia.
2
The history of the US explains how whites have the advantages. From slavery through jim crow through housing and job discrimination that continues to this day.
As for Trump, it is how he keeps enriching himself with his policies. The tax cut that helps people like him, the most % of it went to the rich, who were already doing quite well. It was doubling the rent on all his properties when he became president. It was his insisting that he could run his businesses while being president. His insisting that laws don't apply to him and he can do whatever he wants.
1
We’re all just members of some identity group, floating through time, playing to type. No more are we individuals making choices and living lives. And there’s always someone else to blame. To look at me is to know me.
This is such a sad and pathetic outlook, and the polar opposite of what we were all taught from about 1965 to 2012. It will destroy the country much faster than unfortunate but only occasional instances of racism.
5
Mr. Blow you are 100% correct and I am afraid at this point Trump voters/supporters have no where to hide. No one has benefited from Mr. Trump's election except the Trump family, few white male billionaires, white corporate CEOs and of course Putin. After almost 18 months into Trump administration his approval should be in the single digits. There is only one reason any one would be hanging on to Trump and backward policies is of course white male privilege wrapped up as many shinny objects. Lock her Up or Build the Wall are directed at women and minorities Muslim Ban is not only directed at the color of the their skin but their religion. You have hit the nail on the head when you identified white anguish encapsulated. It is ugly and may undermine America democracy but this is the result of Trump supporters lying to themselves just like Trump lies to them. Trump is not interested in MAGA all he is interested in is Trump.
11
The racist whites referred to in this article are the same people that helped elect President Obama. Many of us white guys who voted for Obama were jaw on the floor flabbergasted he and Holder spent every waking moment fanning racial flames in Ferguson and Baltimore instead of trying to support law enforcement and the rule of law. Obama never said anything to help. He drove the wedge deeper. Part of Trump's success is the reaction to that.
11
Really Steve? C'mon. So you're issue with Obama and Holder, et al was that they fanned the flames of racism in their reaction to Ferguson and Baltimore? Wow, what tunnel vision you exhibit.
So I guess that you should be over the moon by now with all of the 'fanning racial flames' that Trump has done with so many issues all over the country. You should be apoplectic by now if it bothered so much with Obama. But wait, let me guess - it's different with Trump and Sessions. Yeah, sure, all-righty, got it.
7
This is as silly a piece of generalizing as any of Trump's ridiculous generalizations. Until this analysis becomes much more nuanced and deeper, Trump and Trumpism will have all the oxygen it needs. For instance, you have not accounted for the voter that actually determined the outcome of the election - the Obama-Trump voter. Do not be overawed by academic studies and beware of large generalizations from narrow data sets.
12
Charles, you write: “Simply put, Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy (WS) and patriarchy. He is one of its Great White Hopes.”
Charles, read this new study by Kathleen Belew, “Bring The War Home – The White Power Movement and Paramilitary Movement in America” and your belief in “last gasps” will may go up in smoke.
Trump speaks for the people whom Professor Belew examines. They are not gasping.
Charles, consider this: Beliefs in WS rest on the practice established by the United States government in 1790 and maintained ever since that says that in the USA there are “races” one of them seen by Donald Trump and the WS as genetically distinct/genetically superior. This belief in superiority of a narrowly defined white race is a fundamental element of WS. “Narrowly defined” since I know that WS supported the USCB proposal to create a new race MENA, that would have removed all with Middle Eastern/North African roots from the present USCB race, “white”.
Charles, could you please devote some thought to this proposal by former USCB Director Kenneth Prewitt.
End classification by race and ethnicity and instead simply characterize each of us by creating a data base and registry employing SES data and, my addition, medical history data.
Where would that leave the white supremacists if the government took their white race away from them?
Please reply Charles Blow.
Only-NeverInSweden
Dual citizen US SE
Not sure if Blow has looked at the representatives in our government lately. If this represents "white anguish" and this is white's last gasp of air, how long does he think they can hold their breath? Last I checked, 90% of the Senate is "white" and mostly male and has been for over 250 years. When does Blow expect this representation to coincide with America's population demographics? The year 3300?
1
We can thank Fox News for getting conservative white Americans to think that their victims.
As a reminder, whites still own 95% of the wealth of this nation.
7
I'm married to a Black woman with a Ph.d who does diversity trainings and social justice workshops for universities, corporations, medical schools, and educational institutions. When she hears about people who claim they voted for Obama and then switched to Trump she's incredulous. How could that be? To vote for the first Black president and then vote for the most racist president in history eight years later is comparable to being a devout Muslim and then switching to atheism. And those who claim they voted for Bernie and then for Trump? All that proves is their sexism "trumped" their ability to think rationally. I've been saying what Charles Blow just wrote for the last 17 months: racism and sexism put Donald Trump in the White House. Hillary didn't lose. We ALL lost.
30
Social justice workshops? I spit coffee through my nose at that one.
Well, call me. My friend voted Obama, then Trump, because she wants hope and change and to make America great again. Which is to say, she wants the pension she was promised from the airline she retired from, but when they went bankrupt, she lost everything, and no Dem or Rep ever cared.
2
Charles: The Washington Post study only involved white millennial supporters of Trump, not all white supporters of Trump. I've spoken frankly with many white non-millennial Trump supporters and none of them even hint at racial resentment as a reason for their support of Trump. The Post study itself notes that even among white millennials only 41% supported Trump. In any case, while it may be comforting for some white millennials to believe that the erosion in their sense of superiority is attributable to minorities, and comforting for those who dislike Trump supporters to believe that they are racist, the fact is that the decline in this country's economic dominance is the result of globalization and automation. Focusing on racism is not going to do anything to address the continuing negative impact of those forces on those who make up this country's working class - white, black or brown.
8
And refusing to admit anything about the deep racism in this country won't solve anything.
Continuation of my post--3rd part
When people feel “economically subjugated”—turned down in hiring they turn down to crime. incarcerated population (the US has the highest number of incarcerated people) The ramifications are too many:
The enforcement complex—lawyers, court costs, police forces, jails cost and not to be forgotten all the security costs – guards, camera installers, And finally psychological related costs—psychologists, and the like—and lost wages from psychological trauma from the victims…All these costs added are probably higher than if you would put all the incarcerated back to work and pay them the prevailing manufacturing costs (like in the 80’s ($20 range hourly rate—I think)
instead we would like to consume products in countries where the hourly rate is $2 an hour and pay $50 to the police forces enforcement - forces (rate here in California). It is “totally absurd.”
Also the costs of psychological costs---psychologists and the like – and lost wages (trauma to the victims).
Just to be remarked—when people has security – civil servants, for example, the crime is practically non existent—all colors and races (white, black and green—sorry).
I would find it myself probably more amenable to personal enjoyment to work in a factory line than trying to chase criminals—and putting everyday my life on the line.
2
A continuation of my post.
Excellent analysis.
The key to all the chaos--IT IS THE CONSUMER'S DESIRE TO BUY CHEAP STUFF (ultimately to live beyond their means).
The cost of buying cheap stuff is “too expensive” and
WILL ULTIMATELY AFFECT THE MAJAORITY OF THE WORKING FORCE- with exceptions – the judicial system, police forces, the educational system.
When people feel “economically subjugated”—turned down in hiring they turn down to crime. An incarcerated population (the US has the highest number of incarcerated people) The ramifications are too many:
The enforcement complex—lawyers, court costs, police forces, jails cost and not to be forgotten all the security costs – guards, camera installers, And finally psychological remedies related costs—psychologists, and the like—and lost wages from psychological trauma from the victims…All these costs added are probably higher than if you would put all the incarcerated back to work and pay them the prevailing manufacturing costs (like in the 80’s ($20 range hourly rate—I think) instead we would like to consume products in countries where the hourly rate is $2 an hour and pay $50 to the police forces enforcement - forces (rate here in California). It is “totally absurd.”
1
Since the 2016 election, I have seen story after story telling readers about people economically displaced by technology, globalization or both. Every time I read such a story, I begin to feel sorry the people described. I can readily understand the fear and despair of someone with limited options for finding a new job that pays what the old one did and the worry about how to continue to support a family with significantly less money available. Every time, just as I have reached the point where I feel the most sympathetic, bigotry rears its ugly head. Somehow it what has happened to these people is always someone else's fault: black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, Muslims, Jews, women -- anyone who isn't like them. Many (most?) Trump supporters eagerly blame the nearest scapegoat for their situation. The further problem is that some of these people then act on their resentment, causing the major upsurge in hate crimes that has happed since the election. Charlottesville did not happen in a vacuum. Trump and his enablers encourage both the language of racism and the actions that result from it by their own speech and behavior. Until and unless that changes, I don't see how we can begin to heal and come together as a country determined to live out what our founding fathers said they were creating: a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, with liberty and justice for all.
4
I have been hoping that this is true: "Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy." California has its White Rebellion in 1994. California Proposition 187 (also known as the Save Our State (SOS) initiative) was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal aliens from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in the State of California. (from Wikipedia) It was clear that the bill was intended to "save our state" from people who had brown skin...It was legally challenged and finally "dropped" by the Governor at the time.
From my perspective, as a native Californian, it seemed like a "last gasp" and many say it was the catalyst for turning the state so strongly "blue" and democratic. I really keep hoping that people who voted for Trump, including some of my family members, will see that the diversity that is California's reality now and becoming more true for the rest of the country is our strength, not a threat.
The "good old days" were never good for everyone and we often need what many see as "big government" direction to do the equitable thing. I strive to keep an empathetic and welcoming presence to those who are expressing fear (as that what has been stoked by the person in the White House and many in the Fox news alternate reality shows), but it is time to call out racism and discrimination for what it is. And that I will not tolerate nor accept. Thank you
4
Your list of "What do we call..." questions is very telling. As a WASP (and now retired) I have seen all of these types of racism and they are very insidious. I am not sure how to prod white people to introspection, but I have seen some motivation by some of the appalling killings of black men by police. All of the older white men who I have discussed this with have come to some variation of "How can it be this terrible?" and "How can people shoot black men so easily?". It is appalling to say this, but some of the outrageous, tragic video has increased awareness of discrimination and yes hate. We HAVE to do better than this...
3
What Trump supporters around here are saying is how great the economy is doing.
Part of the problem is that most Republican voters never got the great economic news when it was Obama.
I keep saying that Republicans are way better at PR.
Looking at Fox, they are talking about the great job growth of 2017 which was 2.06 Million.
What their listeners aren’t hearing is the following:
2011 2.09 million
2012 2.14 million
2013 2.30 million
2014 2.09 million
2015 2.71 million
2016 2.24 million
2017 2.06 million
So Trump is down about 10% from Obama’s 2016 number and the worst in the past seven years.
And then Republicans just past another tax cut for the rich that will give the average tax payer around $7,000 over then next ten years.
But it will add $10 Trillion to the debt over the next ten years which is $67,000 per tax payer.
I wouldn't mind if Trump voters got fleeced.
But I am getting fleeced, too.
5
"white fear of displacement from dominance." More like 'local' fear: the same fear growing in Europe. Its primary focus is immigration: everywhere it wants borders to be closed. But it can be exploited by racists: in Europe anti-Jewish feeling is on the rise, for example. Dangerous times.
"The idea that the primary motivator for Trump supporters was economic anxiety was a false narrative" Actually, I think people don't see the degree to which their anxiety has economic roots. The poorest 95% of Americans have gone from owning 60% of the country to just 25% in the last 4 decades. So there are a lot of folks for whom this is not a rich nation: they are being told by Fox News that further immigration will make them poorer and they are voting that way.
3
My few coworkers in this deep blue region who did own up to voting for Trump said it came down to him being "strong" or "tough", "not a pushover" and "annoying to liberals". Somehow they conflate politeness with weakness.
1
"...the petrifying fear young white men feel about the erosion of their privilege..."
Is it just pretence when people ascribe this or that to "fear?" Does Mr Blow really think "young white men" are "afraid" of the way the Left is trying to drag this country?
Don't mistake anger for fear. It's not "white fear of displacement from dominance," it's white anger at forever being blamed for the failures of others, of forever being expected to be endlessly tolerant of, and generous with, people who patently hate us.
I suppose Mr Blow believes we're "afraid" of him. Or, at least, wants to believe it.
Sorry, but that's just not the way it is.
5
Kayne West has been receiving a lot of flack for supporting and having voted for Donald Trump. He has called him a brother and friend. Why is it that blacks are not permitted to vote for Republicans and make up their own minds? Why is it that they are expected to vote for Democrats only?
Diamond and Silk are popular black social media personalities who are Republicans and President Trump supporters. Their Facebook page was taken down probably because they did not toe the liberal propaganda line. They have been very outspoken about this phenomenon and have said that blacks should be able to make up their own minds. They have been quite critical of President Obama and felt he did not do enough for black people. They are adamant that President Trump is supportive of blacks and they count him as a close friend. Shocking isn't it for blacks to like and support him.
My point is that there has been a bias against blacks who have voted for Mr. Trump as well as whites who have supported him. It has had absolutely nothing to do with being racist but rather they think he is qualified to run our country. So far he has succeeded and let's let him continue to make America great again.
34
Let's start with the obvious, it is Kanye West, not Kayne West. Now for the more subtle issue, specifically which successes do you refer to? In what way has he made America great again? By ceding market leadership in emerging technologies to China? By championing a tax bill most favorable to real estate interests like himself? Or perhaps the $1.50 a week extra waitresses in Wisconsin are getting from that same tax giveaway is the great success story? If this is what "winning" and "greatness" looks like, I've had more than enough, thank you!
78
Fail to see how criticism of Kanye West and a couple of bloggers who happen to be POC and support DJT is evidence of "bias".
I will totally admit to bias against people who vote against their self-interest. Against petty plutocrats who thieve from the needy while squandering wealth on the already favored. To those ignoring science to argue for coal production and rejection of international accords to protect the global climate. Against imposing religious tests to determine who may enter this country. And seeking to deport minors and hard working people who have paid US taxes and are contributing to the life of their communities.
Obviously, no group is monolithic.
Bias against a few celebrities of color choosing to support DJT? Not really.
36
What exactly has Trump and his allies done for Black people in our country? Just one thing. Not in your imagination- in real life. Please, tell us.
43
If I were starting off today, I would love to have a father with a large stock of rental housing, and enough cash to jump start me into something until I acquire his properties. I think that would give me a distinct advantage.
5
I generally agree with Charles Blow's analysis, but suggest a word be added. Rather than "Support for Trump was largely motivated by white fear of displacement from dominance"...I suggest this sentence should read "Support for Trump was largely motivated by white MALE fear of displacement from dominance." At the same time as using race baiting throughout the campaign to attract white support, the Trump campaign was also doing the same with respect to the possibility of electing a female President. The Trump campaign was successful - at least in part - by deliberately pulling on the strings of both resentments which appear to run deep in American society. This is not to say that Blow's column is not correct, but to go further to highlight another powerful resentment also at play. Having been successful in using these resentments to win the Presidency, rather than showing Presidential leadership to bring a divided country together, Trump continues to play upon the resentments and widen the divides.
4
Another sad column from Mr. Blow. Too bad that he's so angry that he can't see the opportunities that Kanye West can easily articulate Instead, Mr. Blow just stews in resentment.
12
It's not resentment, it's called racism.
1
I read and respect Charles Blow, but this piece puts all whites into the same "basket," if you will. I invite Mr. Blow and everyone to read Thomas Edsall's Times piece about actual election results in 2016 (03/29/18, "The 2016 Exit Polls Led Us to Misinterpret the 2016 Election."
In Edsall's analysis, exit polls had Sec Clinton losing the white college educated vote 49% to 45%. The actual election results had her winning this same group 55%-38%.
Clinton won only 28% of the white non-college educated group (white working class), but this group, the wwc, cast 44% of the total vote, far higher than the exit polls said. But buried in these data, and seemingly forgotten, is the fact that 25% of Clinton's total vote came from the wwc. And President Obama got 8 points higher than Clinton among the wwc, an inconvenient fact that should expand the discussion beyond just race.
And Edsall cites a Pew poll from 03/20/18 that "...33% of Democratic voters and leaners are whites without college degrees." This wwc bloc is the largest voting and Dem leaning bloc in the Democratic Party, larger than the 26% of white Democrats with college degrees, the 28% of minorities without degrees, and the 12% minorities with college degrees. There are great opportunities here.
I was never with the racist deplorables, but I am utterly sick of being lumped into the same basket with them. Given the actual 2106 numbers, to do so is insulting. It is also gross political incompetence.
8
Trump swept rural WI yet some of those Trump voters also voted for Obama and some also voted for Bernie in the primary..
The job of Democtratic candidates is to win back those who switched from Obama to Trump. I wish the survey would have been done with the switch voters not whites in general.
Therein lies the often slim margin of victory.
There are very few Black people in those districts and to some extent lack of contact made them easy to sway.
Job security is still very much an issue here.
7
The real story in WI is that 26,000 more voted in the Senate race than voted in the POTUS race. In other words, 26,000 could not decide who they disliked more, Clinton or Trump. 26,000 was much larger than the Trump victory margin.
4
Its so sad that white people who run the world feel so put on by all those other races. Since the beginning of America, racism has been a core foundation for this country. I can only hope that we the people who actually have an education that is more than Fox news will go and visit the new museum that addresses Lynching in America. To think about the magnitude of hate that white people have had within there hearts and still hold so dear. Think of the brutal police murders, churches, Waffle house the list is endless. Brutally murder black individuals who truly make America great off of there back breaking labor with the ultimate opportunity to be a victim of a lynching because of there color. Or white folks just needed some entertainment for the evening. Trump will always be linked with Roy Cohen and remembered as one of the worst President whose signature statement was brining hate back into fashion.
15
I whole-heartedly agree that racial resentment played a role in that man's election.
But gender resentment was also a huge factor.
I know too many educated, suburban white men who saw Hillary Clinton as every girl who ever turned them down for a date, every female co-worker who was "unfairly" promoted over them, the nuns who scolded them in elementary school, the school nurses who sent them back to class to take exams, etc.
How do I know this? Because they admit it -- they voted for him because they "just couldn't stand her." I find it interesting that these men seem to have no compunction acknowledging their sexism, when I know that they would never admit to their racism.
115
It isn't just Hillary Clinton, either.
The people who have a visceral hatred of her also have a visceral hatred of Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Loretta Lynch, etc. etc.
It's worse that racism, which is why Barack Obama became president and Hillary Clinton didn't.
I have become resigned to the fact that there will not be a female U.S. president in my lifetime even as more and more women serve ably in other countries.
At this point I wouldn't support the idea of a female Democratic presidential candidate, not even the wonderful Elizabeth Warren. It's just too risky given the state of our country.
4
Charles Blow references “white Americans’ declining numerical dominance,” but according to the Census Bureau, the United States is percent 76.9 percent white, up from 72.4 percent in 2010. The Census Bureau’s most recent projection, released in March 2018, is that America will be 68 percent white in 2060. This projection is based on an anticipated increase in the number of Asian immigrants. It is also based on the assumption that United States immigration priority will continue to be “family reunification,” which seems increasingly unlikely. However, if the projection is correct, Asians—not African Americans—will become a larger minority. Intermarriage between non-Hispanic whites and Hispanic whites is so common that the distinction between the two ethnic groups will probably vanish by 2060.
Source: Table 3L Population by Race and Ethnicity: Projections 2030 to 2060, Page 7, Demographic Turning Points for the United States: Population Projections for 2020 to 2060, U.S. Census Bureau
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p25-1144.html
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217
5
As a white guy in his 50s, I'm always amazed at some of the tone deaf commentary op-eds like this produce as white people bemoan being unfairly grouped in with all those racist white people by an African American writer (who, btw, never grouped all whites in his essay...only commented on a statistically significant correlation between Trump voters and racial resentment documented in a few studies and proven self evident to anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to Trump's words or watched any given hour of a Fox News broadcast for the past 25 years). Welcome to the world of every person of color every single day! Until we stop thinking like a tribe whenever we encounter people of color who dare to point out how power operates in the world, we'll continue to get embarrassingly defensive every time the evidence of our tribal identity is exposed.
12
So, those famous words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a dream that some day my four children will be known not for the color of their skin but the content of their character", have come true and white people are NOT happy about this, because they lack the character content to be known by anything but the color of their skin. That is Trump. Yes, it is. He was white and had all the privileges of being white complete with gaining interest free loan from his Dad, after going to a private college, to start out in business. He had the audacity to smirk about blacks gaining some of the same opportunities he had handed to him and made a mess of, just as he does everything he touches. Who does he think he is? Oh, yes, as Comey reminded us even though he knows little and shows it, cares about little but himself and shows it, he is still President of the United States because being white was good enough, he only needed our country's adversary Russia to enhance along with campaign advisors, the resentment and fear that some whites feel should be their privilege alone. Nope, we are all God's children and God and justice our color blind The day of reckoning is coming.
7
And how many white people realize and how many approve of the fact that the violent behavior of the police toward African Americans is actually state-sponsored terrorism. We have the police acting as a sort of American ISIS. In the past, the white community used the fear and the fact of lynching to control black people through terror. Instead of lynching, ISIS cuts off people's heads or shoots them in the head. Today the white community has deputized the police and the justice system to maintain an atmosphere of terror in black communities by periodically shooting and/or brutalizing black people on the street and in the courts.
7
Could it be that the other option for presidency was viewed more problematic? Also a white elitist.
7
No, it couldn't. She got three million more votes. Certain states were targeted by republicans to turn a three million vote majority to a 76,000 vote electoral victory. Harping on about how Trump was preferred to the Democratic candidate just smacks of more white male privilege.
5
It could be, but it would be wrong.
One only has to look at sports commentators to see how far we have progressed. Charles Barkley puts Howard Cosell to shame in almost every category- knowledge, insight, humor, erudition- but would he have gotten a job thirty years ago in the "White Man's" world of ABC sports?
I do not think so, bro.
3
Mr. Barkley is a gem, and is a tower of humor power. Mr. Cosell was a football commentator, and Mr. Barkley is a basketball guru. So, I don't see them as comparable.
1
Racial resentment is such stupidity. What we want -- what's in all our best interests -- is for everyone to participate equally.
We love it when new ideas come along that advance our ability to live in this world -- in technology, arts, cuisine, medicine, whatever. Whenever we limit who can contribute to those ideas, we limit ourselves.
Yes, we have definite problems and inequalities that arose because of horrific acts humans did to other humans in the past. This must be rectified. And now. So in that sense, yes, racism exists. But to take the spectrum of human skin pigment and other solely physical attributes, carve it into groups and assign each group a set of inherent characteristics is so idiotic, so fallacious, so unintelligent, and so damaging to all of us, that the sooner "racism" is relegated to history, the better.
6
This column is totally absurd. Over 62 million people voted for Trump. To imply that the only reason they voted this way is because they were racist is ridiculous. The reasons they did are varied & complicated as has been reported by the MSM. This article is part of a very disturbing trend I've seen on the far left. They demand that you see this country exactly as they do, reach the same moral judgments about it, & confess all your sins. If you don't then you're a racist. Insane. Contempt has become so commonplace in public discourse, often it is seen as a normal way to engage in conversation. This is driving us further apart as a country. Blow likes to cite obscure studies to buttress his arguments. Here's one he missed. Tufts researchers have shown, shaming people for their views can backfire. In a 2011 study, three social psychologists gave college students two different pamphlets meant to combat prejudice. The first emphasized the value of nondiscrimination (“It’s fun to meet people from other cultures”). The second emphasized social norms that discourage discrimination (“People in my social circle disapprove of prejudice”). The 2nd pamphlet was not only less effective than the first in reducing bigotry; it actually led manifestations of bigotry to spike. The scholars concluded that pressuring people to accept a non-bigoted belief can engender resentment that leads them to express more bigotry than they did before. The tactics Blow is advocating are counter productive.
24
This is ridiculous. If you're not already a bigot than either of these pamphlets isn't going to make you one.
1
I am a White male who did not feel “shamed” by Blow’s commentary. He’s presenting his point of view on how racism affects voters. I think any time someone’s opinion cause a strong emotional reaction in us, it’s important to examine the thoughts and beliefs that caused it.
3
Answering all comments. As a moderate Democrat. I'm appalled at how divided we have become as a country. We have to work together to solve the many problems facing us. I think it's time for the GOP to reckon with their policies’ discriminatory effects. That would be more likely if liberals like Blow would stop carelessly screaming bigot. Blow has made an unfortunate habit of smearing everyone ...especially Republicans...who don't buy into his progressive worldview as either racists or white privileged. That's absurd. Reasonable people in politics can and do disagree about the best way to achieve an objective. Resorting to name calling doesn't persuade anyone that you are right. It has the opposite effect. It makes people dig in. Too often charges of bigotry are being used to shut down legitimate discussion. This divisive tactic—has become more central in our political discourse. The Democratic Party’s over dependence on the race card & the need to wallow in identity politics will never bring this country together. That strategy has already backfired. In the past six years the Democrats have lost the Presidency, both House of Congress, the Supreme Court, the majority of state legislatures, Governorships, & most important local offices. Republicans are now in control of a record 66 (67 percent) of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers in the nation. Want to win some of those seats back? Calling potential voters racists isn't the way to do it. It's very short sighted.
1
I actually think it's worse than this--I think that a big part of the reason Trump got elected is that many white Americans were willing to put up with an articulate, not too dark, black man who came in (as I believe it was Ll Cool J remarked) came in with a mop to clean up after white folks, but by god were not gonna be having any uppity woman after all they'd sacrificed.
In other words, I think Hillary Clinton took a lot of the hit from a repressed racism that got transubstantiated into misogyny.
14
I think the misogyny was already there by the bucket full.
3
I believe part of the feeling of vulnerability of some of the white population grew throughout the Obama administration. Racism under the surface was outraged that a black man was POTUS. It didn't stay under the surface for long. Reference, birtherism and the growth of white militia groups.
Trump built on that outrage and likely holds the same prejudices. And not just toward African Americans.
I, young white baby boomer, am dispirited that racism is still alive and well in our nation.
25
Despair grew under the Obama administration too, as no bankster ever went to jail.
2
The more racist and xenophobic Trump acts, the more desperately Trump supporters deny his, and by extension their own, racism. Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, and numerous websites help maintain the delusion but no bubble is impenetrable.
And then the guilt sets in, if only for a moment or two. And nothing feeds resentment like guilt. Whites in denial of their own racism will never forgive people of color for Trump.
7
"Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy." Thank you for stating it clearly. This is the unvarnished truth. Would that more in mainstream media had been this clear in the lead-up to our last presidential election. By vilifying Clinton, much of the "liberal" media helped Trump succeed.
14
Sure, it's all about race. That's exactly why we now have a President Trump rather than a President Clinton, part deax.
Never mind the fact that illegal immigrants are flooding the country, taking jobs and consuming tax dollars that should go to actual legal Americans. It's about inherent racism.
Never mind the fact that multi-lateral trade deals gutted communities across the country as companies fled in search of lower labor costs. It's about inherent racism.
Never mind the liberal shaming of people of faith, egged on by their conspirators in the entertainment arena, that attempted to paint religion as bigoted, intolerant and anti-progressive. It's about inherent racism.
Never mind the deep distrust of government to actually support their citizens and work to improve their lives. It's about inherent racism.
Never mind the relentless onslaught of politically correct identity politics fed by a far left wing media that balkanized the electorate, institutionalized victimization of pretty much all subgroups at the hands of the evil, white men desperate to maintain their white privilege. This one actually does have roots in the fear of inherent racism, whether or not it actually exists.
If all the left has is the well-worn narrative that Trump was elected due to the Deplorable's fear of the browning of America and their desire to maintain their dominance over the non-white population, then truly, the left has not learned anything over the past year and a half.
11
Wish I'd written this.
Well said.
1
"What do you call a person who endorses broad racial progress in theory but in practice is strenuously opposed to disturbing the racial status quo?"
"What do you call throngs of people working in concert, consciously or not, to defend racial primacy?"
"What do you call these people, among Trump’s supporters, whom studies keep identifying as racial actors, whether they view themselves that way or not?"
I think Ms. Clinton called them out correctly for what they are and in the same breath compassionately addressed the voters who were genuinely concerned with their economic well-being, but Clinton was reviled, unfairly, and as it turns out, falsely, by right-wing media/pundits and Trump propaganda who only hyped her characterization of the first group, something that now appears from this study to have been completely true.
Will right-wing media now carefully present and discuss these findings to those they misled and radicalized during the campaign? I doubt it because you know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of right-wing media outlets/pundits and all of Trump's propaganda machine into what I call the basket of deplorables.
9
Here may be the real MAGA strategy to keep the power structure and status quo: While Trump acts all offensive, racist, and misogynistic, Mulvaney dismantles the bank regulations installed after the Great Recession. Trump is a tool used by the financial "deep state" which is run, primarily, by white men.
6
I'm just going to put this out. Charles Blow is getting blow-back in these comments for restating what "the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found, [as] other studies have found: Support for Trump was largely motivated by white fear of displacement from dominance.
“ 'White Americans’ declining numerical dominance in the United States together with the rising status of African Americans and American insecurity about whether the United States is still the dominant global economic superpower combined to prompt a classic defensive reaction among members of dominant groups.'”
Nowhere does the study nor Blow state that this was the ONLY motivator, only that it was the main motivator. Yes, misogyny played a factor, a factor as repulsive as racism. Yes, economics played a factor. But that economic factor was clearly motivated by racism. And THAT aspect is clearly seen in states like Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, etc. where voters who need social welfare programs consistently vote against politicians who will advocate for those programs primarily because they see blacks, not themselves, as beneficiaries of these programs, reality notwithstanding. That one can find blacks, Hispanics and women who voted for Trump, is no refutation of the above..
9
"the inviolable dominance of white male privilege in America was entering a period in which not every shred of advantage would redound to white men, even if a vast majority still did."
Vintage Charles Blow.
Mr Blow knows as much about white men as Donald Trump knows about black men. Not much.
Both make reckless accusations about broad segments of the population so long as it serves their personal agenda and so long as their pronouncements appeal to their base fans.
Neither is capable of nuance, nor contextual understanding.
Reading the words of either is like picking at a scab.
7
" the perception that whites, through no fault of their own, are losing ground to other groups. "
That's not just a perception; it's reality. White people used to run everything. Now we just run most things. That is a genuine loss -- and it's pretty clear that more losses are coming. It doesn't matter that our loss means a more fair and just society -- it's still a loss.
Nobody's going to get that lost power and prestige back. Nobody can "make America great again," if by that you mean "reinstall total white hegemony." The sooner we white people understand that, and start mourning our losses, and then adjusting to our diminished position, the better. Until we do, you'll see more mindless reactive violence.
The future is not going to be as good for us as the past was. That's just the way it is. In the long historical view, it happens to all dominant groups, sooner or later (how many of today's Romans are still sad about the loss of their empire?). You can't win forever. All you can do is move on.
But, everybody else (including Mr. Blow): it doesn't help the mourning process when you deny the reality of the loss.
4
You're right only if the shame of working for a minority or immigrant founded company or the shame of using a minority or immigrant discovered medical cure or the shame of living in world with reasonable C02 levels due to innovation or having lots of healthy food ... etc, etc.
somehow is bigger than the advantage of all those extra brains and hearts and souls trying to Make America Greater than it Ever Was ...
Mama and sis and your baby girl all belong in the house having lots of babies, not inventing or leading or even contributing by using their salary to support a slew of baristas, chefs, real estate agents and what have you. Or paying for their social security or health care by contributing meaningful work to society along with $$ in form of taxes. Better that they MAGA by kowtowing to the men in their lives who, well, feel marginalized and therefore sit around bemoaning the lack of opportunity in your hollow instead of staying awake in class, heading off to a well funded state university, and then maybe founding the next Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amigen, right there with their well educated classmates ...
The present today is better than any past I recall .. in terms of cushiness of the average persons life. Instant communication, ability to squabble with a world of digital beings .. shelter, heat, plumbing, life spans to 80+, good health or ways to fix it
Americas dominant group is supposed to be the melting pot of like minded individuals who lift us all up.
1
Thanks Brian for your insght I don't believe anyone could have said it better nothing lasts forever is a profound statement
Have you considered the idea that maybe even with reduced social and financial clout white people will be better off than they are now in a more pluralistic society?
1
Excellent analysis. Very true, all too true indeed. As a gay white American living abroad in Europe, I am shocked to talk with white men who still, to this day, view Trump as the 'better' candidate to Clinton. I just do not understand it. Frankly these white men are almost exclusively and ostensibly heterosexual, so I think that sexuality and gender play a role in destabilizing the Trump-o-philes from those of us, the majority by several million votes (from at home and overseas), who wanted to reject his ethno-nationalist paranoia.
151
Even those white folks who do not nurse deep racial resentments do not wish to see their societal position diminish. They do not want to live in neighborhoods that are mostly people of color, they do not want to work at a job where most of their coworkers of not white, where they would have to answer to a boss that is not of their race. Or for that matter have a government that was comprised mostly of people of color. Some white people having it bad does not mean that white privilege does not exist. White fragility is when white people are too scared of the thought of losing their power to even contemplate that they are not bystanders to racism and white supremacy.
133
And yet those very same people have the nerve to call us Liberals :snowflakes." A classic case of Freudian projection.
24
I like the irony here. This was presumably written by someone in Portland, the whitest city in America.
This is performance art, right?
More seriously though, I live in a mini-Portland. It's an island of gentrified bliss in a sea of urban drama. Home values are off the chain, it's like Leave it to Beaver all the time, and it's almost embarrassing how white it is.
What's the draw? Coming home to a door that hasn't been kicked in. Waking up to a car that's still there. Trust me, I've done the open minded urban pioneer thing. The cost eventually outweighs the warm feeling one might get from feeling righteously tolerant.
When you age or attain wisdom, you'll get it too.
6
Bill, do you really love to pontificate to the "youngers"?
1
White males are seeing their working prospects diminished because many jobs are being outsourced. High paid manufacturing jobs (automobile, textile plants, are disappearing) the jobs remaining are low-paid unskilled and temporary jobs that generally "only people with very low socio-economic background (immigrants from South-Central America, Africa) are willing to take up--slaughter houses, dog food processing plants, fast food outlets.
37
And ... what about the non-white people who also lost their highly-paid manufacturing jobs?
Perhaps not being an American you are unaware (as the media seem to be), but in addition to white, working-class men, there are plenty of people of other races who, too, lost their jobs.
Plenty, I should add, who did not vote for the current president.
5
I don't think there has ever been any doubt in my mind that Trump has been and is a straight-up racist, no need to pull punches. One only needs two very public examples: The Central Park Five and the birther stance.
He may act friendly to people like Omarosa and Dennis Rodman. But those "friendships" are purely transnational, political, deals made to promote his image.
When it comes to real power, real equality, real justice Trump has shown his true colors. He wants to deny black people justice (the Central Park Five) and he looks to unseat and disparage black power (President Obama).
His promotions of Omarosa and Ben Carson were efforts to appear fair, token gestures for pundits and his base. They were photo-ops for Trump.
Also, His heart has been revealed by his effort to deny people of color entrance into his vision of white powered America through the draconian travel ban and offensive, archaic southern border wall.
There is no reason to hide it, couch it, parse it, deny it. Trump is a racist and he is our president and he is trying to destroy advancements made in the last 50 years. He needs to be impeached, 25-ed, or voted out. On this claim alone: Racist President.
292
Well, he does seem to like black people who sing his praises. He seems to be pretty equal-opportunity on that: tell him how great he is, fervidly and often, and he's more than happy to hire you. Look for Kanye West to be nominated to the next available Cabinet seat.
11
Then again,he did win Democratic PA OH Mi and WI, so somebody thought he represented their views on economic issues
2
So, in order to not be "racist", or to prove one's "wokeness" one must LIKE the Central Park 5, (whoever they are), one must be willing and HAPPY to be a victim of home invasion, mugging, car jacking, murder. Got it...
You are right in saying that accepting poorly founded premises as axiomatic is indeed an easy way to explain away what you call inexplicable
Thanks for putting this argument to rest!! Some people feel very entitled. I call it, the "I got mine mindset". They got theirs (opportunity, health insurance, etc.), so it was no concern if others got the same opportunity. And yes, they will stop at nothing to preserve the status quo, even if it means having a buffoon as President of the United States - Just saying.
3
Steven Colbert's mock conservative persona, which I usually found funny, always confused me when it made fun of conservatives claiming to be race blind.
Of course conservatives were, or at least tried to be race blind! At least that is how it seemed to many of us. How unfair of liberals to mock us for quoting MLK on a colorblind society. Identity politics were something done on the left---how could they possibly be adopted by those with a philosophy emphasizing individualism and individual rights?
BUT, satirists do so often see truths that those they mock do not. Philosophy is often less important in politics than believers hope. This is why so many of the most thoughtful conservatives were blindsided by Trumpism, and why so many remain #NeverTrump.
3
Charles I think where you make your error is putting all your eggs in one basket.
It's human nature to try to simplify but Trump voters are no more monolithic than any other group. People voted for Trump for a number of reasons. Among them economic anxiety, racism, misogyny against the female candidate, ignorance, and cultural values specific to rural areas.
Although we may not want to admit it there is a huge degree of latent racism in rural areas. These are predominately white areas without much interaction with other races and cultures. Many of them have been taught a subtle racism from the cradle. And what interaction they have with the non-white races are generally at a lower socioeconomic level. These are not by and large sophisticated people. They watch Fox TV and they believe and repeat the lies they are told.
I'm not sure what the solution is except education and exposure to other races, cultures and values. To see the benefit or tolerance and learning instead of feeling threatened. And we need to change the FCC rules so that there is a truth in our news and that propaganda and false facts are neither tolerated nor disseminated by a "News" or media organizations.
3
A simple, but not easy, solution is to get everybody educated and working and paying taxes.
Good luck with that America.
4
I love reading your columns, even though I am sometimes bemused. For me, after the 2016 election, I saw this ALL through the filter of sexism, not racism. Same analysis, same group of "resenters", but..........voting as a way to forestall the loss of their privilege under sexist patriarchy. A woman President: heaven forbid! Wouldn't you know, though: I am a white woman with a doctorate. Interesting how we can both feel a profound sense of disjunct with "our fellow Americans", even shock at the outcome, but name the reasons with variations on the same theme.
2
It is important to note that Trump said he would like to be a *well-educated* black (person?). Charles has done a great job of exploring the black angle, but the well-educated identity is just as important.
Well educated is associated with liberalism, less fundamentalism, greater independence from church dogma, greater support for gun control and access to reproductive health care, and, of course, greater economic power and privilege.
Trump supporters fear all of that, many to the point of hatred. Whether they benefit or suffer economically, they are inclined to align with anyone who attacks the interests of the well-educated (and all that they stand for), just as they are attracted to those who malign racial minority members, even if they lack the courage to openly express their own bigotry in aggressive tones.
3
It was all right there for the hearing and viewing during the campaign. The GOP has become a racial lobbying group, driven by perceived offenses and a sense of enduring grievance, mostly driven by its southern character, but spanning that geographical limitation through the bridge of cultural wedges.
I don't get racism. I don't get how people derive any benefit from thinking they are superior to someone else by virtue of their skin color. I just don't. Maybe if racism made you a more spiritual person or more like Jesus, or richer, or better looking, or happier, I might understand it.
Because I don't get it, I struggle with seeing a way to fix it and if we don't fix it, our society will continue to splinter which is not good for our families, our country or our planet.
Maybe we look to something we can all agree on. I am not a religious person, but I know that most religions promote something akin to the Golden Rule. Basically, if you find it difficult to do to others what you want them to do to you, you should try harder. You should basically fake thinking all are created equal until you can actually make it so.
People often understand the word "privilege" because it can mean so many different things, but this article describes one aspect quite well-- the confusion of white privilege with white victim-hood, i.e., white men aren't victims but merely losing some of their historically assumed privilege.
This point is expressed quite well by the old Trump quote. When I was a child, I felt thankful I wasn't black or female, based on their plight in society at the time. I can't imagine any under-educated white male Trump supporter who would trade places with an under-educated African American or immigrant, much less a woman of any color, and he knows exactly why.
1
While I broadly agree with the sad realities Mr. Blow enunciate here, I take comfort (albeit cold right now) that America roundly rejected trump and what he stands for by 3 million votes.
There are many whites of good will out there, Charles. As you say, I also believe that trump is the last great hope and after him, we'll see no more of his ilk at the pinnacle of power.
2
I'm afraid I can't share your comfort. The fact that so many Americans voted for this abomination is truly horrifying to me. I guess I was living in a bubble in a city with a diverse, educated populace. I felt so proud that America had, I thought, come so far when we elected a black man president. I'm afraid we have a very long way to go.
Valuable -- and important -- insights. We must come together to fight the hate and resentment that fuels Trump's base. I think everyone in our society needs to look into our hearts and souls. It's also important, as Mr. Blow points out, to consider the various degrees of racist thought and behavior. This is key to true understanding and eventual personal and social growth.
Our guiding principles in overcoming a turbulent, oppressive, violent and traumatic racist past must focus on fairness, justice and compassion. And we must come together, people from all backgrounds and cultures, to fight this scourge. Trump's base benefits when we let racial differences and tensions divide us. Let's heal and work together for true progress built on moral and humane behavior.
3
For many working class and immigrant whites, the old narrative was that it takes a few generations to do well. The perception now is that the "other" just goes to the head of the line and gets all of the rewards. This isn't true, but it's a perception many people share. Combined with an inferiority complex in some states (a relative of mine thinks that East Coast "liberals" look down on her as a Midwesterner) and there you have it. Racial and class resentment. What my relative doesn't realize is that most people on the East Coast are doing the best they can, too.
6
I think that no one voluntarily (or at least not happily) gives up power--even power they might not have consciously been aware of. I teach a critical thinking class, and it is undoubtedly the white male student who reacts most vehemently to articles about white privilege, who argues most intensely against "identity politics."
I think--hope--that we are in a period of transition as the demographics of our country change and the power begins to be distributed more evenly among all of us who are not white straight Christian males. (I hesitate to use the word justly since power is rarely used justly.)
People can protest all they want, but the handwriting is on the wall and we are all in for a bumpy ride.
4
It's hard to tell what's more frightening: Trump's words in 1989; the fact that he actually believes them, then and now; the fact that Trump now occupies the White House; or the possibility that a working majority of American voters believe these same words and support the figure who uttered them.
November 2018 will tell us a lot; 2020 will tell us more. Better, perhaps, is that we tell 2018 and 2020 what to believe about who we are.
7
Charles … there is such a thing as hating too intensely for one’s own emotional health.
White fear of displacement undoubtedly played a part in Trump’s election, but MORE impactful was the emotional state driven by an America that had become less consequential in a world of increasing complexity, a profound loss of confidence on the part of millions in their economic futures, and the rebellion at being characterized by HRC as a “deplorable” because they didn’t favor her candidacy. That all happened on Obama’s watch, even the peaking contempt on the left for half of America. Not all of that was Obama’s fault, only some was, but the guy on the ground when God breaks wind is the guy most likely to be blamed for it.
Trump beat out HRC on the Independent vote (48%-42%). He captured 8% of the black vote, 29% of the Hispanic vote, 36% of the young vote and 41% of women’s votes. ALL those cohorts were projected to go for Hillary in greater numbers and in the end did not. (https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/grou...
Trump is a lot of things, not MERELY “white anguish encapsulated”. He spoke to the interests and the fears of a lot of people, of ALL identities. If Democrats wish to successfully fight his re-election, they need to convince voters that all the good economic news means little and that the reasons that caused all the NON-white, NON-male, Independent and young voters to go Trump in 2016 are invalid in 2020.
Good luck to you.
26
Part of the problem is that most Republican voters never got the great economic news when it was Obama.
I keep saying that Republicans are way better at PR.
Looking at Fox, they are talking about the great job growth of 2017 which was 2.06 Million.
What their listeners aren’t hearing is the following:
2011 2.09 million
2012 2.14 million
2013 2.30 million
2014 2.09 million
2015 2.71 million
2016 2.24 million
2017 2.06 million
So Trump is down about 10% from Obama’s 2016 number and the worst in the past seven years.
And then Republicans just past another tax cut for the rich that will give the average tax payer around $7,000 over then next ten years.
But it will add $10 Trillion to the debt over the next ten years which is $67,000 per tax payer.
I wouldn't mind if you voted for Trump and got fleeced.
But I am getting fleeced, too.
3
Richard, you may be right about the economy, HRC, and all that. It doesn't change the fact that Trump is a racist. Look at The Central Park Five, the birther stance before the election. Look at the wall, the travel ban after the election (both impractical and clear racist dog whistles) Those actions by Trump truly are deplorable, and clear evidence of his racism.
6
PE:
Trump, like a lot of whites in our society who aren't pathological about it, is an en passant racist. He doesn't think much about race because his upbringing didn't emphasize it. But he responds with empathy to individual cases.
We're not likely to be able to go back in time and make his upbringing any more enlightened than we can for all the other white en passant racists in our society. All we can do is continue to assure that our kids think about it productively and empathetically. Over time, Trump and those like him will disappear from the cultural gene pool.
We're also not going to make Donald Trump a more thoughtful man at 71. If his thoughtlessness regarding race is deplorable ENOUGH to foreclose supporting him by those who support his general policies, then he won't be re-elected.
For those who despise both the man AND his policies (all of them), you're not going to obtain impeachment or otherwise drive him from office on the "high crime and misdemeanor" of being thoughtless about race.
1
The saddest part of this dynamic is that it treats our collective well-being as zero sum...one group's gain is another group's loss. Perhaps when put in this perspective it may seem like an inescapable conclusion or a tautology.
But framed differently - "Would we all be better off if say 10% of the population were systematically denied education, employment and residential opportunities that the other 90% enjoyed?" - then it's almost self-evident that the only logical answer would be "No way."
Worst of all, the secondary costs that fall out of the denied opportunities end up being horrendous. Consider that the largest department of the State of New Jersey is Corrections, and that the pension and benefit costs will continue long after an inmate's incarceration has ended.
When Dr. King said his goal for the civil rights movement was to free the oppressors, he really had no idea how much their own shackles cost them.
11
While I agree with this opinion piece, I believe that the very action of judging and labeling will undercut its message. Until we can say that we see ourselves, in another (the other), we will continue to express our lesser tendencies.
10
Another boogie man of Republicans and Trump supporters are the "liberal elite."
I learned I was the liberal elite in the Bush election of 2000.
I grew up in a blue collar family, first generation in my family to go to college.
I worked my way through high school and college, going to a state university in math and computers which I paid for myself. Saved my money and got a masters in engineering which I paid for myself.
But Bush was the regular guy even though he is third generation multi-millionaire, whose family paid for him to go to Yale and then to Harvard.
And what makes Republicans call me a liberal is that I want to help people less fortunate than myself.
Kind of sounds like a Christian but so many Christians I know go to church on Sunday and say buyer beware Monday through Friday.
I want to pay more taxes to help those factory workers with retraining and health care.
But for them, I am the liberal elite and the bad guy.
Go figure.
Obviously, the Republicans have great marketing. In fact, it is Orwellian.
480
Nah, he could have given them each a bag of gold. They didn't want to innately accept or like that it was a black man giving it to them.
4
Great comment.
4
I would say that Republicans and Trumpistas have perfected "marketing" that is Goebbelsian: "Accuse others of doing the things that you do wrong"
As for "elitists" - What could be more elitist than the flock of white male and female (except for the pathetic Dr. Carson) unqualified oligarch incompetents, including Trump himself and his family members, that take powerful positions and proceed to help themselves to the public treasury and enrich themselves, their friends, and sycophants while cutting supports for the least among us. Elite as in "the rules do not apply to me." I take pride in being snobby about those who vote for such knaves and knavettes.
6
I agree, 100% - it is sad that we use color as a symbol of hate( which it is for sure) but hate rears it's head in many forms, and people like DT encourage such behavior. One only needs to look at how self centered the other cabinet members have become, once given the opportunity. It really an ugly opportunity for sure. I am sure that many in power in DC were stunned at how efficient and forward looking Obama was as president. To their dismay for sure. And the fear of being followed by a woman in the white house OMG
9
I'm sure that for many white fellows with a high school education and mediocre job, the daily reminder that a highly articulate black man running the country (and with a gorgeous and well-spoken family) must have been a nightmare that only a Trump-like persona could end. But...now your pockets and health care are getting picked. Good luck.
113
Mr Blow, you are usually very good, but that was brilliant!
16
It truly saddens me that organizations that used to aspire to objectivity and non-partisanship like the National Academy of Sciences would violate almost every single rule of survey research by creating cringe-worthy, partisan questions to confirm their political narrative. For example, middle-class economic anxiety is NOT exclusive to any race. The very construct of "white" is a refutable category of analysis. Mr. Blow has gone off the deep end. One more able, intelligent, knowledgeable voice has been lost and we are all the poorer for it.
11
I find your comment strange. If you want to determine if someone is motivated by racial anxiety, you have to ask the question somewhat directly. Even though we can debate whether race is a construct, many people believe themselves to be "white" and this is an important identifier for them. Maybe THE most important, unfortunately. We should figure out how they really feel to combat racism. It's ridiculous to say that Mr. Blow has "gone off the deep end". If you're white, it's even more ridiculous. You should just listen and learn.
1
The NAS did no such thing, and where were you guys when Donald Trump was campaignng by whomping up the fear and resentments of your "refutable category of analysis?"
Here's how this works: in our culture, white men function as the zero on the thermometer, the reference standard against which all else is measured.
They are exactly Derrida's old, "non-center which is the center," the zero degree that anchors the system but which is not itself part of the system.
1
Yep. It is all the fault of white males. That explains the states that flipped from Obama to Trump. It explains Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
It explains West Virginia. It explains Missouri where McCain won by 0.1%, Romney by 9 %, and Trump by an astonishing 19%. It is all because of white males. That explains the huge red swath on the map.
This white male did not vote for Trump. Never even considered it. But please, continue to nominate corporately owned DINO's, and maybe next time I will consider Trump. Or nominate a progressive and EARN my sacred vote.
SANDERS 2020!
6
Yeah, Sanders. Because I want Trump to still be Prez in 2021.
When are you lot gonna learn about working-class anger at Yankeee liberal elites? Or about your own misogyny, for that matter?
2
Middle Class and Upper Middle Class Suburban, White females had a bit to do with it too the stats say.
1
This column captures what I've been telling friends since Trump announced his run in 2015. He is the totem (or gollum) of white resentment/racism/white supremacy thought. He is the gag reflex of white fear choking on all the beautiful social change ad progress that occurred during the Obama years, years many progressives didn't appreciate until it was too late. We must keep this in mind as we continue to organize and fight back. We must act, not react. Don't fall for the carnival sideshow. Focus on elections. Focus on electing women and progressives and actual thinking people who aren't gargoyles of repressive fear and willing idiocy.
21
"the beautiful social change ad progress that occurred during the Obama years" WHAT? He was the most divisive President we've ever had!
1
There are far too many similarities between this administration and its white supporters and the Germany of the 30’s with an emphasis on white purity, with Aryan superiority. Indeed as has been pointed out on these pages recently the problem for the poorly educated, disadvantaged white man is not so much poverty but a fear of being left behind by an increasingly large percentage of the non-white population. From their point of view it will no longer be an advantage to be white. This is increasingly a problem in other countries as well.
29
Even if at just an unconscious level, everyone has their simmering resentments and economic anxieties are one way of bringing them to the fore. I would say most people are not overt anti-Semites, yet for millennia Jews have been an ever-reliable scapegoat when things start going awry. It's naive to believe the resentments are going away any time soon. The best we can hope for is that inequalities are reduced to the point that we can all become polite, grinning phonies once again.
2
The constant churning of the race issue in the media - with Mr. Blow at the forefront - is sad to observe.
The color barrier in the NBA was broken in 1950. Today's players do not generally belly-ache about their current situation, by referring to that bygone era. It's gone. GONE.
The same is true of slavery - it ended in the 1860's - it's gone. GONE.
To the extent that prejudice exists today - and I have seen far more instances of people getting along on an average day than I have seen problems - it is unfortunate. But it is not akin to slavery.
Inflammatory language, such as the word "rebellion" used by Mr. Blow, is not appropriate to describe the expression of opinions by people who are not in agreement with Mr. Blow's victim mindset.
33
"it is unfortunate. But it is not akin to slavery."
I'm glad you find that the circumstances of prejudice today beat the lowest benchmark possible. That's not to say we can't all strive to do better. The triumph's of the past not withstanding, there's still a lot of work to be done in finding true civil equality and justice in this country with regards to race.
1
I get it that Mr. Blow despises Donald Trump; he's with the majority of Americans who voted for someone else. But he loses his way when he assigns motivations to people he doesn't know. Obviously: racism exists, it is a grievous wrong, and it can only be overcome through personal interactions.
I believe that we have a duty to this nation, to help maintain America as a moral agent in the world. I can't speak for others, but when Mr. Blow refers to "white privilege", he renders a misinterpretation based on misunderstanding that sense of duty. I'll explain.
My concerns for this nation are twofold. First, are all of us living up to the principles on which we sought "to form a more perfect Union?" (never 'perfect', just 'more perfect'). Second, are we maintaining the capacity to be a force for good in the world? Does anyone really think we are? From this second point emerges Mr. Blow's misunderstood "white privilege."
What Mr. Blow refers to as "white privilege" is nothing except my expectation that we remain capable of being that force for good in the world. If I get testy about changes, it's not because it undermines my "privilege", but because I believe it will incrementally lower standards and thus diminish America's ability to remain an influence for good.
Donald Trump exists and he is despicable. Racism exists and it is morally offensive. But don't use that to assign to others vile motivations then strawman them over sins you cannot know they commit.
71
First, Mr Blow is citing a reputable, published and widely discussed study. He is not making this up out of thin air all by himself.
Second, "white privilege" has a widely accepted definition which has nothing to do with your "expectation" or worry about standards. It does describe a (usually liberal) white person who lacks enough experience or empathy to understand the experience of people of color.
Third, this is not about you so there is no need to get "testy" about Mr. Blow's commenting on the different degrees of racism that drives Trump's base.
58
Mr. Blow didn't assign the word, the two studies he quotes did. You act as if he just made the whole thing up. I don't think Mr. Blow is speaking of you when he talks about those who want to keep the status quo as a country which is a force for good in the world, however given what seems to be your very unusual definition of white privilege I wonder if you are speaking sincerely about your motives for the status quo. Do you think any of the Trump voters voted for him to keep America's influence for good!! People vote out of self-interest, my lower taxes, my coal mining job, my job I don't have that some else is stealing from me...
42
Blow is not assigning vile motivations to others. He is referencing data. Studies have been produced that demonstrate the driving, primary factor of race, racial identity, and racial fears in the 2016 election. Have you read and considered these studies?
43
When I grew up the race/gender differential was almost laughable. White males were the favored flavor in school and in society and there wasn't even anyone else even close. It was so skewed that we didn't even notice- rather than a social norm it seemed to be a fact of nature.
Things are much different now of course and although, as Mr. Blow suggests, there is still a distinct residuum of white male privilege it is decidedly diminished. That is particularly the case in the evolving educational gender gap.
Clearly the change is so profound that it is unsettling to those on the wrong end but the solution does not lie in blaming those who are claiming their rightful place in the world or in playing the self pitying victim. It lies rather in taking charge of one's future as an individual, not a member of a group, and accepting personal responsibility for success or failure.
There are real victims of the social status structure and they deserve redress but white males are not among them. Confusing a relative loss of privilege due to social reordering with true discrimination is a self defeating delusion. It seems strange to me that so many trump voters, so libertarian about so many things, miss that core libertarian principle.
9
Substitute any historically disadvantaged group - particularly women - for race and this holds true. When faced with other groups gaining any social and economic power, no matter how miniscule, the white male dominant group simply cannot conceive of a more equal society. Instead they imagine equality as having the current power structure inverted. This either represents a colossal failure of imagination on their part, or exposes just how aware they are of what their privilege affords them (more CEOs named John than CEOs who are women, Brock Turner's 6 month sentence for rape, etc) to so deeply fear having it turned on them. My money is on the latter...
26
Yes. This is so patently obvious, I'm only surprised it needs saying.
11
The original manuscript by Dr. Mutz said it was impossible to differentiate whether it was global status threat or racial status threat that led many voters to switch to Trump. Sorry.
14
Thank you, Charles. The truth needs to be said, often over and over again. Trump was elected in part because whites and especially white men believe they are losing their undeserved racial privilege.
15
That was then, this is now. Most whites are losing jobs to automation, not blacks. Illegal immigrants have taken jobs from both blue-collar whites and blacks, lowering the pay and making the working conditions worse. Meanwhile, among professionals, the struggle for good jobs is between men and women, not whites and blacks.
The white men who are highly successful? They're not worried, they run the world, and many of them are liberal Democrats. It's easy to be nice to minorities when you know they can't provide significant competition.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the totem pole, it would make more sense for white and black men to join forces against everyone else. Illegal immigrants, automation, and feminists have pushed the blue-collar worker into a corner, and it makes no sense for them to fight each other. Trump is stupid not to specifically go after blue-collar black men.
8
How quickly would Trump have traded places with a young well educated black man if it meant losing his inheritance from his white father?
3
As we look to the Nov. mid-terms, it is important to consider what the appeal is of the Republican agenda. While we are misled by the wishful thinking of Republicans who prefer not to acknowledge the need among their voters for a national party to validate white male supremacy while pretending it is just an accident that nearly all powerful elected or appointed Republican officials are rich, white and male (But binders full of women...), the evidence of policy results cannot be ignored.
The evidence can be discredited and hidden, however. Thus we have all the Congressional bills named the opposite of what they achieve. And many of us have learned to be immediately on guard when any name contains the words "Freedom, Concerned, Watch, Family." Even the word "Liberty" has become suspect when used by the Republicans or their allies. Any day now there will be a liberal movement to reclaim the words Republicans have stolen from the rest of US voters and given their own meanings to; like the US flag, symbols cannot be the property of just one party.
Certainly Trump has opened white "power" groups of all types to the sunlight of disinfection by his "fine people on both sides" destruction of presidential norms in comments. As Mr.Blow writes, Trump has long been able to use the vulnerability of individuals and groups to his own advantage. It may be that this time, Trump has unleashed a demon which will consume him and those around him. Let us hope our country survives
5
Donald Trump is not my real concern.
His role is that of a smokescreen which is allowing all America's wealth, through whatever means, to be siphoned away.
Lack of decent educational opportunity, extremely low teacher pay, infrastructure abandonment. wages which do not support even middle income families, gifts of wealth to the already wealthy, elevation of incompetants to positions for which they lack qualification, judicial appointees without the ability to sit in judgement etc ad nauseam, are the people to whom our gaze should be directed.
He has a small hand in the destruction of our once proud nation while the real culprits remain under the radar of the destruction which is taking place. He is an easy target and an easily recognizable, thick skinned person, onto whom the blame is being placed.
The list of names of those who are responsible for our nation's loss should be the ones who fill this and other columns. He is just a willing and shameless fall guy.
The repetition of his name on such a consistent basis, while satisfying and an easy target, is allowing those who are responsible, such as Paul Ryan, for the mess in which we find ourselves to walk away unscathed
We won't feel the effects, it is our children and theirs who will know the destruction we are all witnessing.
The members of Congress, Cabinet officials, advisors and Justices in name only, should be the ones who take up the column inches of every political commentary published in this newspaper
26
Agree, as usual. But how does someone like me, an 83 year-old white male avoid being knowingly participant in white advantage/privilege? I’ve benefited from it all my life and have been aware that it’s so from my mid-twenties. It’s baked into an institutionally racist system. My wife, for instance, who is black and earns about three times what I earn and is almost compulsively prompt about paying her bills, consistently receives a credit score about 100 points lower than mine. This has gone on for decades, despite my occasionally forgetting to pay a bill. (And, yes, dear conservatives, “there’s probably a good reason,” although not one you’d ever admit).
31
The credit companies know her race? How?
2
Credit companies probably know her shoe size and if she's gone up or down an dress size or become a vegan lately. Knowing her race or even deducing it isn't a leap for anyone with access to enough databases.
It didn't help much when the GOP embarked on the Southern Strategy to bring the segregationist Southern Democrats into the the Republican fold, Swallowing that poison pill resulted in the Republican party becoming the "we feel your pain" friend of whites Charles is describing.
2
Well said. Of course, we have had over 15 months of bashing by the media, yes NYT, and Trump supporters that they should not be considered in any way shape or form racists. We have been admonished that we are applying that 'label' too freely thereby diminishing its sting. There is no need to regurgitate all the op-eds and articles.
Trump's entire campaign and presidential existence is built on the foundation of fear and hatred of the 'other' - people of color wether African American or Mexicans, Muslims etc.
After having to endure the insult and fear of an Obama administration, there was no way whites, especially males, were going to endure the unbearable presidency of a female.
The GOP has used white anguish for decades. Trump just buttoned it up into the biggest social media message he could and blasted the competition.
8
There's no room in my universe for anyone who says (or thinks) "Well, some Trump supporters may be a little racist, but I voted for him because.....".
No, it's you as well and you explained that far better than I can.
6
Mr Blow
Excellent article. As a white male, it is despicable to me that ANY white male would believe they're being harmed/discriminated/marginalized in our American society. I myself have heard the statements and seen the actions of these confused males. Many hate the idea that non whites are moving into neighberhoods, selected for jobs, and gaining entrance into prestigious schools. White privilege is a societal right that they falsely believe in. I say "get over it and put on your big boy pants" to those confused males.
If they could only walk in the shoes of a black man, they would ask God for forgiveness causef by their negative actions. Long live diversity.
7
One of the most active affirmative action policies right now is in the Republican party for minorities who declare themselves right-wing conservatives. Of course, once the incentive for them to continue this wears off, if it does, you might come out of it feeling a bit used.
1
People who are appalled by the ascendancy and legitimization of racist behavior are finally finding the courage to call it what it is...even if we find strains of it within ourselves...
6
I sometimes recall the campaign rally where Trump egged on his bodyguards to rough up black protestors. "Get 'em outa here!". Then, there were his Charlottesville comments. That revulsion is not going to go away until he's been sent back to Trump Tower, afraid to hear a chorus of catcalls when he is seen in public.
I'm less ashamed of my country than I am of the resurgence of racial hatred in certain groups, 50 years after the words of Doctor King swept us off our feet while we watched him on our little TV sets.
It's not all of us, but rather certain niches. The guy with the sign in your photo looks like the one at Charlottesville, probably with similar characteristics: No luck with women. Cold parents. Bouts of rage against not just blacks but strong women, Mexicans, and deep thinkers.
We need more contact with other ways of thinking. Our students who spend a year or more studying overseas are transformed, and rarely join the Republican party, or pay attention to dog whistles on talk radio or Fox. This resurgence of racism is being enabled by a supine media, which worships violent sports (including homicidal ultimate fighting), bombing campaigns, demagogues like the President, and any product advertised on TV that promises stronger erections and sultry attentions from women.
I don't know how where we start, but your unflinching columns are great steps in the right direction, Charles.
13
There have been some good things about Donald Trump's ascendance to the Presidency. It is giving us the opportunity to examine what kind of country we want to be, and how we really feel about our neighbors of other races and ethnicities. As a white woman, I have solidified the notion that I want to live in an inclusive, rather than exclusive, country. I want to try to understand my neighbors, wherever they come from, however long they've been here and however they got here. For that I profoundly thank Mr. Trump.
4
There are most likely an appreciable number of southern white voters who vote republican in attempts to postpone full disclosure of the horrific racial history that has emerged and is ongoing to a smaller degree throughout the US, but mostly in the southern states. Electing their type of leader is a form of a security blanket against embarrassing exposure to the inconvenient truth that their white peers and ancestors committed these injustices or are still engages in aspects of these; it is humiliating to them and a sympathetic leader they hope will ameliorate the severity of the deeds. Many of them truly believe they are not racist and have no animus towards blacks and other people of color, but they are, nevertheless, complicit in the prevailing racism and its consequences by virtue of their failure to both fully and openly acknowledge the racial crimes and injustices committed and speak out against its cultivation. Acknowledgement is a tough process and the demons are never quite buried, as one observes in the resurgence of nativism and even xenophobia in Germany and much of Europe.
4
I'm White but no Trump minion I
Unfairness I hate, by the by,
White and Black apart?
Dear to Trumpist's heart,
And Koch Brothers, too, that's no lie.
United the Black/White can't lose
And that is the pathway I choose,
Trump's choice is Destroy
And Build is our ploy,
Separation? The Oligarch's ruse.
41
I don't understand how you're not the poet laureate of the United States.
4
Yes it is culture not economics. But the cultural divide is about more than race - also resentment against cultural change represented by gays, transexuals and women, foreigners and Muslims, urban liberals and secular elites. In short, racism is one component of authoritarian values. And its also generational - older Americans not younger whites.
39
This all is surely true.
But I think you aren't looking at the fact that Obama was elected and Hillary wasn't. They ran respectable white men against Obama, who were nonetheless unable to prevail.
They ran just about the worst possible person in Donald Trump : ignorant; lazy; intellectually-challenged; amoral; selfish; sleazy; a braggart and on and on....
What were they telling women? We will vote for anything rather than the best of you. And, people might want to pretend otherwise, but Hillary was the best woman to become Commander in Chief. She has all of the intellect, knowledge, and stable character that is needed for the job.
Voting for a walking horror story like Donald Trump was a blatant assertion of misogynistic male power. It was unignorable. And women did not ignore it. As we are seeing.
451
@Christine - But the fact of the matter is, Dems did not go to the polls in numbers comparable to the previous two presidential elections. I would argue that at least half of those staying at home were women.
14
There was certainly voter suppression through state laws and online lying. But I would be surprised to learn that Democratic women who voted for Obama did not turn out for Clinton.
@ Christine & Keith... It is worse than just not showing up in fact... Look at the demographic splits for Obama who carried 90%+ of his own demographic while Hillary narrowly lost white woman. I still cannot believe that sentence after writing it... if only white woman's votes were counted Donald Trump would still be president... Charles is spot on... this was a White Rebellion. Best hopes for better choices in 2018 and 2020!!
It’s not economic anxiety— it’s racial resentment! Duh. Didn’t some of us know this for years? And yet Bernie Sanders pushed this narrative for the past five years and maligned Hillary for not knowing these “ poor” misunderstood white folks. They are not poor. They are not trying to hold it together. They are angry, fearful racists with money in their pockets. Thanks Bernie for letting these deplorables off the hook.
48
I know a great number of these people that you are maligning--they are indeed poor, working full time+ for little pay. How dare you assign motives to them!
The DNC ran an old-school establishment candidate against somebody claiming to be an economic populist. Not smart. In addition (even as a democrat!), I was disgusted by the shenanigans used to promote the "chosen one."
5
Well, come on, how was Bernie going to get VOTES by calling out his potential supporters as racists!? Yeah, that would not have worked out well, at all.
The obvious, just-under-the-skin racists, who would never publicly make overtly racist statements -- but instead hint, tease, demean, and attempt to debase the reputation of any people of color who cross their paths or achieve significant societal recognition. This group -- probably the larger part of Trump's voters -- might not actively 'hate' non-whites...but they surely mostly are inclined to 'dislike' them and feel uncomfortable around 'them.' I have encountered many like this in the course of my life.
These are the same people who think of themselves as 'good', despite the fact that they really do not care in the least as regards the freedom and dignity of others.
You cannot approach this type of person from a place of honesty. They will deny, take offense, and react in a hostile and regressive manner. You know, like what we saw during the last election.
1
Donald Trump is a clown, no doubt about it. I'm hoping that Scott Pruitt will put his boss in that $43,000 sound proof phone booth and lock the door. That would be money well spent.
As a phenotypically Caucasian man I am beyond tired of the NYT and progressive members of the chattering class telling me how racist I am and how my I am ruining the world by my mere existence. This type of original sin assigned to me is akin to the silly sense of guilt followers of the Abrahamic god have felt since Adam was driven from Eden.
If you think that your promotion of identity politics and your promotion of tribalism makes me feel a sense of self loathing, you are wrong. Your identity politics may play among your progressive and virtue signaling friends, but I'm going to tune you out. I have four biracial children, so your predictable charges of bigotry don't bother me in the least.
Perhaps instead of spilling so much virtual ink on promoting tribalism, you could focus more on uniting us as people with a common humanity.
52
Joe, this isn't and never has been about assigning original sin to you, or to anyone else. It IS about opening the eyes of all white people to see the multitude of ways in which we do benefit from the color of our skin (regardless of socioeconomic status), from the assumption that we are not in a store to shoplift to getting better mortgage rates.
The problem with complaining of "identity politics" dividing us is that this country was built on identity politics - White Male Identity Politics (specifically, educated and land-owning). So anyone not in that category - actually the overwhelming majority if you consider that about 50% are female, plus nonwhites. It is difficult at first to see that white men are "normal" and everyone else is an aberration, but that is the baseline set of facts that we all grow up with, and the purpose of columns like this.
The vast majority of our legislators on all levels are white men, meaning they as a group still hold the power, so nothing will truly change until white men change or allow the rest of us to make changes in spite of them.
Hopefully this will help to clarify the importance of this being said, over and over and over, until we all GET it. You can't change anything until you understand what actually needs to be changed - doctors can't treat you if they don't know what lies beneath your symptoms.
9
Thank you! What good does it do, "woke" people, to attempt to make white people feel bad about themselves? You lose any friends you have this way. Take those who are clearly trying to help and co-opt them instead of alienating them. This attempt to make all white people feel bad about themselves, and then calling any pushback "white fragility", is going to get you nothing and nowhere.
I'm a 'white' hispanic-descent American, what people in Latin America call 'mestizo', meaning a mixture of European and Native American/First Nations. Many of us (mixed racial stock folk like me) 'pass' as white or white 'exotic'.
So, when I criticize the white supremacist European legacy that rules North AND South America, yes, that includes probably 75% of my ancestors. I am not personally 'shamed' by the actions taken by individuals/ancestors in the past - you are correct, that type of thinking is entirely Abrahamic, that the 'sins of the father shall be visited upon the children.' I call balderdash!
Acknowledging the truths on which our society rests must happen, and we must make change. How can we do that if we don't honestly address the problems of race which beset us?
We have made great changes -- but all of those past changes were bought with blood, tears, and the deaths of those willing to stand up, speak out, march, and address the greater remove of society and call attention to the inequities of the USA.
This 'identity politics' of which you speak is a right-wing talking point.
It is code for right-wing claims that ANYONE protesting discrimination (of any kind, other than supposedly enacted against WHITES) is lying, exaggerating, and just looking 'for a payout.' This is 'conservative' (more properly, regressive) code for 'I don't want to hear this, and I call it false, because it makes me uncomfortable and/or scared.'
4
And those same white supremacists voted for Obama twice.
Why is this columnist so eager, so endlessly eager, to ignore the vast inequality of income and wealth that has destroyed the underpinnings of life, family and community for 80% of Americans of all races? Especially when addressing that problem would help people of color first.
Stop covering for the plutocrats Charles.
36
If it was not entirely white supremacy that elected Trump, you can bet that misogyny picked up the slack. Since only about 77,000 votes made the difference in the Electoral College, I have no trouble assigning misogynists the honor of electing Trump. They made the critical difference, but all racists and misogynists can share in their pride of what they reaped for America.
19
When the fight is about race & identity, the Right wins every time and the plutocrats are happy.
3
I am tired of hearing these same voices claim all these Frank, Obama voters switched over to Trump as that is not borne out by the evidence. Clinton got 3 million more votes than Trump. Did he get some Obama voters? Yes particularly in the 3 states of PA, WI and MI but those are small in number. The main reason Hillary lost those states is because minority voters failed to go to the polls in the numbers they did in 2012 and 2016. As a white man in this country, we have it made compared to everyone else and to deny that is to engage in self-pitying delusion.
Second, Blow is not covering for the plutocracy. Democrats raised taxes on the wealthy; Republicans lower them. Democrats created the CFPB which is now being undermined by Mulvaney. Democrats quadrupled Medicaid and GOP governors fought against it.
And not every article has to be about plutocracy. You are the one undermining equality when you engage in dangerous false equivalency between the 2 parties
30
Mr Blow writes, “Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy.”
I’m not so sure that he’s one of the last gasps. As we’ve seen in the last election, there’s a much larger portion of the populace, across the age demographic, that harbors those sentiments than we had expected. It’s likely that there are many more mini-me Trumpsters among the “millennial Trump voters” gearing up to pick up the mantle of this belief system. The media will follow the rinse-and-repeat pattern of elevating them by giving them prominence and sympathizing with their grievances.
8
"The idea that the primary motivator for Trump supporters was economic anxiety was a false narrative swallowed and regurgitated by a gullible media too afraid to call a thing a thing: racial resentment."
I don't know how you separate the two. Economic insecurity makes people vulnerable to demagoguery. I think people who are just out & out racists, with no economic motivation or rationalization (like Mr Trump) are relatively rare. Anyone can become defensive and retreat to a worse version of themselves when they feel threatened. I'm not defending it, just stating a fact about human nature as I see it.
One other point. When I argue with Republican voters, the thing that they feel gives them permission to discount Mr. Trump's racism is the demand from some Democratic & left voices that race be acknowledged as THE determinative factor in all social, economic & political phenomena. They hear that sort of thing and they can't take the charge of "racism" seriously anymore.
17
The left needs to stop crying wolf. Not everything in this world is sexist, racist or homophobic
9
When I took the postal carriers test I got a 93 but didn't get the job. Points were given if you were black, Hispanic or a veteran. Like wise for other city and state civil service jobs and unions jobs. That was the mid seventies.
23
@JoeG - Not sure how you can prove that blacks and Hispanics were given points, so we'll let that one rest. However, when you look at the population of letter carriers, what percentage were black, Hispanic, or female?
The fact is, blacks are only twelve percent (12%) of the population. Even if every black American were given a job first, it still would be vastly outpaced by white employment. However, black unemployment is many times higher than white unemployment, even among comparable education and socio-economic levels.
10
Don't forget "veterans' preference points" given for those same jobs. Are we to malign our veterans as well?
9
Not maligning anyone. Except left leagers that wrap themselves in the flag when it's convenient. Just saying there's unintentional consequences accompany the best intentions.
Thise two sentences are the essence of the Trumpism: 'Simply put, Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy. He is one of its Great White Hopes.'. White supremacy is loosing power and they'd support such buffoon as Trump, as a last hope to hold on to it. It's a survival instinct and, as any living creature, they will fight till last drop. Let's hope, with upcoming elections, Trumpism will loose and loose big, so US could finally shed it dark past and become truly progressive country.
9
Keep the punches coming. I love reading your articles.
3
Wow. I can only be ashamed of my fellow white people. To be gripped by such depths of irrationality is astounding to me. We are destroying ourselves, our country and possibly literally the world in our denial of objective reality.
We are making America hate again.
7
I apologized for "my" people's behavior toward a group of black students I was traveling with once. The more I thought, the more I realized whiteness does not make them "mine".
3
"petrifying fear young white men feel..."
Oh please: this could only have been written by a northeastern urbanite insulated from the reality of suburban and rural life in the south, midwest and west where white people and black people live peacefully in close proximity despite the troubled racial history of their particular areas and our country.
12
My children will very soon be "well educated blacks." Shortly to graduate from collage. That does not prevent me from being afraid daily when they drive while being black. When, if ever, do I stop feeling that fear? Not while this man is in the White House.
173
Another viewpoint:
““My friend Hillary Clinton is wrong. Thirty percent of the people that voted for Donald Trump had voted for President Obama. Why?” Durbin told “Fox News Sunday.“
“The same people who looked for change with President Obama thought there wasn't enough, as far as their personal lives were concerned, and they supported Donald Trump. That is a reality the Democrats acknowledge.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/18/durbin-hillary-clinton-trump-v...
4
Young ignorant males are being taught that it is ok to express their resentment through violence at being marginalized and left behind by women and minorities.
32
Blow's incessant support for Hillary Clinton gave America this vulgar barbarian as president. If we had an honest Democratic primary (and an honest Justice Department), we would have a President Sanders and some real progressive change. So now, thanks to Blow and his fellow Hillary shills, we have a President Trump, while the Democratic party marches to the tune of Bernie's policies, not Hillary's policies. Trump did not win because of any white rebellion; Trump won because Hillary was an abomination, a deeply corrupt liar who was a miserable candidate. And maybe one day Blow will accept the fact that Hillary was perceived by so many Americans as a corrupt liar who covered herself in the appearance of impropriety, inviting honest people to question her character and truthfulness.
Maybe Blow should call it the Rebellion of Hillary's Deplorables. After all, Hillary turned off so many voters when she called them deplorable. Or maybe Blow should call it the rejection of the Wall Street candidate by Democrats.
10
Reading the byline for this piece I had such hope it would be an insightful commentary on something other than Donald Trump, but alas I am disappointed.
We all get it Mr. Blow, Trump is terrible, we agree. But you are not. I am soooooo tired about hearing about Trump, I wish you could start writing about other topics so I could enjoy reading your pieces again, well maybe in 2020.
7
What to call someone who knowingly voted for a candidate who openly scapegoated black and brown people from the first moment of his declaration?
What to call someone who knowingly voted for a candidate whose history is filled with blatant acts of bigotry from redlining his real estate to keep African Americans from renting his properties to calling for the execution of 5 kids of color proven innocent of their charges?
You call that someone a racist; whether their racial animus is based on hatred or based on fear.
I am sorry. There are no polite terms for those people. There is no way to sugar coat it. In spite of the squeaky clean record and the historic achievements of Barack Obama in bringing the Nation out of the hole we had dug for ourselves by electing George W. Bush these people hated him because he is a black man.
Replacing him with a so called man who cannot get through a day without a scandal or some cruelty to someone or some people he feels a resentment towards.
8
Trump's FATHER was the one who refused to rent to blacks...in the early 70s. Trump worked for dad back then, he was a young man. The family business was properly reported, fined & disciplined for violating the fair housing law -- and never did it again. Even Trump's enemies cannot say he has ever again refused to rent to minorities. As far as the Central Park Five -- NOBODY knew they were innocent due to DNA back at that time. They were convicted by a JURY TRIAL. Trump was not on the jury and had no power to convict or try them. He was mistaken, but so was nearly everyone -- judge, jury, media, this newspaper, most people reading about the trial. To single out Trump is grossly unfair.
2
Ta-Nehisi Coates said this back in October. Now it's a thing?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-pre...
1
Mr, Blow: Once again, thank you. This is what many of us have been saying since November 9. 2016. Trump is the answer to the terror white Americans felt after 8 years of Obama, a terror which had been building since Brown v. Board of Education.
He, and the GOP, certainly personify a last gasp of that terror, I hope. Desperate and corrupt with nothing to stand on but a blatant thirst for power.
8
I just wonder when Martin Luther King's dream will be fulfilled for a future in which we are judged by the content of our character instead of the color of our skin.
4
The trope of reverse discrination is very powerful, and anecdotal evidence is never hard to find. When you’re suddenly equal to someone you could always be considered better than just because of your race, it doesn’t go down well. The same can be said of heredity, religion, wealth, nationality, gender and sexual orientation.
5
Great editorial, Mr. Blow - scary (especially the picture) but well written.
"Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy. He is one of its Great White Hopes."
Let us pray that he is "the last gasp" and not the revitalization of white supremacy in our country. Good Americans are sick to death of the hatred and racism that has plagued our nation for centuries.
4
The Citizens United case has given White Wealth the economic engine. Fox News is the "free speech" megaphone. The only thing missing for White entitlement (despite their waning numbers) is for the Supreme Court to allow Gerrymandering to be legal.
At some point we will have a "South African" model of governance. History demonstrates how that will end.
5
“First, white millennial Trump voters were likely to believe in something we call ‘white vulnerability’ — the perception that whites, through no fault of their own, are losing ground to other groups. Second, racial resentment was the primary driver of white vulnerability — even when accounting for income, education level or employment.”
The issue of "white vulnerability" is almost a joke. Young, white, males are certainly vulnerable because they have been coddled and spoiled by their parents to the point where girls now are the majority of college students and girls make up the majority of medical students. White males have spent their time on sports and video games while others have spent their time studying. Whites have for decades cacooned themselves off in their white suburbs and have no clue to what the rest of America and the world is all about.
3
"Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy" From your mouth to God's ears Charles. As a white man living in the south I am made to feel uncomfortable around those I most look like. Since Trump came down that escalator I've stood in wonder, mouth agape as his candidacy went from bad joke (with 4% approval) to eventual victor of the GOP primary, to president of the U.S. With each new hurdle bringing down my opinion of friends, family, co-workers , the media Religious, business and governmental institutions, and now, America itself. Even though it seems like an oxymoron for Trump to represent white supremacy and white anguish at the same time, it doesn't matter. Either way their time is up. They should use this time to better themselves instead of bringing others down with them.
4
Mr.Blow is absolutely right. My relatives, who truly believe they are open-minded and have not one racism bone in their body, would often complain blacks/ immigrants receive favourable treatment. They would often assume the worst about those people.
3
Mr Blow, you are,absolutely correct in your conclusion. I, with incredulity, listened to many state that Trump, during the election, was saying what we all were thinking, which actually explains his "victory". Unfortunately there are many white skinned Americans who are closeted racists.if there is one upside, it might be that ,yes, we have a long way to go as far as race,relations. I might be an optimistic fool, but I think we can overcome. There are enough of us, who are not scared of Muslims, Jews or black people to erase the white nationalists whom are attempting to destroy our melting pot of a society. Let's remember it is fear and ignorance that drives racism not just hatred.
1
I agree wholeheartedly with your colum. As a follow up, may I suggest that you please go over to your Editor's office (down the hallway?) and ask him (not a 'her' anymore as I understand it) to please align NY Times reporting and coverage with your excellent analysis. After that, could you please begin educating your print, TV, and social media colleagues, first at your paper and then anywhere you meet them. I know that this is not your job but it would go a long way with eradicating the media's gullibility and anxiety. I would do it if I could but I don't personally know any of these people.
5
"What do you call a person who doesn’t openly endorse racism but nevertheless knowingly benefits from it?"
That would include any black person who benefited from affirmative action as affirmative action is based on race.
24
I must admit that I bristle at the term “white privilege”, as it implies something that I don’t think I have ever had, nor can I choose not to accept if I do have it. Rather than call this a privilege, let’s call it what it actually is: racist discrimination against minorities. That terminology is crystal clear and lays the blame squarely where it belongs among those using racism as a means of exclusion. Using the term white privilege is a baiting tactic that produces enough smoke to prevent a clear discussion of the underlying issue and about ways to alleviate it.
7
Exactly. The concept is not off, the framing is. 'White Privilege' tells every white person who has struggles and lives paycheck to paycheck that somehow, everything in life is easy for them.
The object should be to minimize the issues ALL people have, or to take away from white people. It should be to lift up the black minority that has suffered at the hand of racism.
'White Privilege' will continue to cause emotional and reactionary push back. Find a better way to frame this if you want to stop alienating >50% of the population
5
We have white privilege whether we claim it or not. That is something you have to work through. When is the last time you were followed in a store? When was the last time you were stopped in traffic? Called a racially provoking name, in public, out loud and no one said or did anything? When did you have to pay more for the same loan with the same income? The examples are endless. Think hard.
7
In an amicus brief filed in the Fisher vs. Texas case, UCLA law profession Richard Sander pointed out that racial preferences at the University of Texas are decisive factors: “For example, among freshmen entering the University of Texas at Austin in 2009 who were admitted outside the top-ten-percent system, the mean SAT score (on a scale of 2400) of Asians was a staggering 467 points and the mean score of whites was 390 points above the mean black score. In percentile terms, these Asians scored at the 93rd percentile of 2009 SAT takers nationwide, whites at the 89th percentile, Hispanics at the 80th percentile, and blacks at the 52nd percentile.”
http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Sander-Taylor-b...
5
@William Case - I will not deny your evidence. But take a step further and delve into the median quality of the grade schools each of the groups attended. If the school's performance correlates to the freshmen's board scores, then the college is righting an earlier wrong.
4
So, instead of fighting to correct the root problem, we hope that racism will cancel racism. How about we fight to correct the root injustice, instead of propagating them up the chain?
The University of Texas compensates for inequality in K-12 schools by admitting any applicant who graduates in the top ten percent of their Texas high school class. For the remainder of applicants, it factors in socio-economics for all students, regardless of race or ethnicity. On top of that, it adds racial and ethnic preferences for black and Hispanic students. A black or Hispanic student who went to an affluent high school gets preference over a non-Hispanic white student who graduated from a poor rural high school.
“Simply put, Trump is one of the last gasps of American white supremacy and patriarchy. He is one of its Great White Hopes.”
I’ve been saying this for years after the 2010 census revealed that more white people died than born.
Groups, no matter if they be racial, ethnic or political, tend to make a lot of noise as their perception of power and dominance slowly slips away. History is riddled with this scenario.
5
The reality is, every single person who voted for Trump may not be a racist themselves, but they all tolerated racism. They minimized it, told themselves it wasn't there, or worse.. deep down identified with it. "Make America Great Again" in itself is a highly offensive slogan. Again? When was America great? During Segregation? Slavery? Before women could vote or own property? How far back do we have to go to be great again? These people voted for him knowing exactly who he is. Warts and all. They swallowed it, enabled it, and endorsed it. And that is what is so disturbing for the rest of us to ponder. James Comey said in a recent interview "Trump does not represent our values"... but what if he does? What if that is exactly the problem.
12
@Katie - I honestly believe that most Trump voters meant "when a person could have a middle class lifestyle with only a high school diploma".
3
Mr Blow misleads somewhat. Much of the concern among white voters in terms of their status has more to do with their numerical primacy or plurality in American society. Their concern is about immigration and what that portends for the demographics of the country in coming decades. Certainly there is straight up racism among some Trump voters too. But what allowed Trump to have the following he did in 2016 and not, say, 2000 was substantial legal and illegal immigration and the demographic shifts that created. Blow tries to make this about African Americans, but it's not. There's a reason Trump's campaign began by calling Mexicans "rapists and criminals", not blacks.
By making this mistake, Blow loses the opportunity to properly interpret the results of the study: when immigration and immigration policy threaten the numerical plurality of the previously dominant group, there is going to be intense resistance. That might indicate that you would want to rethink that immigration policy, lest you get more politicians like Trump. Instead Mr. Blow just wants to yell "deplorables!" some more. Didn't work last time, why would it work now?
7
And yelling "deplorables"! is precisely what will lose the Democrats the next few elections until they learn otherwise.
1
That there are many white people who somehow believe their entitled privilege purely based on their skin color is at stake is incredibly dangerous and depressing. While we knew racism is the core tenet of the Trump's America, the aggressive efforts to normalize and support this unfounded fear and ignorance with the myriad of policies this Administration is ramming through is absolutely unconscionable. If we are going to ever climb out of this abyss, it will take voting at the ballot box and the cash register. It's time to really stand up and send a message that the racism, greed and corruption that this Administration is openly foisting on us is not acceptable.
6
Excellent column, Mr. Blow, thank you. Paraphrasing Angela Davis: It's no longer not enough to not be racist, you must be anti-racist. In word and deed.
That said, we have many other problems exacerbating the anxiety and dread of ever one of us: continuing exploding population, declining resources, the spoil and relentless exploitation of our precious, irreplaceable natural resources, pursuit of more and more weapons of mass destruction, climate chaos and our lack of addressing its consequences, and still no solution for perpetual toxic nuclear waste storage, security, monitoring, and upkeep (or even exactly how to warn future generations). I fear we've living on Planet Titanic...
4
On day zero, when whites are no longer the largest demographic group in America what will be different for the vast majority of middle and lower income Americans? Maybe by then we will have learned to recognize fear mongering in all its many guises so that we can reach out and help each other in our daily struggle to live meaningful lives within an economic system that accepts so much suffering as one of the costs of doing business.
5
Charles—I completely see your point. I was talking with my biracial son last night who told me that some of his friends make jokes with racist innuendo. I made it clear to him that people who talk this way, think this way. They may not even admit it-but they are racist and no doubt harbor resentment. We need to call these people out—each and every time.
14
If you are a white person like me who does not feel this way, you don't want to be painted with the same brush as those that do. How do you distinguish me from them? Are all us white people the same in your eyes. I love reading your posts Mr. Blow and always agree with what you say. I did not vote for trump. I remember as a kid in 1967 when the Thomas's came to my apartment building and Mr Thomas was black and Mrs, Thomas was white. Mr. Thomas sat in the car while Mrs. Thomas rented the apartment. I had an apartment on the first floor with my family and we had a terrace I sat on all the time. This is how I noticed the event. I was gobsmacked and knew there was racism and said to myself how unfair that was. The very next year. MLK was killed and my mom was born in the same year and in February. I could not believe they were the same age, and he was killed because of his political activism and the color of his skin. I vowed that this would never be me. At 89 years old, my mom is still alive. MLK did not get to live these past 50 years because of racism. Its not all white people. My encounters with people of color have been nothing but decent and humane. I hope you will not paint me with the same brush. I would love to join a panel and have a discussion that needs to happen. I have never been racist. I see all of us as striving for the same things in this life. When people truly understand this, racism ceases.
260
I very much respect that you and your family are not racist.
The question is not how you can have black people like Mr Blow not see you as racist. It’s about examining what you have done to dismantle a racist system from which you benefitted from. You said it yourself— your mother got the benefit of 50 years over MLK. That is white privilege.
Ultimately, it’s not about YOU and making sure that you are not seen as racist. We don’t need you to talk to black people to change black people’s minds. Black people in this country have endured racism for centuries, no matter how many non-racist white people there are, the racist system prevails. We need you to talk to your fellow white people, many who harbor intrinsic racist attitudes, and dismantle them.
65
Blow is not saying that all whites are racist, but rather that Trump represents the diehard core of white racists (the Venn diagram of venal, hateful, and stupid) and that there can be no escaping this conclusion. There is a question that precipitates from this, which is: How can we, who are not racist, fantasists, or some fringe nutjob, reach the other folks who have attached themselves to this unhinged man and his enabling party?
58
@ A B - The civil rights movement made as much progress as it did due to people like you, white Americans who stood up for black Americans.
19
The "White Rebellion" is not just an American movement . . . it is also global.
Far too many whites want some form of segregation - harkening back to a time where specific geographical locations had borders of racial divide.
Johnson's Civil Rights Act changed all this during the '60's at least on paper, however, the whites of Red States really never let go of their White Supremacy.
Predating Johnson, JFK began "Affirmative Action" in 1961 . . . and for sure, both men upset a lot of white people.
Today we have a president who stands for all those threatened Whites; "There were good people on both sides" (Charlottesville)
So, why is it that the States with the worst public schools and lowest paid teachers - end up being "Red States" ?
Why is it that the Red States have the most White Supremacist Militias ?
Why is it that Red States "lead the world" in populations who do not believe in Global Warning ?
The members of the White Rebellion cling to values and ideas which can never be returned to - and yet they hold fast that Trump "can" turn back the clock.
7
Charles rightly asks the very question so many of us do:
"How could anyone vote for this buffoonish character, and how can they continue to support him even as he makes a fool of himself and a mockery of America?"
But the real mindbending question is how 30 percent of Trump voters voted for Obama prior... I guess 'the white rebellion' wasn't in effect then. Try a new tactic Charles because these points you make just don't fit with the facts.
4
There's something else, Charles - the 'gullible media' was letting it's advertising revenue determine their broadcast (and print) framing of the issue.
And it cannot escape mention that His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness was enabled by Russian bots, Cambridge Analytica, and Faux Noise Machina, all aiming to create divisions where there were none, and exploit unease where it did exist - specific targeting of campaign rhetoric.
No lie about the economy 'doing poorly' or anything else was out of bounds in service of GOP'ers getting 1) a SCOTUS appointment, 2) tax cuts on corporations and the ultra-wealthy, 3) Obamacare gutting.
The Grifter-in-Chief persists in these activities/messaging even as he sits at the head of the GOP and our country - he is a clear and present danger to the country, constantly promoting unrest and division among Americans. This is excused as 'disruption' by GOP'er apologists, but it's just plain old 'dipsy-doodle' chaos:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/29/orrin_hatch_on_trump_f...
which should take down the entire GOP - make Koch Bros. Inc. start their own party from scratch.
127
Tribalism seems impossible to overcome; it just seems to be in our nature.
People can't be happy simply knowing they have a good life. They can't vote to make their life better. Instead, they need the affirmation that their tribe has a better life than that other tribe over there, for no other reason than that tribe isn't their tribe. They vote to make their tribe better than the other, even if it hurts their own.
It is utterly and completely illogical, but that is the conclusion I reach based off the evidence presented by the study quoted.
43
Someone already mentioned it, but I would like to point out that "white anguish" is a virulent subtype of the middle-class "anguish" felt by many Americans of all races and backgrounds. If we can extinguish the root causes of "middle class" anguish by providing economically and socially for the vast majority of Americans, then I largely suspect in doing so will also smother the strain that brought Trump to power.
58
Even if we didnt provide, meaning taxpayer dollar support, education and healthcare, we would be a lot better off as a whole with strong incentives to reward hiring practices that numerically reflected demographic percentages, had impeccable clean air and water anywhere near human activities, and assumed that the world we live in and personally experience, is a perfect reflection of our own attitudes and fears.
The most successful of ‘us’ and our tribes, in the long game, are the most inclusive.
7
Josh
If you check with the Smithsonian, or elsewhere, you will find that humanity originated in Africa; therefore, "anguish" might be a better than "white anguish."
1
I agree with your premise Charles, but the role that unequal distribution of wealth has had in heightening this otherwise “somewhat” dormant fear of non-white Americans should not be discarded. America has a race problem for sure don’t get me wrong. It also has many other problems including an ignorance of citizenship responsibilities problem; a segregation of rich and poor (greed) problem; a fantastical thinking problem (belief that government is unnecessary and the individual and his/her rights is supreme); and an election system problem driven by a corruption problem. The race problem is complex and ingrained in American society but will not be resolved without tackling these other problems as well.
260
And we can thank the Republican party for the last 40 or more years for exacerbating all those problems you've cited!
19
True, but we can also thank the Democrats for their role in that polarised spin cycle of two-party politics and the 60% of citizens who couldn’t be bothered to vote because their right not to, Trumps (pun intended) their responsibility to ensure a functional democracy.
And what do you call white folks who claim they're not racists but knowingly vote for someone who is?
As for The Donald having believed that well-educated blacks fare better in the job market than well-educated whites, how in heck would he know? When precisely did young master Trump enter the job market? Was it at the same time that he enlisted in the military? For a black American, educated or otherwise, to have equal footing with our Kitty Grabber in Chief on a financial or social basis he would have to have inherited a highly successful business from his old man as well as the fortune that came along with it. If our feckless leader wishes to compare his situation with that of a specific American of color, he should look at what his predecessor accomplished without his having been born with a silver teething ring in his mouth.
547
@stu. I'm glad I commented before I read your comment. If I had read yours first, I wouldn't have bothered. Well done.
32
Trump also inherited a network of corrupted politicians and bureaucrats willing to give him tens of millions of dollars in tax abatements and other advantages. Some estimates put the cumulative value of these tax abatements over the last 50 years at close to a billion dollars, which may equal or exceed his net worth.
25
Far exceeds.