If democrats are serious about winning they should drop all identities from their platform and national strategies. This would force them to address actual people.
22
We need to stop talking about race and start talking about class. That's the elephant in the room, and it's been here for centuries. It works. When they start talking about "deservedness", you pivot to subsidies for private jets, Big Ag, pharmaceutical monopolies, Wal-Mart, etc. Talk about how the Great Recession was the greatest redistribution of wealth in the history of our country, where 50% of all wealth owned by African-Americans was wiped out.
Everyone in the élite media mocked Bernie Sanders for the "millionaires and billionaires" refrain, but it's why he still has net-positive approval in spite of years of negative coverage and attacks.
This piece is pretty close to the truth, here. A lot of Trump voters are not prejudiced, per se, but they've been fed a lie that minorities are doing much better at their expense. There is no Democratic counter-narrative that, no, actually, it's the very wealthy who are doing well at your expense, and the rest of us all have shared interests.
Every time some strident, ignorant Democrat brands them collectively as racists and bigots and xenophobes, they dig their heels that much deeper. It feeds the narrative that they're under attack.
Compassion and understanding. It's not complicated.
78
Why not just reprint Jardina's entire book in your column? In the morass of quotations you seem to miss the forest for the trees: Dems still don't get it. The problem is with the progressive, woke narrative that there is automatic virtue (and power) inherent in victimhood, that all persons of color are inherently victims of oppression, and that any white person who stands for the anthem, doesn't protest the travel ban, believes in border security, supports their local police department and doesn't donate to the ACLU, is a racist, bigoted, privileged oppressor. This binary view of our country where people are either opressed or oppressors, compassionate or cruel, morally superior or morally bankrupt, feeds the "basket of deplorables" narrative and only ensures more division.
78
@HW Thank you for saying this. Agreed!
14
Among the arguments against ending slavery in the 19th century was the notion that former slaves would exact revenge against their owners. There was a bit of projection there, as there is here. White people have, on some level, an understanding of how they have treated minorities in the US (though I can't say that many other countries have done a better job), and they don't want that treatment for themselves.
Civil rights laws, and affirmative action, by compelling employers to use objective standards in hiring and promotion, actually helped everyone that wasn't part of the inner circle (e.g. related to the boss). Even white men.
But it's easy to feel persecuted when a traditional advantage is diminished.
As respects uniting to protect their rights, White people (and others) in the US also have the advantage over Black people of being able to identify with a particular nationality (or two)--they can join Irish American, Swedish American, Lithuanian American associations and no one bats an eye.
Black people identify as African American, to some extent, because we have been deprived the ability to identify as Ghanaian, Congolese, or Mauritanian American. This is motivated, in part, to protect our rights but mostly, I suspect, as an effort to nurture cultural identity.
28
Let’s be clear, okay?
Just as long as white guys got pretty much whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it, they never wanted to talk about whiteness at all. Oh, they’d talk about “Southern traditions,” or whatever, and “white traditions,” is what they meant. And they absolutely did talk, often very loudly, about the white man’s burden...but that was always an assertion of racial superiority, never anything like, “So where are we getting this white guy biz, anyway?”
They liked to keep it as the “zero degree,” the reference zero against which everything else was measured, something that was just natural and handed down by Gawd and therefore beyond discussion.
But as the Civil Rights movement grew after WW2...oh, brother. Then they felt more and more and more picked on. THEN it started to become necessary to explore the nature of “whiteness,” to say it loud, ah’m white and proud.
Then we elected Obama, and boy howdy, did they ever start to crawl out from below the footboard. That’s what every bit of the birthers, the screeching about Obama playing golf, the tan suit, the “feckless,” thing, the endless yelling about muslims, all of it, was about. Oh...my...GOD, we is now done got a Black President. Soon, they gonna stick us in tunnels under Walmarts.
And then we got Trump, who uses it to play these people for suckers every single day.
One wonder if they’re ever going to figure out that they’re on the side of those they want to look down on.
51
Two points:
1. Politics - "The results obtained using groups other than blacks are substantively indistinguishable from those measured when blacks are the target group." That describes my libertarian view - I oppose redistribution programs whether the proceeds go to whites or blacks. However, liberals often refer to those who reject redistribution as racist. It's a political tactic. Sure, some Trump supporters are racist. But the white suburban "soccer Mom" isn't racist - but may be scared into voting Democrat (or staying home) by accusing her of being racist.
2. Liberals view of blacks - The other conclusion of Carney and Enos is also revealing. "Far greater differences in resentment toward blacks and other groups can be found among racially sympathetic liberals." Liberals often demonstrate sympathy with blacks by sharing their dollars but not their neighborhoods or schools. Some of the most segregated areas of the country are in very liberal urban areas. Consider the resistance of affluent whites whose children attend overcrowded PS 8 in Brooklyn Heights to instead send their kids to nearly PS 307 which is heavily black and poor. These are the same liberals who nod their head when Hillary described Trump voters as "deplorables". Yet, these hypocrites cannot allow their little darlings to attend school with blacks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/nyregion/race-and-class-collide-in-a-plan-for-two-brooklyn-schools.html
18
This author of this column still doesn’t have a clue about the "deplorables," and how they feel about what is happening to the country.
Go ahead. Keep it up. Repeat over and over that straight white men are bad, and don’t deserve what they have.
Remind straight white men that hard study, hard work, obeying the law, paying taxes, marrying, and being a good husband and father are no longer valued by liberal Democrats, but are seen as symptoms of privilege, and as something very wrong, even evil. Tell these people that having a gun for self-defense is foolish. Tell them they are racist for not wanting a flood of uneducated people to clog our streets, our hospitals, our schools, and our prisons. Tell them they are racist for wanting criminals behind bars. Denigrate the history of the founding fathers. Tell these people that you know how they should live, better than they do.
And admit that deep down, you want to interfere with their lives in every way possible.
If you don't understand this, then you don't understand "white identity politics."
These attitudes are what Trump recognized and used. Mr. Trump should never have been President. He is a terrible President in so many ways, including what he has done to the Republican Party. But make no mistake, he was elected because the Democrats and their leaders wrote off and criticized the values of much of the white population of middle America.
23
A “must view” YouTube presentation by a white professor for those whites who are blind the existence of white privilege while, of course, benefiting from it cradle to grave:
What does it mean to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-pZH-S4jk
Highline College
Published on Jan 26, 2016
Presented by Dr. Robin DiAngelo during Highline College's MLK Week, January, 2016.
1
My grandfather lived in Bison, Kansas, a small town with a population of 250 on the Kansas plains.
It now has a feed store with a gas pump, a bank and a post office. The schools are closed, and students are bussed to nearby Otis.
My grandfather did not go to McDonald's for breakfast. He had a farm on the outskirts of town, which produced eggs and potatoes and wheat for bread.
Life was simple. Democracy could work in such a small community.
I have lived in various urban environments. I am amazed at how little I know my neighbors. I live in proximity to thousands of people, who make up at least a dozen different cultures.
Meanwhile government has become too complex to comprehend. The NY Times tries---Thomas Edsall usually does a reasonably good job. But even with sociological studies, and political science and so forth, I understand far less of what happens in my urban community, and in NYC, than my grandfather did of his simpler environment.
Indeed, it is not clear to me that people can understand well enough to run an effective democracy.
The article and the book by Ashleigh Jardina may be erecting new out-groups, that NY Times readers can pretend to understand without really comprehending.
Motives are complex. People see lines in the emergency room and conclude that illegal immigrants cause shortage of resources. Are they wrong?
It is easy to ascribe their worries to racism or bigotry. But perhaps the NY Times is the source of a new discrimination.
12
I admire Edsall’s work, but I felt this was not one of his better efforts. There was too much painting of various groups as all of one thing, or all of another—when there is much more nuance and detail to be had, often from the very sources Edsall quotes.
If there is any consensus among political scientists, it is that a number of whites are now ready to abandon Trump and return to the Democratic fold. They are a minority, granted, and may be no more than 10-12%, but they are enough to deliver key battleground states to the Democrats. Without them the Dems cannot win the electoral college.
These swing voters should be wooed, not demonized, but you can't tell that to many of the Democratic faithful who are out for blood, damn the consequences. That is the problem with painting entire groups as evil—as racist, for example; it embroils you in a form of blood lust that blinds you to thinking clearly and dispassionately about how to solve the exigent problems.
Whenever I make these points in this space, without fail, some reader replies with, "Well, the Republicans did this and the Republicans did that." These are the words of someone looking for an excuse to wallow in victimhood and anger, someone who’d rather hate than win. Democrats, we can do better than that. If we rise to our better natures, we can win all three branches in 2020.
7
Social scientists never seem to have a problem achieving research results that they can interpret as confirming their ideological inclinations.
Progressives and segments of the Democratic Party can insist on continuing to demonize white working people as racist, misogynistic xenophobes and thereby dismiss them. It will then have to figure out where the support is going to come from for them to win power more than just occasionally. Their hoped-for combination of oppressed minorities (many of whom do not vote that way consistently), with well-off techies, professionals, and celebrities is not going to do it. That is an uneasy alliance in any case, and it is not likely to hold together in the long run.
14
@ERP I assume you are a social scientist familiar with IRB best research practices.
Also, I'm pretty sure we're going to be fine with one simple division: white supremacists vs. everyone else. Yes, one side is racially constituted. The other is based on ethics, which can and does include white people of all socioeconomic and educational backgrounds.
1
Jardina "these whites feel, to some extent, that the rug is being pulled out from under them".....they are - being told - the rug is being pulled out from under them, by Trump, by Fox News, by the GOP. They will believe until these "trusted authorities" and "news' sources tell them something else. Propaganda works well with an incurious, low information, easily exploited demographic that it targets.
Social psychologists and historians are still trying to understand how the delusions and lies inherent in demagoguery caused the crimes, the racist based social coherence and the indifference that led to the Holocaust, see 2002, Oxford Press, Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust.
3
As if the democrat Party doesn't use identity politics as well....hilarious. The right is racist and the left is not!
9
>How should Democrats...confront — [white identity politics]?
***This op-ed piece doesn't answer this latter question.
3
I happen to be a white guy, and I am here to tell ya that nobody, but nobody, whines about how they’ve been picked on like white guys.
Nobody. My working theory is that nobody else can afford to.
10
Over 70,000 mostly white people died last year from drug overdoses. Must be because of all that white privilege and entitlement.
18
@kl Yes, actually. But it's not the privilege and entitlement of the dead. You should redirect your ire at those in the White House who claim to have a well-run task force dedicated to the opioid crisis. *They* certainly have privilege and entitlement--to prioritize rallies and golfing over the lives of Americans.
5
White privilege cannot beat suicide, drug overdose and poor choices in life. But white privilege is real and it gives perception advantage.
When a teenage black guy runs a traffic light he is seen as black BUT when a white teen guy runs the same traffic light he is seen as a rash teen. THAT IS WHITE PRIVILEGE.
7
...so many whites are not really racist as long as they are the top dog...
3
Let me see if I understand this....White people,who get their privileges from the mere accident of being born white, think that blacks need to earn their way in life? No, that's not racist.....
3
We’re all some shade of brown.
5
Perhaps whites are tiring of being told that they are the only race that can be racist. ALL races are capable of racism and are also racist. Even within their own race. Not just whites alone.
21
I still argue that the apparent success of white identity politics has economic roots. Fix the economy and it will lose its powerhouse potential. I am willing to argue that the Nazi party in the '30s would never have succeeded without the Great Depression (it’s pretty much accepted that the intentionally hampered post WW1 German economy was a large contributor). We are coming off another very big depression and economic changes have decimated the middle class (due to Republican & Democratic neoliberal policies, the Clintons and the DLC were like, “maybe we should give Reaganomics a try”) on the country side. Racist white identity sleeps until bad economic times awaken it. How to combat the success of white identity politics? Fix the economy and put it back to sleep, and it will not just hibernate, it will wither, for it has already been withering; it is not today quite what it was 90 years ago. The liberal diversity agenda is something tenable only as a luxury in a good economy. Fix the economy, attack inequality, tax the rich to build for the rest, then you can get back to "and justice for all."
4
@James Smith Yes, or put another way, "economic justice" is another aspect of justice in general. It's not all about civil rights and anti bias.
4
@jackl,
No, economic equality doesn’t give equal civil, voting and minority rights. Minorities are structurally disadvantaged by not being able to partake the economic benefits. So both economic and minority rights have to go hand in hand.
1
@James Smith
Your position sounds good on the surface but I'm not sure I agree with you. I think the problem is that the economic system is inherently racist. Further, the economy is doing rather well right now--at least by the usual indicators--so that white people's supposed economic anxiety really seem to jibe with the actual situation. And, it's the blacks and other racial minorities who suffer the most in hard economic times.
1
Identity politics is the realm of the Democrats, is the card you always play.
It's weird that you are complaining that some one else is doing the same as you.
8
The White People talked about here consist of the dead and dying. This is a self correcting problem.
1
Nonsense.
White identity politics put Donald Trump in the White House made Mitch McConnell Senate Majority Leader and put Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.
White identity politics made Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump part of an international axis of white identity nationalist supremacist evil.
7
Just because some bad people voted for Trump, it doesn't follow that everyone who voted for Trump is a bad person. I believe a good number of working poor white people, especially men, voted for Trump not because they are terrible people but because Trump was speaking directly to them while Hillary and the Democratic establishment was ignoring them. People want to be heard and to feel that somebody is on their side and they'll vote for the person who best does that. Or in Trump's case, the person who best pretends to do that.
This idea that white people who are losing out and scraping by have nothing to complain about is ridiculous and damaging. How do you fault people whose towns and ways of life have been decimated for wanting to get back what they once had? People who once had good jobs now have no savings, no retirement, a leaky roof over their heads, not enough food on the table, and no ability to afford medicines or medical care.
A little compassion and understanding goes a long way. Assuming the worst about people gets you nowhere but more divided and further away from real solutions. This is the lifeblood of the Republican Party, but Democrats are not currently offering a reasonable alternative.
6
@J.C. I beg you, stop this. You preach compassion and yet you fail to realize that "white men" who were being "ignored" by democrats placed their hurt feelings above acknowledging that other human beings deserve human rights. The president is a bigot. Voting for him is a bigoted act. Stop trying to act like ANYTHING can justify that.
6
Left out of this discussion is the nearly constant shaming of whites, especially white males, by many on the left, as was famously exemplified by the 'basket of deplorables' statement.
It's generally considered bad business policy to shame your customers. And if the product you're selling is a political candidate or a set of public policies, it's no surprise that progressives have lost a lot of customers over the years.
Just consider all the insults that urban progressives use to describe rural conservatives. Notice the one stereotype that's still acceptable to use in the movies to portray an unsophisticated or stupid person: give him or her a rural, preferably an Appalachian, accent.
I consider myself to be a progressive somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders. Yet when my kids come home from their liberal colleges and have learned new ways to bash white people, I am not hopeful for my party's future.
No one votes for candidates of a party that insults them.
18
Isn't "white identity politics" just a politically correct term for racism? I don't think any mainstream group, let alone the Democratic Party, should yield to racism for vote. When was the last time embracing racism ended well?
I can only think of spectacular failures when racism became a dominant ideology of a society. Think Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia, the antebellum South, imperial Japan, and arguably Brexit.
If the only way a governing coalition can form in the US is to embrace racism in any form, we've already jumped the shark.
3
The cited study is incredibly flawed. The person asks some really poorly designed questions and then purports to measure something called racial resentment? Please first define racial resentment in an objective manner and then PROVE that your test measures it. The person ASSUMED his test measured so-called racial resentment because he said so. Pure poppycock.
10
Maybe this would all be clearer for democrats if they spent more time simply listening to conservative Americans (who tend to be white) and less time studying them and all their pathologies (like they're an exotic species) for the purpose of changing their political views. And reducing everything to white - black issues, whether in popular or scientific circles (and especially when hispanics/latinos are the country's largest and fastest growing ethnic/racial minority), seems to support identity politics more than truthful understanding and unity.
7
@carl bumba I would be happy simply listening to conservatives if they would be happy simply listening to me.
Just like “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, but I am sure CB’s days being aired are numbered....
3
Articles like this, and the many articles cited within, combine to give social and political sciences a bad name. I think you can conduct surveys endlessly without coming up with anything useful, or anything that couldn't be refuted with more surveys.
6
The finding that white identity is related to fear of losing our jobs to others reflects the insecurity capitalism visits on all who live under its imperatives. The perpetual insecurity encourages us to work hard and win our competition with others.
That's a big reason why capitalism grows socialists. Socialism doesn't require perpetual GNP growth, competition among us or manipulated consumerism.
2
I am not afraid of racial minorities or immigrants. I am a socially conservative Democrat who married a woman of color from an immigrant family. I love my country and my family and believe in treating everyone fairly and with dignity, while providing a substantial safety net to the marginalized and vulnerable.
I am afraid of the prejudices of a woke (and tragically and comically white) elite whose identity politics is a terrible stain on our universities, which then filters into large corporations and government. It is impossible not to see the contempt laced in the words and writing of Professor Jardina and others.
They write from an ivory tower (have you walked around an elite college town lately?), with tenure and the comforts of a college town sinecure, paid for by the patronage of the wealthy elite that send their children and tuition dollars, and the governments that shovel them grants, surrounded by a moat of elitism and meritocratic exclusivity...and then they write books criticizing the racial resentment and status anxiety of poor white folks? Who is *really* maintaining and profiting from a system of inequality and unearned power and privileges here?
Sadly, these intellectual-yet-idiots serve as excellent role models for the alt-right who gleefully borrow from the same identity politics playbook.
12
White people feel agrieved for real and fake/inflated reasons.
The fake/inflated reasons that most NYTimes readers could probably tick off from memory are made significantly worse by a dedicated, consistent, concentrated, and explicit effort by media, overall, to emphasize diversity.
Whether it be the thousands of cumulative hours of news coverage of movies like Black Panther or Crazy Rich Asians, or the 25-50% of content produced by literally every single public radio production company, or articles published in digital/print, or efforts to focus on and emphasize diversity in corporations, etc.
First the cynical, strategic, intentional, etc. right wing/conservative political and media apparatus basically lies or vastly misrepresents reality.
This gets the base fired up.
Then the left makes matters worse by basically "doubling down" and focusing a lot of attention on diversity issues.
Even though the reality is that actual, measurable, diversity is still relatively low....
If you keep telling a person they are terrible, and then follow that up by basically ignoring them 100% of the time, you are going to make them furiously angry.
This isnt a shock.
The occasional token media coverage of the rust belt, or midwest, or angry white old trump voter simply is not a solution to this problem.
6
In the case of anti-Mexican anti- Central American immigration, it is both anti-immigration and racist. If these folks were coming from Norway, you'd nary hear a peep. In Texas and other parts of the Southwest brown people tend to be lumped together with black people. This something most easterners don't seem to know. One of my Chicano friends came back from seeing NYC and related at how surprised he was that many asked him what "tribe" he was.
1
"...pro-immigration, pro-diversity Democrats face clear obstacles breaking the Republican hold on white voters."
This is a well-researched and well-thought-out essay. Though the 2018 election may have challenged this view, racial identity of white majority would be a major impediment to Democratic successes in future. The concerns of the white majority ought to be addressed. They should not be made to feel "powerless," as a sizable minority at least of whites feel.
When whites felt they were all-powerful, they were magnanimous. Many may not know it but in the 18th century, for a short period slavery was abolished in Georgia!
If whites could feel their position is secure, that the immigrants will not take it away, they would tolerate immigration of non-whites.
The main obstacle to comprehensive immigration is the “Path-to-Citizenship” clause. (I'm a liberal Democrat, Indian American)
I strongly believe that if Democrats really care about the misery of nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants, they would drop that clause. Democrats should take the initiative and say, if you illegally remained in the country you can’t have citizenship with some exceptions such as entering as minors before say, age 14, or overstayed for a short period after visa expired, or commendable military service.
5
In the U.S., very few white Americans had to think a whole lot about race until Obama became President. Suddenly we were watching a black man every night on the news. What a lot of white Americans found was that they believe they are more American than minority citizens. We are the "real" Americans, entitled to the lion's share of the nation's privileges, opportunity and wealth. Add a daily dose of Fox New's bigotry and covert racism and we have our first openly racist and bigoted president. White identify politics won't end until the baby boomer generation passes away. Fortunately, the Millennials are not nearly as intimidated by race and immigration as the Boomers. The question is what will happen in the mean time.
The best way to get rid of white identity politics is to get rid of identity politics. It's equally morally repugnant across the board and one precipates the other.
7
So called “white identity” voters are the reaction to “civil rights for all citizens” no matter what color. There are other and notso unemotional terms, but essentially these people are the same angry, resentful voters they’ve been since the Civil War.
2
Ideology of White Supremacy, Trail of Tears, Dred Scott Decision, Slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, Redeemers, Lynching, Jim Crow / States Rights, Mexican Repatriation (1930) , The Silent Majority, Welfare Queens, Willie Horton, Mexicans are murders and rapist.
"White Identity Politics Aren’t Going Anywhere." When did it ever
disappear Mr. Edsall? When? Good grief.
"White Identity politics", "tribalism" are meaningless words, used to create confusion, credence and subterfuge. White Supremacy, call things by their proper name.
1
White identity politics does not, of itself, equal fascism. The spoken and unspoken assumption is that Democrats *should* confront them, when they do not confront, but embrace, identity politics by other groups. They need to explicate this distinction. They usually resort to shame and references to the Third Reich, but these are really petty rhetorical tactics.
Explain why this distinction, cooly, calmly and with reason.
3
"In other words, white identity is not defined by racial animus, and whites who identify with their racial group are not simply reducible to bigots."
Yet this is what the left says all the time. If you don't want 22 million people who broke into your country removed, you're a racist. If you want a co-worker who is not performing well and happens to be black, your a racist. If you've been a victim of mugging and cross the street when you see someone in a hoodie, your probably a racist, even if you don't know what color they are. If you think it's weird that we suddenly have to change pronouns to satisfy .05% of the population then you are anti gay. It's ridiculousness at its apex. The left is fond of labels and their minions are fond of shoving their agenda down the throat of anyone that doesn't agree 100% with some of the most ridiculous of their ideas (abolish ICE, open borders). Most of them have never been outside of their cities and bubbles. They're almost worse than the right, because they are so convinced of their righteousness. That is what got Donald Trump elected, they need to look at themselves hard in the mirror and determine whether for more years of Trump is what they want, because the America he will leave us with won't be worth living in. Everyone wants to come to America, because it was founded on northern European principles. There were egregious crimes committed, but that was then this is now. We need democrats with a platform not a bullhorn.
10
Why can't we all just get along?
Rodney King
1
We're already off white. We do need color.
1
I think a goodly number of commenters today should go to the blackboard and write:
THE PLURAL OF ANECDOTE IS N.O.T DATA
1,000 times. And a PERSONAL anecdote is even worse than one about your Aunt Sally's friend's cousin's husband because it is difficult to be unbiased about something that happened to you personally.
There is real data on this stuff--race of people shot by police, university quota systems, unfounded charges of sexual abuse, etc., etc., etc. Look it up.
3
Democrats tend to focus on hyphenated demographics, so I suggest a move towards referring them to Urban-Whites and Rural-Whites. That'll show everyone they're truly accounted for and super special. Problem solved..
Wait, I forgot Suburb-Whites. And Work-From-Home-Whites. And..
3
People will always be racist and that they will always try to advantage themselves.
The problem is when you perpetuate advantage over generations. Curbing or eliminating inheritance would solve that issue nicely. What do you say white folks? Willing to actually work for what you get, like minoritieshave alwyas had to do?
Or do you feel entitled to the house and property that your parents—not you—earned.
1
Is there a "hobnail boots" option?
Few things are more distressing than watching the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot by asking low income whites to literally slit their own throats for no good reason. At least the GOP gives them some spite by hammering those on the safety net. The left gives them nothing but psychological abuse.
11
If it's racism, why do we see the rural revolt in France ?
7
When you talk about racial equality, it matters a lot if you talk about leveling up or leveling down. The vision of racial equality a generation ago was rooted in ideas of growth, so that African Americans could do better without whites having to give up much of anything. The ideal was for everyone to have what middle class white people have.
But the economy over the past several decades has been so brutal that what actually happened was that a lot of working class whites came to experience the same precarious economic status, and all the associated social ills, that were considered unique problems of the black community back in the 70s.
That could have created interracial solidarity and a commitment to improving the economy for working people of all races. But people like Trump and those around him have done a very good job of dividing the working class along racial lines. That's what the right wing (and its billionaire funders) wants most.
Regarding racial consciousness, I'm of Italian descent. I'm proud of it, in a sort of low-key way. Especially the food. But I want everyone else to be proud of their backgrounds too, and for all of us to live our ethnicities without having to fight about it.
7
To Tom who writes
"That means creating proposals to improve economic security and opportunity for working class whites, blacks and Latinos alike -- for everyone in the lower 80 percent of the population.
Virtually everyone in non-college America has been hurt by adverse economic trends and policies over the past 30 years. These trends include foreign competition, offshoring American jobs and yes, historically high immigration. "
THANK YOU. CORRECT ON ALL POINTS
BUT HOW WOULD THESE PROPOSALS LOOK?
As Paul Volcker
"He wondered how many lectures and presentations he had sat through with economists “telling us open markets are wonderful, everybody benefits from open markets.”
Eventually, Mr. Volcker said, someone in those lectures would always ask, “What about that poor manufacturer in my town?” But that concern was dismissed too easily, with talk of worker retraining or some other solution far easier said than done."
And therein lies the rub. Far easier said then done.
A useful first step would be for those open market economists (led by Krugman) to admit that free markets are NOT wonderful for everyone. That they were wrong
about it.
Still waiting for that.
But we know from the history of agricultural trade that a workable solution will include tariffs. Every country uses tariffs on agriculture good.
Without those, Canadian Diary Farmers, US ethanol growers, would be thrown out of work
US workers, too, need what US farmers have.
2
Does Edsall read his own newspaper. On Dec. 12th, in an op ed in this newspaper, I suggested that Democrats could win over aging, anxious older whites by championing preservation of Medicare and Social Security. But Edsall and the authors he quotes are so fixated on identity politics that they can't shift to an increasingly important variable determining political attitudes and voting: age. https://nyti.ms/2ExlW2e
7
There are those that voted in the last election and in 2016 out of animus and tribe, but far more voted out of selfishness. (to get meager tax theft for themselves)
Identity politics will soon go by the wayside as simple demographics take over. The one catch is that quite soon Liberals are going to have super majorities to enact true Progressive policies.
Those policies are geared to treating people equally (including whites) and that group will be able to finally see that they are not subjugated (like all others have been forever). Once that happens, then the division will stop and those trying to instigate it will be laughed at.
It is already happening .
2
Though most of us didn't realize it at the time, the US reached its apex in economic expansion in terms of upward socioeconomic mobility around 1970 when the minimum wage peaked, the bills for the Cold War began coming due, OPEC began to put on the squeeze, and the union movement began to go into decline along with the beginnings of outsourcing manufacturing and the death of blue collar America that went with it. Main Street economies in factory and family farming towns across the country disappeared as Wall Street, Madison Avenue and Walmart tightened their grips around our collective throats and disco and escapist consumerism tightened atrophied our minds.
Subsequently as the tide rose for a contracting few, those boats moored to the flooding docks of the old economy began to sink. All of the idealistic movements of the 60s-- including the civil rights movement-- failed to grasp these developing realities. Springsteen and later Mellencamp would sing about the economic destruction of urban and rural white America but the civil rights movement continued to portray the economic stagnation of blacks-- who had arrived at the door of the economic party just in time for the party to be shut down-- have continued to portray things in terms of racist whites having everything and oppressed blacks having nothing as a result of racism alone.
Elite white liberal members of the 1% have no interest in having these economic realities known. They like things going the way they are.
10
I always said disco was bad.
2
Maintaining racial discord benefits the upper crust of American society: the more low income whites view minorities as the enemy, the less likely they are to realize that the super rich are really the ones responsible for their increasingly bleak economic prospects. As such, it’s highly doubtful our country will ever move forward beyond our current racial fault lines... sadly.
10
There are those that voted in the last election and in 2016 out of animus and tribe, but far more voted out of selfishness. (to get meager tax theft for themselves)
Identity politics will soon go by the wayside as simple demographics take over. The one catch is that quite soon Liberals are going to have super majorities to enact true Progressive policies.
Those policies are geared to treating people equally (including whites) and that group will be able to finally see that they are not subjugated (like all others have been forever). Once that happens, then the division will stop and those trying to instigate it will be laughed at.
It is already happening ...
@FunkyIrishman
Yes. Almost all who voted for Trump were traditional Republicans, who vote religiously for Republicans in each and every election. As a group they are doing well economically relative to Democrats and non-voters.
Time and again political commentators pull out the aggrieved "working class white" narrative. Give it a rest, people. Democrats do *not* have to pander to them. They'll get plenty of attention along with everyone else when Democrats are in a position of power: Social Security and all the other social welfare programs, public education, strong consumer and labor protections, infrastructure (jobs) investments...
The Democratic coalition is large and getting larger. 2016 should have taught us two things: one, don't fall for the right wing's false narrative. Two, don't abandon your base; go all in for them and they'll turn out for you.
Something else that is happening. Those traditional Republicans that have reliably voted R in every election? More and more of them are leaving the party, particularly post-Trump, as they see real damage being done in the areas of foreign policy and competence in basic domestic governance - whether that be responding adequately to natural disasters, conducting scientific research, or managing federal contracts. Many of these people will join the Democratic coalition without any effort, whereas the cultural warriors everyone spends so much time fretting over will not.
2
My pal Skip at lunch today said it best when he said the unspeakable problem with this country is the undeserving middle class. This is typified by everything I read in this piece, with white middle class people complaining how they are being targeted for unfair treatment. The middle class used to be the economic engine of this great country. When our two grandfathers rose above their middle class roots to found the company we now head, people were willing to work, they didn't complain about black people! (Well, maybe they complained a little.) They worked hard, saved their money and built a business empire. Sadly, little of that is being done today. I blame a lot of this on political correctness and its pandering of the middle class. God bless. And Freedom!!!
There has been no period in my lifetime (starting when Truman was elected President) when white people did not complain about black people. For the first 20 years of my life, segregation - legal second class citizenship for blacks going back to 1876 - was legal throughout the South and was the de facto norm in most of the country. Thereafter we had Nixon's Southern strategy, continued by Reagan and the Bushes and now by the racist in the White House (birtherism what do you think that was about?).
Let's get off the train to Fantasyland. Equality before the law. The US civil war was fought to put it into our Constitution. I'm not for postponing it again while the uniformed squawk about freedom.
4
As I read this article and absorbed all of its statistics, I was mindful of another reality: by 2050 whites would cease to be the majority. We will have truly become a multi-cultural, multi-racial society. While it is understandable to some extent that those identifying as white in a political sense to be afraid of this, it isn't the Democratic Party's job to make these people less racist, it is everybodies job to some extent. Familiarity with people who are considered "other" has to begin early, in kindergarten and grade school. Even adults can have a change of heart if they have opportunities to interact with African Americans, Latinos, and members of religions other than their own. Politically, all that groups can do, really, is work towards fairness in economics, healthcare, and education. As society becomes more equitable, more educated, and less segregated many of these problems will very slowly go away. It will take generations.
2
There are those that voted in the last election and in 2016 out of animus and tribe, but far more voted out of selfishness. (to get meager tax theft for themselves)
Identity politics will soon go by the wayside as simple demographics take over. The one catch is that quite soon Liberals are going to have super majorities to enact true Progressive policies.
Those policies are geared to treating people equally (including whites) and that group will be able to finally see that they are not subjugated (like all others have been forever). Once that happens, then the division will stop and those trying to instigate it will be laughed at.
It is already happening !
I don't trust the vast majority of academics, who've led insulated and priveleged lives on a whole, to come up with reliable studies on such issues. Nevertheless, I did enjoy this finding: "we find that political conservatives express only minor differences in resentment across target groups. Far greater differences in resentment toward blacks and other groups can be found among racially sympathetic liberals" The auther does a disservice by not taking the energy to further explore what this finding evidences. But I suppose mythologies die hard when they form the basis of one's ideological system, in this case a system that depends upon the legends that only some people can claim victimhood, that there are global minorities that are, in fact, majorities (and vice-versa), that certain groups are necessarily bad because they stand in the way of chosen dogma, and most curiously, that not being racist is, in fact, a devious form of racism!
9
This is almost too amorphous and too much to digest. All in all I think that immigrant-ophobia has been around as long as the US itself. I also think that poor whites should be a lot more focused and outraged about redistribution up the economic chain than sideways to minorities. The main color problem is green, not black, white, red, brown or yellow.
6
If you are accustomed to privilege,
equality can feel like oppression.
6
There are those that voted in the last election and in 2016 out of animus/tribe, but far more voted out of selfishness. (to get meager taxtheft for themselves)
Identity politics will soon go by the wayside as simple demographics take over. The one catch is that quite soon Liberals are going to have super majorities to enact true Progressive policies.
Those policies are geared to treating people equally and everyone will be able to finally see that they are not subjugated (like many have been forever). Once that happens, then the division will stop and those trying to instigate it will be laughed at.
It is already happening ...
1
At the risk of being curmudgeonly cynical about allowing ourselves to be continually influenced by political pollsters, pundits, researchers, authors, media experts and their ilk with psychographic/demographic descriptions of the various groups necessary to secure election victories, I say poppycock & balderdash. And to those described above, I say put on a blindfold, stick a pair of ear plugs where they belong, and give your thesaurus and label making machine take a holiday break.
You just might learn something valuable by gaining a better perspective and the wisdom that comes with it.
2
Mr. Edsall, please be careful otherwise you may end up being the next false equivalency to Trump in a Brett Stephens column.
3
To urban-rural, ethnic, and class divides we need to add religious divides. Some Christian sects excel in being victims. Some await the end-times and their rapture, others vow to praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Sorry to be a nudge, but look at the Scottish Presbyterian offshoots in Dixie and in Northern Ireland. In the latter, about half a million people hold the UK government hostage, as well as the millions who voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. Blessed assurance? Bloomin' arrogance and hypocrisy!
5
I recently saw a hashtag referencing the potential democratic candidates to run against Trump; #demstoowhite. My immediate reaction was that if this is the Dems rallying call we’ve already lost 2020.
7
Racism is organized theft.
Sexism is organized theft.
Evangelism is organized theft.
More for me, means nothing for you.
If I say you can’t own this or that or work that nice job, but I can, I am stealing from you. To live with myself I have to justify my bad act...white man’s burden, god said so, etc.
Perhaps if we address the real issue here: theft or more politely put, a basis for discrimination in the allocation of resources, we’ll begin to address the real issue. White identity politics=theft justified.
3
Ha! What rubbish. The notion that whites leaving the Democratic camp have moved solidly into the Trump camp as fervent supporters is an agenda based lie. Recall that there was a huge anti-HRC vote in 2016. There are times that a candidate is so distasteful that you attempt to pick the least bitter medication. While not being pro-Trump, many whites felt they had no choice but to vote for him. In order for the Democrats to win the White House, they must offer a centrist who's background isn't an endless stream of questionable behavior. Right now their bench is nothing but a JV team of nothing burgers. THAT's the issue..............
5
I'm sorry but when I look at Congress, CEOs of the majority of companies and financial institutions, the news I see an overwhelming majority of nothing but white men with a few women sprinkled in. So, what anxiety is this?
4
Just another progressive academic attempt, via identity politics, to trivialize and demonize individuals who do not agree with Democratic positions. Perhaps one might consider that there are non-racists who disagree with socialism, confiscatory taxes, and anti-business rhetoric, who vote Republican based their own analysis of the data.
8
Why should White Identity Politics go anywhere? White people enjoy White Privilege and want to protect it. Every part of life in America is touched by it and The Majority likes its place at top of the food chain. The comments here are loaded with White People who will tell you they were wronged by reverse racism. I don't doubt the way they feel and can empathize. Now think about Black People who as a race face institutionalized racism every day of their life. The only light at the end of the tunnel is demographic change. A Black getting a job instead of White is an aberration the vice versa is the norm. Denial is not a river in Africa!
4
When your life is not going the way you thought it was going to be you need someone else to blame. When you didn't get that promotion and the position went to a person of color it could not be that they deserved it. When opioids were decimating communities of color from the '60s to today the answer was to build more prisons. Now that it is killing people in the majority population it is an epidemic that warrants compassion. When your position at top of the food chain is challenged it is only human nature to try to protect it. Building a wall is not going to stop the browning of America but what the heck give it a try. People of color are just making up their plight in America and from your vantage point. you can't see what all the to do is about. In truth, change will only come with a demographic change.
4
Is tribal war “identity politics”? Is #MeToo a tribal war?
Not at all. Identity politics is not about clashes between rival identities. It is about recognition of equality as in “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” as appeared in the French Revolution, and as background to “e pluribus unum” as appears on American currency.
It also is about combating the distortion of politics by wealth, and refusal of the few to aid the many.
Assertion and cooperation both require recognition of dignity. Both are denied by tribal insults and denigration of “the other”. This disgusting boorishness, the hallmark of Trump and slavishly supported by the GOP and outlandish unending propaganda from Fox, Limbaugh, Alex Jones etc etc, this is what must be fought off.
Vote for inspiration to be better. Not for specious alliance with destructive forces.
3
A potential problem with Jardina’s poll statement: “Blacks must work harder to get ahead.”
Does that suggest Blacks do not work hard enough now?
Or does that suggest Blacks face greater imposed obstacles that need to be overcome by working harder than others?
Potential huge swing on weighing perceptions and attitudes.
3
A lot of this is about self-fulfilling prophesy. If you tell white people, or anyone else, that they are your enemy because of the colour of their skin, then they are going to become your enemy. At least it's a start to use the term "white identity politics". The self-fulfilling prophecy narrative usually says that identity politics is virtuous but doesn't apply to whites.
7
Any discussion of identity politics is difficult because it inevitably characterizes a whole group of people by the behavior or characteristics of part of it and often does so based on a single characteristic. This article does so numerous times in a relatively sophisticated ways, but falls short. I know a fair number of people who are living their ethnic heritage who would be called "white" by society. Few liberal whites want to be characterized as white nowadays because there are only negative connotations. I don't.
But there are many good things about being a WASP male. A lot of bad, but a lot of good too. Some academics are working to create a positive white ID. I think that's the way to go if we want to heal some divisions. it won't easy. It won't be pretty. It will require extreme vigilance to avoid the bad, compassion on everyone's part, and commitment to justice for all, but maybe it's a way forward. I learned that in a racial equity class by the way, if you're wondering.
1
Increasing income and wealth inequality over the past four decades among the middle classes is a big factor influencing this "circle the wagons" mentality. When groups experience this kind of financial destabilization they react in a predictable way - and this is why we're seeing a rise in populism, racism, and opposition to immigration here and in Europe. Remember how this country curtailed immigration from the 1920s until the 1960s? The 1920s were another Gilded Age, like today, and WASPs were freaked out about all the Irish and Italian catholics who emigrated here between ~ 1880s and 1920.
Instead of blaming the oligarchs, capitalists, and neoliberal government policies, people focus on culturally or racially different interest groups as a scapegoat. Those who are really pulling the strings of society are so remote and untouchable that I suspect many people don't even recognize who really pulled the rug out from under them in terms of financial stability and security. But it's clear that over the past decades, risk has been transferred from corporations and government to the individual. People have a chronic fear of losing what they have because all but the filthy rich are one medical crisis away from losing their life savings. Those middle class people who can afford to save toward retirement (despite decades of wage stagnation) depend on the stock market going up to be able to retire some day and not live in poverty.
None of this is any excuse for racism of course.
3
There is a growing segment of our population that is experiencing many of the same economic problems as racial minorities, but for them, this is a relatively new phenomenon. It might be helpful to conceptualize this group as a growing "white economic minority". While it is true that whites are not a minority group, many of these (mostly young men and women) are underemployed and struggling in the same way that racial minorities have for generations or centuries. Many work "off the books" in jobs like construction and in hard labor. If and when they apply for jobs as plumbers assistants they may be turned away for not being "experienced" for an entry level "no experience" job. No one seems to want them. Dems need to understand this anger. They need to understand why some whites project their frustration towards those who also struggle, and have been, for generations. It stems from economic insecurity.
3
I don't think "white oppression" or racism is up to the Democrats to solve. Racism or "fear of the other" has been around since before the Civil War. In many ways, it's intergenerational and will take more generations for it to die out. In the meantime, educational programs aimed at diversity and familiarity starting in early childhood will go a long way to ending this scourge. Policies that encourage economic parity can help along with programs to train workers in more technical skills. Town and city planning that encourages integration can give people choices to face their own racism because, in the end, it is a personal choice requiring a change of heart.
2
So much of this rings true. After much travel around the US and many conversations, I have found working class whites deeply concerned about job security, future work opportunities, moribund local economies, care of veterans, the opioid epidemic, and substandard
public schools. Some, like my mom’s caretaker, sense that the only advantage they have ever had was race. With white racial advantage declining, they do fear they will have to contend with racial discrimination on top of being ill-served already by the schools and government agencies they turn to. Providing all Americans with good education and lifetime training opportunities would go a long way toward eradicating racial identities and the accompanying resentment. Toward that end I tutored that caretaker’s granddaughter and guided her and her family toward a good, affordable public university where she is excelling. We need more opportunities for all, more and better government, and an ethic of wanting equality for all as best for all of us. The weight of inequality reduces economic growth, stunts
learning and achievement, and debases us all — upper, middle, and lower income people.
10
I'm not sure that the differentiation is white vs. other. It may be your family vs. other. I want to make sure that my kids inherit the advantages that my status entails.
5
Why? Because they’re not smart enough or already-advantaged enough to make it on their own?
It would also be helpful to know the answers to the questions, "Whites should work their way up without any special favors" and "Everyone should work their way up without any special favors."
6
I am white, son of an immigrant father whose first job after high school was in the WV coal mines, and I strongly support affirmative action for African Americans. Many, if not most, whites don’t recognize is that they benefited from 400 years of whites only affirmative action. It was illegal to teach black slaves to read and write. Quite a few of my 22 years in the Air Force were spent in the segregated south. There was de facto segregation in other part of the country, including my birth state of New York, but not de jure segregation as in the south. It surprises me that there is not more outrage among our black citizens. In my old age, I have strived to eliminate most of my biases. I view immigration as positive as long as immigrants assimilate. Sexual preference does not bother me at all, since I am convinced it is genetic, like being born left handed. I will retain my bias against southern white evangelicals, since racial bias is endemic to that demographic. Lincoln should have welcomed their departure.
16
@JSK,
Thereby bangs a tale. Just what does it mean, to assimilate? That they speak English so that you can communicate with them?
I speak perfectly good English, but there are plenty of people whom I have no interest at all in communicating with. Does that mean I have not assimilated?
1
@JSK. Most whites today simply don't realize that they have inherited that spot on third base simply by being white, and that blacks and other non-whites are stuck in the dugout because whites who came before us made dammed sure that's where they were kept. Now, whites who feel threatened feel justified because blacks have more crime and poverty which they, in the whites' opinion, deserve. People in general are blind to the sins of the past, especially those committed by their own families or their own kind. Whites are no different.
1
@JSK
People who are struggling to survive and keep their family going every day, and who don't have much hope for a bright future, don't care much about some advantage their ancestors may or may not have had over other people. They're trying to make it through today.
You're trying to make the effort to understand people who aren't like you, but that clearly doesn't include white people who aren't like you. That falls short of getting us to where we need to be as a society.
Don't be so quick to pat yourself on the back when you're slapping somebody with the same hand.
4
Edsal searches into the minds of right-leaning whites in America to uncover insights that could lead to winning them back to the Democrats. Apparently, he finds three kinds of these despicable human beings: 1) Mildly racist, 2) half racist, and 3) fully racist. Each of these creatures has some level of resentment and insecurity, and is wholly intent on protecting its deep rooted "power." They seem to be annoyed by a "political correctness" that pervades the culture (Edsal provides the quotation marks - implying that PC'ism is some sort of Fox News pop fiction).
The key to winning back these voters? Quit living, breathing and talking about identity politics. Quit being "outraged." Quit talking about the aggrieved, put-upon alphabet soup of interests that need the rectification of social justice. The down-trodden unemployed worker in Kentucky doesn't want to be brow-beaten on how guilty he should be because of his "institutional racist power." Nor, does the typical Independent, or anyone else for that matter.
Edsal wants "actionable" insights? Take a deeper, much deeper look. Examine yourself and the progressive narrative.
Then find a candidate that lives and speaks to a message of unity, community, well-being, universal principles and hope.
14
Reading this op-ed and many of the comments confirms what our nation's history beg at least two questions that most of white America ignores: (1) why did most whites, including in the North and West, blithely stand by and hardly raising an eyebrow when slavery, segregation and other discrimination far worse than anything whites whine about having to endure these days; and (2) why do white Americans seem so sensitive to, and so quick and vociferous in complaining about, acts of discrimination against them or their fellow whites, and yet they ignore and never utter a word about the residual effects of far more egregious discrimination against black Americans for more than 350 years that continue to this day?
The answers to these questions seem simple to me, and they are evidenced by our history and the newspapers, letters, diaries, political speeches, and other data that comprise it. The documentary history of white America shows it is rotten to its core with racism, starting with our Founders, and that if anything the Civil War exacerbated white racism. While the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and laws enacted due to it have ended de jure discrimination against blacks, nothing significant was done to remedy the horrific harms done to black America--unless one considers the fed's post-Bakke, watered-down affirmative action efforts significant. But even those must be solely to promote diversity, and not to serve a much-needed remedial purpose. So says the white SCOTUS.
8
@Jamie Nichols You are free to find a black person and pay them all the "reparations" you want, as a private individual. And the Dems are free to include reparations to African Americans in their 2020 platform. Not sure it will work for them, though.
6
The phase "white privilege" is curiously omitted in the article though it does seem to convey much of what is being described.
That groups of vulnerable whites are now feeling resentments
is seen in how the "PC" opposition encodes these types of racially based resentments of marginalization/relative power destabilization. In this context, PC stands for a stereotypical race contingent mindset that governs institutional attitude and administration.
What is missing are the social and institutional efforts to convey the underlying reality of white privilege in daily
person to person or person to institution behavior/interactions. In particular, it appears as if empathy instruction and role playing to understand how the other (minority) person is forced into a subordinate role are sorely lacking in the society.
Instead we are confronted with this blindness of consciousness that infects all social levels and regions whenever the next viral video emerges from the internet that exhibits how vulnerable one can be by being both black and doing something completely ordinary.
If those who believe their white privilege has been vitiated by
different features of "PC" run amok were put in the position of
self interrogating their becoming the subject of (and not the instigators of) such videos, perhaps then some progress can be made in peaceful (or at least drama less) racial cohabitation.
1
Time to bring back "class consciousness." Yes, it's all too easy to distract struggling people by pointing to rivals ("immigrants/ minorities taking away 'your' job"). But when considering "ideas about deservingness, and ... outgroups getting too much or taking too much that is not due to them" the fact remains that it's been the 1% that has made out like bandits over the past couple decades.
3
Both Liberals and Conservatives want their illegal: nannies, pool cleaners, landscapers, housemaids, and car washers. Neither of them want these people living anywhere near their homes or communities. This is what I would call true bi-partisan agreement.
8
White Identity Politics is indeed essential to the Republicans' strategy of dividing the working class vote. They will not let it go.
Organizing scarcity, by reducing access to healthcare for example, makes sense in that light. They tried to do it on the sly, but the partisan Texas judge inadvertently exposed their game this week.
It's like a variant of an old joke:
A Republican Congressman, a poor white man and an immigrant sit at a table, with 12 cookies on a plate. The Republican politician grabs 11 cookies and tells the white guy, “You better watch him. He wants your cookie.”
4
Any time due Reparations want to be settled so that the TRUE "welfare queens" -- like Trump -- can no longer hedge their faked fortunes literally off the backs of virtually free labor similar to slavery securing French help w/o which we wouldn't be Independent in the first place, don't let America's checkerboard society stop us.
I've never heard a white person talk about wanting/deserving to be at the top of some so-called 'racial hierarchy.' I've never heard talk about wanting privileges or any of that. I think the feeling amongst a lot of people in white America is that the US is their country yet is being hijacked. They built it, their fathers built it, their grandfathers built it - their ancestors fought in World War II, in World War I, in the Civil War and yes the Revolutionary War for this country. How about these other folks?
I get the feeling that people see these non-white newcomers as a bunch of carpetbaggers and interlopers, not because they're not white, but because they are rushing in to cash in on white America's great successes without so much as a thank you to the middle and working class whites of the Rust Belt, the Midwest, the West - you know, the people who made this country what it is. Instead, they call them racist bigots, left-behind losers! It's a bit of a slap in the face. Because at the same time, those same people who call rural whites uneducated bigots are dismantling the US's industrial and agricultural economy, stripping rural whites of everything they achieved.
It's kind of a lot.
14
@Quinn: Well, Quinn me lad, I'm pink-white, a naturalized citizen, and have often enjoyed the badinage of a pub. Since Desert Storm, I've crossed pubs (research centers!) off my list, one by one. until there are few in Queens I care to visit--especially of the typical Irish American type. I've witnessed gross racism, reaching from Dinkin's time to the Obama years. I've read treatises defending the rights of whites, often cloaked as states' rights. And you know, the people who off-shored jobs, brought in robots, and transferred car assembly to Dixie out of MoTown--they were not your leftist elites. The idea that hard-working settlers made America what it is is questionable. They found a rich cornucopia of water, timber, and minerals--and wild-life. But not all of them became wealthy. And many who fled Ireland and the oppression there begat their fair share of oppressors.
4
Janina missed the group of white Republicans who don’t care about race, find identity politics to be repulsive, and worry that Democrats are using identity politics to raise taxes. A pretty big miss on Jardina’s part.
6
Dems don’t have to understand and confront “identity politics” - they have to understand and confront propaganda about “the other”.
Identifying and villainizing “the other” was the very successful tactic of Goebbels to assist the rise of Fascism, and here in America it has arrived again in Trump and the GOP.
Fox News, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, talk radio, rabid fundamentalist programs, Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones (to name a few) — all enlisted as parts of a hugely successful brainwashing machine. Defanging this widespread propaganda machine has to be a top priority.
Putting the genie of the villainous other back in its bottle is no easy task. Once the id is unshackled, rationality is eclipsed.
5
Here is a solution to the racial divide.
In a given city, town, hamlet, have the upper 50% go to the home of the lower 50% for 3 hours on Wednesday nights and dig into the human inequalities, pairing one "upper" family with a "lower" one and rotation every six months. If you do not know what to do ask about their children or read a religious (Christ, Buddha, you name it) chapter together.
Oh yeah I forgot, you are busy on Wednesday nights!
After all, when one is stuck in a nursing home then, many a racist finds Jesus in the person of a caring black woman.
A tangible vision of what it means to treat everybody equally may wash upon selfish and ignorant souls.
That would be more meaningful than burying ourselves in a church, a bar, or a TV.
That would be America at its best especially at a time when a LOT of people are going to get hurt with scarcity and toxic human debris raising their ugly heads.
1
Because identity politics is all people like you talk about.
I used to work with a very smart person (sorry, but to your inexorable dismay, this person's race, gender and sexual preference currently escapes me). This person spent no time on their personal appearance, and had a very astute reason.
"While, wearing fashionable clothing is the easiest thing you can do, it adds nothing" [paraphrased]
I suppose with identity politics, we've found something that requires even less effort and adds even less.
Here is a New Year's resolution for all you liberal-progressive-socialist (and other failed ideologues): drop all monikers: white, black, man, woman, Hispanic, Asian, gay, straight etc. when characterizing someone, and as soon as anyone else uses them, discount those people.
After all, with the debatable exception of sexual preference, these are the only things we can not change about ourselves, so it would seem unfair to judge us by them
5
On a variety of forms I am asked my ethnic identity. As a brown-skinned Ashkenazim, the only valid answer is Caucasian. To me that is a bad joke. Whatever I am, it is certainly NOT White.
6
It's the economy, stupid.
Some of the white identity voters can never be swayed by any pocketbook argument, but others can. What is needed are policies that provide benefits to all (social security is the best example) rather than those targeted at specific people (SNAP (food stamps)).
So, it turns out that the policies of the Progressive wing … universal health care, raising the minimum wage, etc., are better suited to win over the whites … if they drop the "socialist" label.
I certainly think the third rail is for the Democrats to tell us Whites how privileged we are.
10
Haven't they gone to the White House?
1
Another fine effort from Edsall, as usual --
But, a note to the headline writer: "politics", despite ending in "s", is a singular noun. Think of it this way -- what does a "politic" look like, and when did you last see one all by itself?
4
How about just doing away with the racism/sexism inherent in Affirmative Action, minority set asides, etc? A White or Asian male disadvantaged by these preferences cannot help feeling aggrieved.....and that ain’t racism
8
There has never in history been a group in power that has voluntarily given up that power. It is human nature to want to keep what you have and find ways to expand it.
Historically speaking these power shifts almost always occur in a violent manner but really all that changes is who is now on top and who gets the short end of the stick.
2
@mike melcher The problem with this theory is that there is no such collective group. We are all individuals no matter our race. Only a small percentage of white people have any power or wealth to speak of. The more accurate grouping is by economic class or political class. This isn’t to say that there is no such thing as racism, because there is. The group in power though is the wealthy, not all white people.
3
Carney and Enos's work suffers from an obvious flaw: Any American who encounters a Modern Racism question about Lithuanians is interpreting that question from a perspective about ethnic and racial groups that's been shaped by black/white relations in the US. They say "Yes, Lithuanians should work their way up!" because they're really thinking, "Any group should work their way up!" and that comes from "Black people should work their way up!"
Similarly, Edsall overextends Jardina's conclusion. Whites are scared about white victimhood, and trying to create some dividing line between that view and whatever you want to call 'racial prejudice' is asinine. They aren't prejudiced against black people, they just think black people don't deserve to succeed over them? This is an exercise in nonsense. A belief in 'deservingness' and meritocracy is so connected to racism in the US today that jumping through a million hoops to distinguish them is a waste of time. The talking points have been merging them for too long.
All that said, it would be a wonderful relief to see major American newspapers spend a fiftieth of as much time on parsing out the nuanced attitudes of black voters as they've spent rehashing the same tired old stories about working-class whites.
1
77% of America can't be wrong.
2
One problem that continues to encourage more whites to move further to the Right, and push against any possibility of considering their common interests with People of Color, is the current practice of those on the Left of "privilege shaming". This game of "gotcha", calling out (often working class) whites who appear to lack the requisite insight regarding pervasive racial preferences, only serves to alienate those groups, embolden their resistance, and convince them they have nothing to gain from alliances with the Left. While privilege shaming may feel good in the moment for the accuser, it is part of the problem, certainly not the solution. This article shows that "whiteness" is more complicated than the Left might have us believe. Broad-stroke, brazen disdain for white people, often expressed by other white people who want to position themselves as somehow "better" and "apart", is what needs to be called out and confronted for what is is: A game of one-upping the often less educated and less wealthy white working class in one more effort by elitist white people who want to portray themselves as, once again, the "winner".
13
Does anyone else find it peculiar that the study interprets the belief that any racial group 'should have to work their way up without any special favors' as racist? That is a ridiculous interpretation, and is simply a pathetic attempt to paint conservatives as racist.
From the article...
“Lithuanians should work their way up without any special favors. Their conclusion:
The results obtained using groups other than blacks are substantively indistinguishable from those measured when blacks are the target group. Decomposing this measure further, we find that political conservatives express only minor differences in resentment across target groups."
6
The economic pie is getting smaller for the working class, while it gets bigger and bigger for the Billionaire Class. It could be an effective strategy to pit workers against one another, under the guise of race.
6
The categories of whiteness are distinctions without differences, since the results from such feelings vary little. The result is actually racial hostility toward black people -- especially. It matters not what it is called, how it is sliced, or the level of resentment that exists. Black people under any of these categories of whiteness suffer from white entitlement to historically privileged positions. My suspicion with this focus on the Democrats' recapture of the white working class is that yet again blackness (and whatever is attendant to it) gets sacrificed. What Trumpism fundamentally teaches is that white resentment and fear trump common sense and decency.
2
It seems as though whiteism and racism are like two sides of a coin: one can only see one at a time, although both are solidly connected.
2
I identify as Scandinavian-American despite a trace of both Neanderthal and Mongol, but can't imagine identifying as just "white," which is what I look. I went to high school with kids who had a mixture of French and Native American ancestry. Not that that fact made an ounce of difference to anybody. Racism is pure evil.
1
It's simple. The rich in America have pitted working class whites against one another and against blacks, Chinese, and Hispanics for 200+ years. In doing so, labor movements have been stifled, progressive policies have been thwarted, and economic disparities have become as American as apple pie. And the rich get richer, whether white, brown, or other. This has kept the most hawkish form of American capitalism alive for, well, 200+ years. It is our national anthem, our national motto, and our national disgrace.
American racism IS American capitalism. It's definitely not a Republican idea...or even a white idea. Heck, look at Warren Buffet--Democrat and Friedman disciple rolled into one. Bottom line is this system of pushing working-class racial anxieties is the best thing that could happen to Koch brothers and the Bezos bro's alike--and anyone who has the luxury of enjoying their stock slips in his or her portfolio.
I smell a rat--and it's cloaked in American wealth. Until white, black, and Hispanic workers can unite and stand up against unbridled corporate dominance, we will fail as a country. Period.
4
Fear of!
The most interesting aspect of this social dilemma that has been omitted is the fact that many white voters applaud redistribution of wealth to the most undeserving, the .01% whom have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the nation. To paraphrase Balzac, "behind every great fortune, is a great crime." Outrage is obviously misdirected in terms of white identity. The hand that takes from the white is the same that takes from the black. When will white folks realize they are being had?
2
Racial divides can't be solved until we look at class divides. In America, the 1% are staying on top largely by playing working class whites off against working class minorities.
It is no coincidence that the party that now favors tax cuts for billionaires and unaffordable medical care and bad schools and roads for the rest of us is also the party encouraging racial animosities.
Rather than catering to racial resentments, the Democrats need to remind everyone again and again that there's no point in squabbling over what scraps are handed down by the privileged few, when we'd all be fine if we just got our fair share of the pie.
1
I think the focus on measuring how many grains of racism were on the scale that tipped the election to Trump will not have a meaningful answer. The problem is that racism is not the only significant attribute of the working/middle class voter and it can't be separated from other attributes. There is an economic context of declining opportunity overall, within which this discussion takes place. The political focus should include a strong push for economic security and opportunity for all working and middle class people. If you provide the white voter with a reality of decline it will lead to resistance to your political program. In a sense you've primed the pump for racism. It's a bad strategy. It won't win people over.
6
This piece is a surprisingly fair treatment of this issue that seems to be telling a complete story of the issues at hand, rather than cherry picking the facts to prove an editorial point.
I propose this - That it is human nature to identify within groups. Whether family (blood), community, country, racial, socioeconomical or whatever, there is a genetic advantage to having biases because groups protect individuals within them, thus benefiting the members. The consequence of this is that whites will protect whites and blacks will protect blacks, and so on.
In the study in this article, it showed whites would have biases against blacks and protect other whites. The same would be true if the study was the other way around - blacks would protect blacks over whites. I'm saying that deep down, this is a completely human trait and should be understood as universally true, not as an exclusively white problem. Only until then can we actually address the issue honestly.
2
The cited academic studies seem to be largely designed to confirm the authors' biases - that "white resentment" is based on racist beliefs rather than the realization that laws of hiring/firing/education are stacked to benefit some groups at the expense of others. The Democrats have gotten a lot of mileage out of identity politics - ie, agitating everyone against rural white men, which result in the Trump victory. We'll see how this works in 2020.
7
Mr. Edsall states clearly that Republicanism is based on racism.
Correct. Racism is an element of fear; fear is the foundation of conservatism.
"Confronting" white identity politics needs to look no further than Martin Luther King.
A battle of attrition will be won by progressives with a relentless message of peace and fellowship.
That is how these ugly politics will be marginalized. Not defeated, ever, but marginalized for a permanent progressive majority.
2
“many whites are unable to find jobs because employers are hiring minorities.”
I work in senior management. I see the 'diversity' goal in the bonus structure, where I can pump up my bonus by hiring an anyone over a white person. Same with tech firms in The Bay, recruiters get extra points for bringing in women or minorities.
They all but do not want to hire white men; it is bad for metrics. I stopped providing my ethnicity on job applications. After reading through Ms. Jardina's history, it seems she has no business experience and is a newly minted Ph.D, which is fine, but she isn't actively engaged hiring matters where there are clear incentives to hire over whites.
13
You're right Mr. Edsall, nothing to be done about Southern. Review any small town below the Mason Dixon and observe corrupt county/city politics and carefree/careless school boards with thoughtless education policy guaranteeing ignorance and kids free from ambition. It is social and political stuck in the mud forever. Kids growing Southern are taught that ignorance is a blissful life even when you're barefooted and pregnant.
Unwittingly people like Jardina are exposing their own bigotry. It is the same old "deplorable"-bashing that helped Hillary Clinton win the last Presidential election.
I have voted for the Republican candidate in every election since I became a US citizen in 1980 (except I sat out the last Presidential election). I am implacably opposed to racism.
But I equally oppose Jardina's racism which consists in having government violate the spirit and letter of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which barred discrimination on the basis of race or sex.
No one -- neither Lithuanians nor blacks nor any other identity, and certainly not privileged upper middle class white women -- is entitled to special treatment.
My opposition to these policies is about principle, not resentment. My own fortunes have not been affected by these policies. (Except once in a fairly minor way).
When I oppose the (especially Democratic) establishment's racialization of our political system, it is the safety and welfare of blacks that concerns me most. Nothing could be more irresponsible than the (virtually unanimous) acceptance by African-American leadership of the institutionalization of racism in our body politic. It is a two-edged sword. Once we embrace policy of positive racial discrimination, it can easily be flipped to justify policies of racial negative discrimination. When will we learn that the only way to get beyond discrimination is to stop discriminating?
7
The solution is to follow the Yugoslav Model: break up an ungovernable state into its constituent parts. The Northeast Corridor, Upper Midwest, Left Coast, and Mountain West need to break away from the old, irredeemable Confederate states and their newfound, troglodytic allies. Then the great red center of the continent can concentrate on what it does best — be an aggrieved, backward-looking rump state, absolutely convinced of its own superiority while it slouches toward irrelevance.
How does it go? Something about, “When in the course of human events...”
2
A lot of statistics and poll findings that, all boiled down, say that white people want to keep their privilege over all other groups.
Isn't that the definition of racism?
2
It seems to me that those whites who "feel, to some extent, that the rug is being pulled out from under them — that the benefits they have enjoyed because of their race, their groups’ advantages, and their status atop the racial hierarchy are all in jeopardy." are in fact racist. They know, at some level, that they are atop the racial hierarchy, have privileges because of that, and don't want that to change. Therefore, they vote for racists like Trump who promise to let them keep their advantages based on their race. What am I missing here?
1
this would be a good article for SAT's or reading comprehension tests. I'm struggling to understand the difference b/t the 3 groups in the 'coalition':
- white identity
- white consciousness
- white resentment
with some of them prejudiced against others, some not. Very confusing.
I identify as the Irish-American third of my DNA. I don't know what white means or why that is a culture. As non-WASP Americans, Irish-Americans have been seen and treated both as non-white and white. So what can "white" really mean after that?
I know my Irish history and I know how myths about our incompetence, inferior intellect and immorality were manufactured by the WASPs. I can also see how those same types of lies have been used to oppress African-Americans. My own sense of Irish history, my own family's suffering in the world, their painful efforts to rise out of poverty, make me want to align with the struggle of black people in this country too.
1
The feeling that
“many whites are unable to find jobs because employers are hiring minorities.”
Is shared by many Asians. I work with many.
There view is
Increasingly Asian are unable to find jobs because employers are hiring minorities.”
Or admitted to Harvard, or being promoted on merit
4
Although the title of this piece is “White Identity Politics Aren’t Going Anywhere”, the gist of the piece is that the Dems might think this, but they would be well advised to compromise with white supremacy impulses if they want to regain White departures from their ranks.
If this is really the proffered advice, it should be ignored. The slogans “stronger together” and “e pluribus unum” are truths, not ad gimmicks.
To counter white supremacy one has to counter the unending blitz of propaganda emanating from Fox News, Trump tweets, scurrilous web sites, manipulative links on Google, misdirection from Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, talk radio, rabid fundamentalists.
Goebbels in the past and again the GOP today use a brainwashing apparatus that submerges rationality and unshackles the subterranean tribal urges of the Id. Once loosed, rationality & sanity are secondary at best.
Breaking the grip of this hugely successful cobweb of disinformation and rabble rousing is the proper priority, not some specious compromises with disgusting impulses. Open the curtains; let the light in! Make room for the human part of us!
3
Not all whites simply engage in groupthink - seeing only race, ethnicity, or gender when we look at other humans. Some of us are liberals in the basic sense that we see others as individuals like ourselves. We thus strive to judge people on their individual merits, not simply or even mostly based on the race, ethnicity or gender into which they were born. These features of persons do not determine their virtue, character, work ethic, or basis for differential treatment by government or private centers of power. Indeed, the 5th and 14th Amendments, as well as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, explicitly protect "any person," not certain groups.
To appreciate the importance of these words, I suggest that none of us, if we were unemployed and applying for work, would or should simply accept being passed over for a job in favor of a demonstrably less qualified person, with the official explanation that "listen, lots of people who look like you have great jobs; statistically, people who look like you are employed, so your unemployment is of no significance."
The individual is not the group and the group is not the individual. I hope the Dems remembers this going forward.
Thanks, Mr. Edsall, for another fine piece of work.
10
It's not white identity politics. It's identity policitics, period. And it does overlap with political / economic philosophies due to the weath distribution. It hits all people, including Asians in NYC with the school system plans being discussed.
The vast majority of people, whatever their race, are only a few generations removed from poverty, both historically and on a go forward basis. When you realize this, you see how the philosophies of individual responsibility, social welfare, and equal opportunity are critical ingredients to a society with opportunities for wealth sharing and personal fulfillment.
Everything else is corrosive identity politics and/or socialism.
10
I was struck by the line " it’s difficult to “convince some whites that there’s something normatively objectionable about identifying with one’s racial group and wanting to protect its interests.”
are we also attempting to convince people of color that it is normatively objectionable to identify with a racial group? seeking to protect its interests?
if not, if we are saying it is fine for some groups (to make up for past injustice, perhaps) but illegitimate for one group, I don't think we are are likely to make much progress; if we want people to see each other primarily as fellow human beings deserving of human rights, then we have a better chance; sure we need to acknowledge how the past has shaped present opportunities, but the goal should be a society which preserves the rights of all
21
I like Edsall, but I disagree with "the dominant strategic problem has become balance white and minority wings"
The dominant problem of the Democratic Party is not this split but who controls it. Corporations vs Ordinary Americans
Money is the mother's milk of politics. Those who finance the campaign of the Democratic Party are ultimately the
the ones that control it. You can' run, unless you have money
There has been a dramatic shift away from Unions
To illustrate this claim
Here are f the top contributors to the current leaders of the Democratic Party
Nancy Pelosi
Top contributors 2017 - 2018
Top Contributors
1. Facebook Inc
2. Alphabet Inc
3. Salesforce.com
4. Amazon.com
Charles E Schumer
Top Contributors 2013-2018
1 Paul, Weiss et al
2 NorPAC
3 Blackstone Group
4 Lazard Ltd
There's a left wing, represented by Sanders who pointedly refused to take money from corporations, running on small donations.
And there is a right wing, represented by the Democratic leaders, financed by Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
Those that finance have no economic interest in raising wages. Rather, importing more of those willing to work for less, via immigration , and in the case of S.V. H1B's
Until the Democratic Party gets a grip between the conflict of what it states its social goals are , and those of those who finances it, it is burying its major strategic conflict
18
@Woof Thank you for bringing the topic of campaign financing into the discussion. While our system of "legalized bribery" has always been a bit shady, since Citizens United, the spigot is wide open. Our officials have become dependent on large donors who expect something in return. To me, this is the core, the crux of why our political system is in big trouble.
2
The entire GOP platform is based on an observation articulated by LBJ:
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "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."
Frightened, fragile white people have been emptying their pockets for the GOP for years now. Their need for validation and affirmation is bottomless, and what they have to show for their allegiance is tragic - for them, and for all of us. Empty pockets, damaged souls, destroyed communities.
The GOP trades in shame and fear, and this strategy has paid them handsomely while impoverishing their "white" followers. Shame and fear are powerful things to manipulate the GOP are masters.
18
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "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."
1
It works both ways. African-American turnout wavered in 2016 because they didn't identify with the Presidential ticket. They did identify with Trump's statement "What the hell do you have to lose?" Then they identified the Alt-Right as a growing arm of Trumps support so they got back in the game for the Mid-Terms. The Democrats should learn the lesson and give African=Americans someone on the ticket to identify with.
1
An inclusive agenda that would guarantee health care, education - including free/nearly free state/city colllege ed - and a decent retirement would work wonders for all groups.
And we can afford it. Rescind the Trump/Ryan/McConnell tax bill - for starters. Then we'll see where we go from there.
We can have a decent America.
3
I'm a native born American citizen in my 60's, of Middle Eastern ancestry. I'm also a woman who began practicing law in the 1970's. More than forty years ago, my white male peers in law school would bluntly tell me that I was just taking up a spot that should have gone to a man. Our law school dean even went so far as to tell the class that women received no "affirmative action" bounce for admission. And of course, then as now, Middle Eastern ancestry confers absolutely no advantages of any kind in this country.
I'm now retired, but I went on to have a 35 year career in the practice of law, litigating a majority of the time. I saw white male privilege in my workplace every single day, from the day I started practicing, to the day I retired.
And what was this privilege? That white males were owed a good job. That they didn't need to compete with women. That they didn't need to compete with ethnic minorities. After all, their fathers and grandfathers didn't have to. They believed and -- given the number of Trump voters -- still believe that they should simply be given a good job, regardless of the effort they are willing to put in.
Our top universities have huge numbers of ethnic minorities for one reason -- they are willing to work harder than white males to accomplish their goals. They don't expect anything to be handed to them.
Democrats should write off Trump voters. No more "reaching out" to bigots. Their blind hatred will never change.
8
Yes, Democrats should confront white identity politics. So should Republicans. So should any American with any sense of decency. This sees to be part of the trend of looking to Dems to fix all sorts of governmental and societal ills from,partisan anger to the opiod crisis. Of course, Dems should be pressed for ideas. but where are the call outs for Republicans? I suspect we don't hear them because we all know Republicans won't, despite still holding much of the power in this country.
4
I am a W-word progressive, who recently for 30 yrs lived in a blue area that turned 'deep purple' in 2016. I got disabled on the job, so I live a more subsistence lifestyle than most. I also consider myself a Second Wave Feminist. This recap of various studies repeats the comfy notion that this group of racists popped up and it is the 'poor whites' (W-word), who are the culprits. But it is not. It is a comfy notion for a comfortable subset of Caucasians. Unbelievably, these groups financial disparities are huge. A further breakdown of all these studies would also yield a further sexist evaluation that W-word men were at fault for putting Trump in office.One main reason, their jobs are disappearing. Their wages have gone down, and get this, white men are dying at such an accelerated rate that it has lowered life expectancy across the board for Americans in general. Fewer European American males are going to college than ever. And in direct conflict with Equal Pay for Equal Work is the lack of current honesty surrounding the, 'women only make 81 cents' for every dollar a man makes. Currently I mainly hear about the disparities in pay surrounding CEO's and entertainers (one percenters), not a true economic class breakdown. The bottom three percentiles (10, 20 and 30%) have all reached parity in pay with the bottom two where men now make less income.
Addressing any of these concerns in an open honest manner, will go a long way for the Dems to recover these lost sheep.
4
Currently, Caucasians make up only about 14% of the world's population, so yes, they are most definitely feeling threatened or outnumbered.
Therefore, it is likely that the people immigrating or seeking asylum into the US will be PoC. So it is not directly racism when in fact the majority of immigrants are just statistically more likely to be PoC. White immigration is obviously very low in comparison.
Also, part of the problem is that whites are not allowed to celebrate their heritage or ethnicity anymore. This creates an enormous backlash or feelings of being disregarded.
Euro-Americans are marginalized in many ways. We are told to hate ourselves and that we are all bad people or worse. That we should love diversity more. White culture is evil.
If white culture is so awful, how come so many want to move to white majority countries today? Must have done some things right. As a white person, I prefer living in a white majority country. And why is it that only white countries are told we must accept all immigrant PoC, whereas we would never demand that another culture or country accept millions of white Westerners. It is not a priority of China, Japan or Korea or African nations to say, Oh we need to import more diversity. Only in white majority nations does this seem to be a thing.
21
Where are white people not allowed to celebrate their race or ethnicity anymore? I don’t know where these places are that you refer to.
4
@Kathy Piercy
Where? In institutions which forbid Euro-centered celebrations and holidays (certain --ironically--White private schools and other places). Need to get out more, Kathy. Maybe that's not happening in AZ. Happens in liberal enclaves everywhere. White bad; "of color" good. And even officially so.
3
@kl
What is "white culture?" The culture of the French is very different than that of the Sami, which is very different than that of Hungarians.
The issue is that "white culture" doesn't exist, but "white supremacy" certainly does. I've never seen any bans on celebrating French, Sami, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, etc. cultures. But when Nazis and KKK want to have a parade, people who dislike white supremacy tend to think that's not very cool.
1. "white culture" = doesn't exist
2. "white supremacy" = rooted in slavery and genocide
3. "culture of different groups of white people" = Lots of fun, beautiful traditions, great food. Just like all cultures.
So.... what are you exactly lamenting here? #1 is a fairytale at best, although often used as a codeword for #2. What is it that you want to celebrate publicly? White supremacy? Or different cultural traditions of white peoples? Because if it's the latter, I have great news for you! You're not oppressed and you never have been. Please, go out and plan the parade. I'd love to learn more about your culture, as long as it's not actually a codeword for white supremacy.
1
There are several qualities I have observed that seem to be common to all racial, religious, and political groupings. The most prevalent of these are: incompetence, intellectual laziness, and rage. The first two are endemic in government and industry, and each sector has evolved a specialized jargon of rationalization and concealment. Rage is the weapon deployed by the top tier of society to keep the incompetent and intellectually lazy angry at each other, their attention being diverted from the real source of their conditions. The fear of losing one's job to a minority could be more accurately stated just as a fear of losing one's job. If one speaks out against corruption or simply bad faith, one risks being punished financially. This (justifiable) moral cowardice can escape self-examination by shifting the anger to those who may or may not be standing in line for one's job. While I am not trying to minimize the pernicious effect of racism, I am suggesting it it too pejorative a label to apply in all cases of perceived unfairness. As for "identity politics," well, when a label becomes toxic, its time to discard it. The label is the bathwater. The baby is the diversity it represents. We don't want to step away from the diversity. We do want to focus on the programs and policies that will benefit the most diverse society – including everyone. The grumpy old white 1%ers with their short-term myopia may not see the benfit for them, but they will, by surviving.
1
Obviously, for a political party, understanding voters and their motivations is a good thing, whether you agree with those motivations or not. However, these scholars seem to believe that answering a question like "do you believe people should have the same rights and duties, regardless of their race?" in the affirmative is racist. Since they start from the assumption that these voters' concerns are not legit, it's difficult to imagine that they will figure out a way to earn their trust.
2
We shall see what happens when the minority becomes the majority as seems inevitable. We also shall see the effects of inter racial marriage. This will be a true test of the strength of our Republic and Constitution as much as trump and the current Republicans are. It will probably continue t be a bumpy ride for a long time.
2
Im reflecting on the observations of Haidt & Graham's Moral Foundations Theory, which has repeatedly shown that conservatives value in group and hierarchy. When these principles are not respected, they feel attacked and that the actions are immoral. Thus, when the hierarchy that places white Americans at the top is erroded and others try to make inroads into their communities, it becomes morally acceptable to push back. This is ultimately a racist morality.
The authors cited in this article that found that white Americans scored groups equally, be it African Americans or Lithuanians, want to claim that whites are not racist because it lacks animus towards one group. However, racism does not need to target one group to be racist. Wanting to keep out others from benefitting, preventing their upward mobility, is xenophobia and racist.
1
I really wish white people who feel so threatened by so-called "identity politics" would actually listen to the experiences and perspectives of people of color. Once you start hearing--and believing them--the veil will be lifted from your eyes and you will no longer support the ongoing injustice and illusions that have kept this awful caste system of ours going for so many years. I'm white--I believed in the illusions. I thought my black son would have an easier time getting into schools and programs because of supposed interest in increasing diversity and affirmative action, etc. I soon found out the exact opposite is true. It's hard to believe from the other side such barriers really exist, but wow, once you open your eyes, you'll never be able to shut them again!
4
Alorram: that’s a straw man. One can absolutely believe the injustices directed at minorities while still hating the idea that further focusing on our differences (identity politics) rather than trying to break down those barriers is the solution. Identity politics is, at its core, the idea that the way to solve an injustice is an equal and opposite injustice. It’s why identity politics feminism has resorted to male bashing and rent seeking for women to buy their votes rather than achieving real equality.
5
In a 2018 paper, “Immigration and Redistribution,” Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano and Stefanie Stantcheva, who are all economists at Harvard, point to the costs of ignoring majority opinion on public policy matters that affect redistribution — policies that arguably have a disproportionate ethnic or racial impact. The three authors found that merely prompting “respondents to think about immigration and immigrants’ characteristics generates a significant negative effect on support for redistribution.”
I hope Ocasio-Cortez reads this. She is calling for redistribution programs such as Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, cancellation of Puerto Rico’s debt, a Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico, higher education and trade schools for all, and housing as a human right at the same time as she is calling for ICE to be abolished.
People who favor her redistribution wish list must realize that none of these wishes will come to pass until all illegal immigrants have left the country.
5
Mr. Edsall,
I suggest you stop spending so much time listening to
Academics -
and go down to local bar and just listen to common folk.
There is very little racism in America, far less than any other
country, but there is segregationism, socio-economic which
is the most persuasive and damaging but fully approved by
Liberals and Conservatives alike - after all Manhattan is the
most segregated city in the United States with the most
segregated public school - and ethnic - which seems
natural, no matter what Leftists say and wish to believe.
As long as laws provide that "Minorities" be treated "better"
anyone else - resentment will continue to fester and boil over.
13
The Democrat party invented and exploited identity politics to build their current coalition. This effectively moved America from the concept of a melting pot to a country with a set of groups each trying to right real and perceived wrongs and gain advantages and benefits for their group. It should not be surprising that whites are now adopting identity politics, and Trump is exploiting it, just as the Democrat party has done with blacks, Hispanics, the LGBT community, e.g., over the past 50 years.
To stop the Balkanization of American and cure the sharp Fox News - MSNBC News divide that exists in this country, American society needs to move back to the melting pot ideal. That ideal had "WASPish" overtones, but waves of immigrants and blacks emerging from slavery integrated into that ideal and climbed the social and economic ladder. This was a multi-generational process and sometimes it needed help from people like Dr. Martin Luther King, but the process worked and served America well.
4
I have written this the past and I will write it again. Whites have cocooned themselves off in the almost all white suburbs for decades leading to their dissociation from minorities and more recent ethnic groups such as hispanics. both who tend to occupy the cities more than the burbs. As a result whites have become fearful of anyone not white because they know little of the struggles of minorities especially due to whites enjoying such an economic advantage over minorities. A related case in point was a recent discussion I had with several fellow northern white men who can't understand all the fuss over the removal of confederate statues, especially in the south. They felt that this was part of the south's heritage and so what was the big deal. I reminded them that there were not black and to blacks these statues honor men who were in support of keeping blacks enslaved and this mentality continues to permeate many southern white's attitudes today, and northern whites to some extent, towards blacks. I could tell they weren't buying it and they dropped the discussion since they are used to most whites agreeing with them on the issues of blacks and other minorities when most of their attitudes are simply subtle racism and can't be described in other terms. Whites, such as described above, are all too often your Trump supporters.
5
Thomas Edsall is a keen observer & a clear writer, but this column--despite its dependence on a new posse of social scientists--is really just another version of that self-comforting (white) liberal platitude:
Most white people aren't bigots, they're just feeling a bit insecure about their status, and with enough caressing, the Democrats can bring them around.
It doesn't occur to any of Edsall's social scientists that trying to seduce people who don't like you & don't respect you & won't live near you & believe you're stealing their birthright is a crippling form of self-debasement.
A few days ago, an eminent ER surgeon was denied membership to a Charleston club--where many members supposedly were his friends--because he is black. Who in his right mind--except a social scientist or a politician--would would want to "bring these people around?"
People clutch victimhood like a blanket. At the school bus stop just yesterday a kid hopped on the bus with a Santa hat on and a couple of the other mothers near me wondered aloud if he would be scolded over it (no chance) and lamented that kids don't get to have fun any more with the holidays at school. Nevermind that before he got on the bus he excitedly told everyone waiting that today was a day he and his school bandmates and the school's band leader were going to march through the school playing jingle bells.
Half the houses in the neighborhood (including ours) are lit up and lawns decorated with Santas and trees and reindeer, public spaces everywhere are festooned with lights, holly and garland and retailers are wall-to-wall brimming with Christmas and have been for at least 9 weeks, with 2 to go. At least 2 radio stations on our local dial are 24/7 with Christmas music and literally no one has reprimanded anyone ever for saying Merry Christmas but it's more fun to pout and feign injury.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
2
The article concentrates on white racist attitudes and seems to come to the conclusion that racism or racist attitudes whites is a great deal more complicated than assumed and is often not racist. One obvious question not addressed is how white attitudes compare to the attitudes of other ethnic groups. A proportion of whites think that African-Americans can get ahead if the try a little harder. What proportion of Hispanic-Americans fell this way? What proportion of African-Americans feel this way?
3
Thank you for your essay about the Atlantic Coast States. California already has a non-white majority, as well as the world’s 5th largest economy.
People here are not paranoid about race. Democrats have 75% of the members of the State Legislature.
3
It is not an acceptable political strategy that the left simply compromise away everything they support and believe in, so that they may co-opt the right , which has no compromise to make, in order to gain voters that democrats will then be terrified to lose, creating a paralysis to action on any front. Enough of this soft conservatism mumbo jumbo. The left should now fight for everything it wants , just as the right does, and inspire our voters to the polls , because they know we are fighting for them. The right will not compromise and our answer to that cannot be capitulation.
3
I think part of the issue is that so many "whites" don't see themselves as "whites" -- they're proud of being Irish or Italian or whatever ethnicity rooted in them some feeling of pride, home, place, and yes, identity. They remember the family stories of immigrant relatives coming here and working hard, being discriminated against, persevering anyway. To be told they are merely resentful whites, when they never really thought of themselves that way -- some of them really do think "all lives matter," and don't understand breaking it down into which specific groups matter more or less. They feel hurt and rejected when corrected on this and other identity politics issues. To then hear they are claiming they are "victims" -- this offends and angers them more. They simply want to believe we are a meritocratic society. I know this is the way my parents see it. I'm not saying they are right. I'm just saying we need to try to understand, and I appreciate reading about the research being done on this issue.
5
The average lifespan of people in the US has reversed historic trends by declining for the last few years.
The reduced lifespan is entirely accounted for by white men and women. Hispanic men and women and black men stayed the same and the lifespan for black women increased.
Drug deaths and suicide were the drivers for reduced white lifespans.
Whatever is going on, it's not small or insignificant.
9
One fascinating aspect of Mr. Edsall's excellent piece is realizing how few white Americans meet, live with, run in to or regularly interact with African-Americans and other minorities. Those areas of greatest Trump support are all-white, in great swaths of all-white American geography -- not a minority face to be seen, relatively speaking, within tens or hundreds of miles. And there never will be. So really, the hostility of many in white America to those in the racial or ethnic minority is a pure fiction of their own imagination, a fantasy not borne out by any personal life experience, negative or otherwise. In that sense, the issue will never be licked, as there is no physical means of bringing all races together to learn from one another in these vast areas -- without building a real, working NYC subway system in places like rural Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia, etc.
6
@JTS-Except you failed to mention the entirety of the South that voted for Trump, where millions of African Americans live. Nor did you cite places like Michigan, where many arrived after the Great Migration.
4
The first step is recognizing that white identity politics is not a majority movement. And that leads to a crucial 2nd step: an absolute insistence on electoral fairness, in order that the inclusive majority is able to simply out vote an obvious minority cohort of electoral participation. We don't need to give in to fear. We just need to end the nefarious practice of partisan gerrymandering and insist on fair elections. That honors both the 1A and the 13A, 14A, and the VRA, as well as the national tradition of welcoming refugees and immigrants into the national family, and the Great Experiment that is America.
5
If the left is correct that people of color and immigrants are disadvantaged in our society, it's no wonder that whites feel that their whiteness is a privilege and want to keep it.
Only if we make the struggle one about economic inequality - the thing is way out of whack - can we oppose this. And the wealthy and powerful who benefit from Republican policies are spending lots of money and treasure to make it all seem to be about race.
3
I'm a white person, I was recently treated unfairly by an institution, and I came to learn that one of the reasons I was treated unfairly was because an authority figure was sincerely concerned that treating me fairly would expose the institution to a "charge of white privilege."
Believe me or don't believe me, but when I found that out, I experienced a mental paradigm shift. I would articulate it as, "oh my god, Trump is actually right about this." The feeling of moral indignation was powerful and validating, and convinced me even more that I was in the right, and the institution was in the wrong.
I detest Trump, and I've since calmed down, and the injustice has since been resolved, but I'll never view this issue the same way again. These white Trump supporters aren't all racists; some are just responding viscerally to a person who acknowledges and validates their offended sense of justice, and they're not all wrong.
208
@Patrick
Thank you for this. I hate Trump too, and I'm not white, but something about your experience rings true to me. Without knowing any details, I am wondering if the authority figure was thinking "what would I do in this situation if Patrick were black." And he/she overcompensated. We are all trying to thread our way through difficult issues. I wish there were a way to discuss them seriously, without all the vitriol.
42
@Patrick
You experienced the inevitable statistical outlier event: yes, of course, a very small percentage of white people will experience a kind of reverse discrimination. That's a certainty -- at some point, an institution or person is going to screw up and get it wrong from time to time.
Thankfully, I have never ever experienced such a thing and I know of no white friend or acquaintance that has. However, EVERY single one of my friends of "color" has experienced job discrimination at multiple points throughout their entire lives. Every single one! Think about that. To boot, they were unable to get the situation sorted out to their advantage as you did -- they simply had to give up and move on. Think about that as well.
So, yes, of course "they're not all wrong." But 99% of these white identity folks definitely are wrong -- nothing has happened to them personally and yet they obsess over the few instances of "white" injustice that get touted on Faux News, without acknowledging that people of color have endured the same injustices for centuries.
68
@Amanda-Experiences like Patrick’s are not outliers, and in my circle of friends many of us have experienced adverse experiences related to our ethnicity. I, for one, was told by an admissions committee for medical school that I was not “diverse” enough, and then later found out the significant point boost minority students received; I would have been easily accepted if I wasn’t white. These incidents and the inherently racist language expressed by the far left (e.g. ‘white privileged) is sidelining the whole progressive movement, to the determinant of many worthwhile positions: gun control, healthcare for all, the environment, workers rights, etc.
51
Trump has been very successful with his politics of hate and xenophobia.
It's obvious that the Democrats helped him with racism of their own, e.g., the explicitly-racist BLM movement. (Not Hillary Clinton, though; she knows better than to support racism.)
It's very upsetting to me when people who write explicitly racist things - Jardina, for example, in this article - aren't challenged on their racism.
The USA is becoming more diverse, and this is good news. To celebrate the diversity, and all get along with each other, we have to discourage not just racism that targets minorities or "blacks" but also racism that targets "white" people.
10
@Astrochimp
White people have been and still are the politically and economically dominant racial demographic, and aren't subject to the systemic and institutional racism against non-white people at every level.
I'm not going to say that whites 'benefit' per se, it's that they don't step up to the plate with an automatic strike 1 in the pitch count whenever they step out in public.
It's not 'racism' that targets white people, it's personal bigotry. Bigotry from black people who don't have the power to turn that bigotry into systemic racism, unlike how it works in the other direction.
1
@Astrochimp, It is considered ok to denigrate white culture but don't even think of doing the same to another race's culture. If you don't believe this watch SNL.
4
@kl That's exactly what I'm talking about. We need to do better as a society.
It's never OK to judge another person or group by skin color. (… unless you sell cosmetics.)
The Southern strategy and identity politics are the same thing. We should treat black people exactly the same as whites. Low skill llegal immigrants are a problem not Hispanic immigrants. For everyone's sake especially in view of the coming demographic shift stop using race in politics. Please.
5
Victimhood pays. Is it any wonder that white men have joined the rush to claim victim status?
Since WWII, our nation has increased the representation of people of color in our government, we have supported affirmative action, and we have made diversity a mainstay of the workplace.
Now, after 70 years, people of color have made tremendous progress. We as a nation have acknowledged the harm and enduring legacy of slavery (most visibly with the new museum of african-american history on the Mall). We have elected a black president, and placed black and hispanic people on the Supreme Court, and in Congress. Many of our heroes in government, entertainment, and sports are people of color.
At the same time, many whites, especially in the working class, have suffered a loss of jobs, income, social standing, and community. Regardless of their economic and social condition, whites are now saddled with the burden of being told they have inherent "white privilege" -- a kind of original sin that cannot be erased or forgiven.
The Democratic Party has made it clear they prefer anyone other than whites, especially white men. Bernie Sanders was derided as an "old white guy." (Can you imagine the backlash if someone spoke out against a candidate because she's black?) Hillary and Kamala and Nancy fight for the rights of women, people of color, illegal immigrants, and LGBTQA--together amounting to three-fourths of the population--leaving straight white men as the reviled "Patriarchy."
16
White Identity Politics Aren’t Going Anywhere https://nyti.ms/2GtYlkD
“ Democrats should NOT try to confront THEM, because there are voted and this kind of thinking shows a binary thinking
To Republican I would say: You can't rule Democrats and gover on. Society is also not to be ruled in freedom and so it's better to empower all in small sections of projects... to be engaged for society and NATION.
White identity politics is a reasonable response to a society where all ethnic groups practice tribalism.
No amount of hand wringing or tortured logic will change that simple truth.
16
" In addition, 64 percent of Trump voters believed that “average Americans” have gotten “less than they deserve” but “only 12 percent said black Americans have gotten less than they deserve.” "
Wow. What a revealing juxtaposition of beliefs. Fully half of Trump voters not only don't think black Americans are "average Americans," they actually think black Americans have had it *better* than average, not worse.
It's hard to know how to even really begin to tackle such ignorance and self-absorption. Irrational beliefs can't typically be remedied through rational argument. Dispiriting to say the least.
5
Honest people do not describe folks who are against illegal immigration as anti-immigration.
27
@Charlierf thank you. As a legal adian immigrant myself, I agree. Most of us have no problem with INCREASED legal immigration IF we can decrease illegal immigration.
6
And honest people do not describe Democrats as wanting open borders.
1
It is really obnoxious to analyse people who have a different opinion as if they are zoo specimens. I am tired of it. I would have to say I'm with Kaufmann in that liberals should back off from the righteousness, state their case and tolerate others. Like they ask me to do.
I also think Vuarek has a point. I think there is concern about outgroups gaining too much political power and pushing through changes that benefit "their people." Particularly when they are very different and do not value assimilation to the dominant culture. I would have to say...duhhh. That is a circumstance that can be counted on to create distress in a certain percentage of the population.
I also agree with Alesina et al who say that you can't have a culture of redistribution at the same time as open borders.
There are many reasons for people to feel the way they do about immigrants. But the left always conflates legal and illegal immigration. I am opposed to people sneaking into my nation with whatever illnesses they bring and creating a market for false identification, creating an underground economy, where they operate in the shadows. No, that is not good, but legal immigrants, the ones that value the concepts of this nation and present themselves in truth, wanting to join us, they are welcome. We have a problem with illegal immigration and many refuse to acknowledge it. The left excuses it. Don't try and put me in your box so you can examine me like an odd insect.
13
The left does not want open borders. But the left does want compassion for children who were brought across borders illegally and who have grown up as Americans.
3
Wow. So, when more than half of the “whites” in America vote for Trump, that’s a sign of racism and a problem that must be acknowledged and addressed. When nearly 100 percent of black voters in America voted for Barack Obama — twice — that was what? Enlightenment? Remarkable that nobody finds that “it is essential to understand the motivations — the needs, beliefs and agendas” of the black voters who were in the Obama camp.
Writers like Mr. Edsall, and the many race-baiting professor authors he cites, are the problem, not the white voters whom they vilify.
Martin Luther King had a different focus. Leave your color behind. We’re all Americans. Embrace the Dream.
20
To state it simply, race politics is not about equality, it is about power and control. It is about taking you out of my way because I want what you have even if I didn't work for it.
In Latin America, where whites are a minority, with Native Americans, Asians, and blacks, and a great mixture of these groups are the majority, there's discrimination against white Hispanics. That is starting to happen in this country.
I have black friends who have told me that whites are horrible. My answer is that if that were true, then how is it that Obama won two elections and the whole world wants to migrate to countries populated by whites. I don't hear of anyone desperate to migrate to Africa, for example.
Then a black supervisor said it right, it is not about color, it is about culture. White cultures are terrified all their gains based on past mistakes will be undermined by immigrants whose cultures do not share the same pursuits, values, and priorities.
And example is many blacks accuse whites of racism when criticized for not performing their duties and following rules others are required to comply with in the workplace and in school. Many blacks, not all, believe they have entitlements, based on their color, they have not earned.
And, yes many blacks are discriminated against. But others are harassed as well. Blacks complain about unfair treatment, but others have to deal with religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and age discrimination. We need to focus on excellence.
7
The very same blunt survey instruments will turn up the very same “racist” results if given to any of the four major races or to any of the sub-races. There is nothing new under the sun and the human suspicion of “the other” is built right into the DNA. Civil society is about taking people one at a time, unless of course the goal of utopians is a bitter, tribal conflict till the asteroid arrives. How very human.
3
I'm white and I'm proud!!-ly supporting nice and honest people around me. Isolation, meanness, and change for the over 20, over 50, over 80 crowd is always upsetting. Racism and infighting at the bottom rung of the ladder go hand in hand. Just look at Bush Jr's love of Bandar Bush, the Saudi envoy during his presidency. Bush Jr famously said when he went to Brazil and saw black Brazillions:"You have THEM here too?" White identity politics is broke people fighting broke people, and descendants of the same.
If the most important thing you have going for you is that you are "white", what a shallow soul you must have.
If your biggest claim, your most valuable calling card is your "whiteness", how fragile your self-worth.
If your identity entirely rests on being "white", if that is who you think you are, how easily manipulated you are, ripe for the political pickings of powerful forces.
There you sit, in your "whiteness", alone in the night, trembling because you know deep down that the identity you have bought into is a shallow, fragile, vulnerable thing, and at root, a lie.
The Democratic Party should be the party representing the interests of the vast majority of working people and families, regardless of race. The Democrats should be able to plainly and clearly explain that the issues that matter most to the most Americans have nothing to with "race", and everything to do with economic justice, and investment in social and physical infrastructure.
This is what the Democratic Party did in the past, and can do again. The Republicans' deceptive appeal to "whiteness" offers nothing but the fragile affirmation of an identity that has tragic consequences for the real lives of those whose self-worth is fragile and tentative.
3
So whites express this feelings
"many whites’ reactions to our country’s changing racial landscape do not simply manifest in outward hostility. Amidst these changes, many whites have described themselves as outnumbered, disadvantaged, and even oppressed. They have voiced their anxiety over America’s waning numerical majority, and have questioned what this means for the future of the nation. They have worried that soon they may face discrimination based on their own race, if they do not already."
Then
My Question is to very same white folks?
Are they able to think or consider , how do you feel if immigrants did not over populate you but more if they did genocide and took all your land , render your future in an enclosed small lands which practically worthless. yes the plight of the Indian American's , this doesn't mean that or never mean that some thing happened 400 years ago is not the reality and issue of today.
Yes many white folks may be suffering greatly, their golden days are behind them, also there is no way out from this rot.
But
In this land we have already a preceding example of that condition. plight of Native Indian Americans, At least new immigrant is not killing you en masse and forcefully taking your lands.
Like White folks telling to Blacks they should be grateful, what America gave them, I can tell white folks the same They should be grateful to what America gave them, and move over new immigrants are here.
5
Dems have been playing the identity politics card for the last 50 years. Now whites are finally waking up it and voting in their own interest. The left calls it racism but they can't have it both ways.
10
It can't be both ways. You can't have African American, Hispanic or any other Identity politics without getting White identity politics as well. To think all identity politics except White = Good. White Identity politics = Evil is Hypocrisy at best at worst some truly noteworthy cynicism. You either accept white identity is has legitimate as any other identity politics or you ban ALL identity politics. You can't have it both ways.
17
You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. When looking at the trump rallies one wonders if these people will ever accept diversity.
If you were employed in an hourly job w/o health care or retirement and your boss said "take it or I will hire some illegal immigrant", would not you feel prejudice also? Maybe I am being too simplified, or direct, but I believe this is the economic aspect of something like the racism discussed here.
9
@toom
I agree there is an economic aspect as well, but perhaps resentment is best directed towards your boss, as they are the ones actually taking away benefits from their employees (and an illegal immigrant would almost certainly get a worse deal, since they do not even have to be paid minimum wage.)
1
@Sarah I am sure there is resentment towards both.
“White Identity Politics Aren’t Going Anywhere”
What is “White Identity Politics”?
Apparently it has to do with diversity and the concepts of “stronger together” and “dignity for all”.
The claim is that these laudable themes do not resonate in a climate of tribalism and vilification of “the other”. Surely the remedy is not abandoning the goal, but of neutralizing the campaign of vilification?
Whence this campaign? It is a process well-established by Goebbels in the rise of Fascism. Buried in the tribal instincts of man, down in the serpentine Id, this urge to demonization is ordinarily governed by the rational mind. But Goebbels then knew and now the Oligarchs behind the GOP know an inescapable blitz of propaganda can submerge rationality and release the buried subconscious.
That is the scourge to be faced by the Dems: it’s not about argument or policy or ideology. It is about reasserting the rational and again shackling the Id.
The propaganda machine now brainwashing 40% of voters has to be broken,
1
It is ironic that Democrats are accused of playing "identity politics", when it is Republicans who are the ones campaigning on the insecurities and fears of one specific demographic group. Democrats are standing up for the rights of those who the Republicans have demonized. Pointing out the idiocy of a wall or bathroom bills is not identity politics, proposing those dumb ideas is.
2
It seems to me, as a nearly-70 white male, that so much animus is generated toward other groups, be they racial, ethnic, or even gender, by the erroneous idea that others' viewpoints, needs, and desires are substantially different from one's own. This creates a tribal mentality that generates fear and loathing. But in reality, don't blacks fundamentally want the same things I do? And don't Mexican immigrants? And Muslims? And women? We all want pretty much the same things out of life, so why the fear? Does electing a woman or a minority diminish me as a man? Does it threaten my existence? I think not.
Trump disgustingly played to these fears: Mexican rapists, Chinese thieves, Muslim terrorists. The ignorant seem only too happy to jump on this bandwagon, demonizing anyone who is different. What we need to do is to tear down these stereotypes and reinforce the idea that electing someone of a different group is not a death sentence for one's identity group. If we could convince the average (white) Joe that his lifestyle and needs are not threatened by the rise of minorities, perhaps he'd be less inclined to vote for a bigot.
4
All politics is local, in rural and small town WI that switched to Trump from Obama there are few to none Blacks to take jobs from Whites. The immigrant Hispanics work in jobs Whites have abandoned such as meat packing plants and large dairy farms.
Few if any Whites think immigrants have stolen those jobs from them.
Of course racism and xenophobia exist but it is mostly fear of the unknown or different than fear of competition.
I would guess that most of the antipathy in those areas is more directed at educated urban elites who are thought to see rural and small town people as losers and stupid.
The anxiety in these areas is real in declining and aging populations, youth abandoning their homes to urban areas where there are jobs, diversity and tolerance. Manufacturing jobs are declining as is farm income.
Candidates that offer some hope to alleviate those fears will win.
53
Astute politicians know what it takes to fix society's problems, but they don't really know how to get White people to vote for it. That is a problem for Democrats because they are more honest with the realities of the 21st century job situation. The other reality is that we can't go backwards. For example, coal is no longer profitable compared to natural gas. When white voters hear that the "good old days" aren't coming back they are more inclined to vote for the #MAGA party.
2
So, the only thing that matters is race. Everything, everyone's personal condition, where you live, what you do to support yourself and family don't matter, how you act in and interpret society is entirely defined by race. Have I got it right? Non-race based policies don't matter? Personal effort and accomplishment don't matter? Culture doesn't matter in determining individual and societal results?
So, if I'm white I can sit back and let economic success come to me? I can be lazy, not study or work hard and still reap the benefits of my white identify? I can abandon all those middle class values (hard work, don't do drugs, get married/committed and stay married/committed, don't commit felonies, have children when married/committed and financially ready to have them) and still do fine? If I am not white, even if I practice all of these virtues I will be denied the justified fruits of my actions? Have I got it correct? If I have it correct then....abandon hope all ye who call the US home.
20
I’ve heard it said that homophobia is the fear straight men have of being treated by other men the way they treat women. Perhaps racism can be understood as the fear that white people have of being treated by others the way they treat black people. “What goes around, comes around;” is mitigated by the Golden Rule.
127
@Frank Salmeri: No Frank. Racism is the belief that certain traits including behavior and intelligence is due to genetic makeup of a group of people with one group ("one's race")possessing superior traits.
Your politically motivated spin on the meaning is good for nothing other than a polemic. I like the way you cast racism as a white against Black dynamic.
You know better, or at least you should. Does voting Democratic mitigate living in racially segregated housing or attending a racially segregated school system?
Think Oakland v. San Francisco - gentrification of the former notwithstanding.
5
One factor not discussed here is the racism of the privileged. Trump never had to fear competition for a job or a place at college. The "birther" nonsense was backed by some of the richest men in the country. These are people who sit at the top of the heap (having largely inherited that position) and cynically use their own prejudices to stay there, largely because they don't want to share their place with anyone who doesn't look like them.
11
This is where I stopped reading: "In the 1950s, the Democratic coalition was 87 percent white and 13 percent minority." EVERYONE KNOWS WHY! The "Democratic Party" of the 1950's was the Republican Party of today, and black people couldn't vote in the South and in many other states. LIBERALS HAVE ALWAYS CHAMPIONED MINORITY RIGHTS; CONSERVATIVES DON'T AND NEVER HAVE!. Lose the party labels: liberals believe that all people are created equal and should be treated that way and conservatives don't and never have.
8
My experience in talking to whites about this issue is that many of them see the US as becoming a nation of victims - and that they are the ones being blamed. The Democrats generally encourage this thinking.
It's one thing for a party to help bring along ethnic groups but another one to blame whites for all the failings in the country. I think the Democrats would do best to stop blaming the whites for all that afflicts the US. That political correctness does not solve problems. It just makes one group think that they are victims (are they really?) and that their problems can be solved by putting another group down.
18
@Maria
Excellent. Exactly correct. American culture, not just politics strictly speaking, has become all about victimization battles and the attempt to dominate, oppress, and shame by those who believe that "as a class" they have been dominated, oppressed, and shamed, even if individually that is not true.
7
@Maria, where does this “Democrats blame whites for our society’s problems” idea come from? Is the simple act of defending equal opportunity or opposition to discrimination a blaming act? Look at the Constitution (Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV or The Civil Rights Act of 1964). No special rights are given to any race, color, national origin, sex, or religion no matter which categories apply. One’s guilty conscience or one’s privilege based on whiteness does not validate this concept of blaming.
4
@Maria If you want people to stop blaming "whites for all the failings in this country," I suggest electing more people of color. Since, you know, the majority of all three branches of government are white.
1
Enough. For the thousandth time : WE Dems need to stop wasting time, money and hope on chasing the “ uneducated “, largely Rural White Vote. It’s ALL about Racism and spite. They are responsible for Trump, let them live with the results.
Period.
5
Great work. It is interesting that much of the research does not support the view that Trump's supporters are primarily motivated by racial animosity toward blacks in particular.
3
@Mike Ferrell
Because they are not. This is one of those snap-ons that the left automatically places on those who don't follow the politically correct script and pay fealty to certain concepts, which I won't enumerate here.
3
Edsall's columns are always exhausting, but exhilerating and incredibly informative.
The way I've read how the GOP appeals to race is to show a piece of pie to white people and say, "this is all that there is to eat" then to let scarcity create tension and friction over access to that small piece of pie.
The Democrats need to show (and have failed... wth the slight exception of Bernie) that there's a much, much larger piece of pie actually available and that the 80% don't need to be fighting over it.... that in fact we can all comfortably share the pie if we can show how the GOP has been keeping about 90% of that pie hidden for themselves.
2
"White Identity Politics Aren't Going Anywhere" : European-American politics are going somewhere because European-Americans have to defend themselves in the face of the educational, professional, and other preferences given to blacks and hispanics and other favored groups.
10
The Republican party is our new home. I'm an ex-Democrat, but with race now coming to the forefront on every issue, it's plausible that the remaining Dem whites will eventually flock to the R's. Speaking for myself, the only channel I watch these days is FOX, which is stunning given my liberal/Democrat history.
3
Oh. Gosh, I bet that ‘splains the racial makeup of the Executive Branch, the judiciary, Congress, all the major companies, the governing boards and primary stockholders of evey big law firm, bank, and TV station, the...
1
Keep worrying about race from any direction and the oligarchy eats all our lunches. The only time any people can afford to give up any privilege at all is when they feel secure in their future and their children's future.
1
I could barely finish this column. Recently I read Frank McCourts second memoir "'Tis". He was born in the US, grew up in Ireland, and returned when he was a young man. Several times he noted feeling like why do I have to be an Irish-American and not just an American. That is exactly the way I feel. All are welcome in my heart and home. If we liberals push identity politics too far all will be lost. I remember being at my Unitarian Church when they complimented themselves on their diversity. I looked around and there was hardly anyone with black hair let alone black skin. How ridiculous we can look.
10
@amp, I left the UU church for this same reason. The hypocrisy was glaring. Unitarians on ecstasy are blind.
This article ignores the fact that the Democrats beat Trump and Republicans In most of the recent elections. When winning isn't enough to win it is time to repair/improve the rules. No more electoral college, changes to the Senate. North Dakota shouldn't have the same number of Senators as California. And fix the outrageous gerrymandering done by Republicans. It is time our votes actually counted.
Another issue with this opinion piece is that while he does acknowledge the racism, saying simply that the groups "fall to the right" is like saying Trump just told a few white lies while in office. These people aren't just flirting with fascism, they've been dating it for two years and are about to pop the question.
7
@Max Deitenbeck
Beating Trump in California and New York just demonstrates that those coastal states are predominantly democratic.
2
@AACNY
And his winning in the south and midwest just proves those states are predominantly conservative. What is your point?
1
“for many whites ‘identifying with their group and protecting its status hardly seems problematic, especially compared to racism,’ it’s difficult to ‘convince some whites that there’s something normatively objectionable about identifying with one’s racial group and wanting to protect its interests.’”
So, if ‘many whites’ don’t think something is a problem, it is hard to convince them it is wrong. Duhh! What about ‘many blacks’, or many ‘reds’, or many ‘yellows’? If I am trying to convince somebody that something is wrong, I have to start by convincing them that it is at least a problem. It doesn’t matter what color they are, even if they were green. Much of this pontificating is just an obfuscated restatement in lofty ersatz intellectual language of the issue that the authors are claiming to clarify. “It is a tale…full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Racism doesn't live alone in the hearts of Trump's core supporters. There, it is mixed with, and reinforced by, fear of modernity and the rapid changes it brings.
The whole of social life in America is being transformed by social media, smartphones and the internet, and by the inescapable reality that our vast continent is now just one more part of an interconnected world.
Many Americans are flourishing in this new world order; Trump's core is not. They see nothing in it for them, and all they need are unscrupulous leaders to validate their resentments and their fictions of times-gone-by, and their anger flares.
This group is an unreachable and declining demographic, and the Democratic party must abandon them.
It's hard to estimate their size. Trump's low approval rating is boosted by a strong economy and at least some of his boosters are attracted by that, not his atavistic policies.
My guess of the size of the hard-core Trumpers is <> 35%. The rest of us combined can elect good leadership without them.
3
I wondered at the part about substituting Lithuanian's for black citizens in the survey questions. Did the survey designers actually expect people to respond to this as though they were truly evaluating their feelings on the Lithuanian experience? Or do they understand that people are smart enough to understand that they are playing with the survey, using Lithuanians as a stand in for more commonly talked about minority groups in the U.S. Give people some credit. They are not that dense.
1
It will be easier to change the views White Americans have of immigrants than their views of Black Americans. Racism enabled Donald Trump to become President. My life experience, education and conversations do not convince me that these views are changing.
2
So, after reviewing unverifiable, highly questionable studies by every person cited in this article, the author’s opinion was formed. I want five minutes of my life back.
5
Here is the Dems intractable problem: They can propose legislation that helps all people (such as ACA), but many whites will perceive it as not helping them. Instead, it is viewed as a handout to the undeserving . Jardina notes the correlation between racism and opposition to government spending. Dems will never win over these people.
7
@Paul Lomeo
No, it wasn't racism that made Americans reject Obamacare. It was its price. Democrats didn't help those who made too much to get a subsidy or receive Medicaid. Democrats raised their costs substantially, not to mention their lost plans, doctors, hospitals, etc.
You are correct, though, that democrats will never win over "these people" with harmful moves like that.
2
I (white lady) think it's hard to talk about this "white identity" in the aggregate when it has such huge regional correlation. I have worked with African American and Latino populations, coworkers and bosses for a decade. Moving from where I was (big city in the SW) to the Deep South has been an eye opener. The grievances here run deep and feel insurmountable.... It was only after coming here that I heard white people refer to "us"
7
According to the article, "Because for many whites “identifying with their group and protecting its status hardly seems problematic, especially compared to racism,” it’s difficult to “convince some whites that there’s something normatively objectionable about identifying with one’s racial group and wanting to protect its interests.” OK, so there is something normatively objectionable about identifying with one's racial group if one is white, but not if one is African American, Asian, or Latino/a. This argument is logically inconsistent.
3
@ka kilicli
THIS:
"so there is something normatively objectionable about identifying with one's racial group if one is white, but not if one is African American, Asian, or Latino/a. This argument is logically inconsistent."
2
When I read about “equity goals” I scream in my head, when will enough be enough to claim “achieved”? In MInnesota, Frequent rants on Public Radio that you do not see “diversity/equity” in groups. Hello! Minnesota is 81% white. So in any group of 10, it stands to reason you will find 8 white people. That’s equity folks! that is simple math and not an “equity” problem. To move forward, need to define end of actions, ie Affirmative action in place for 5 generations. Or, college costs based on income, not on race. In job situation, if you are holding out for a Black, say hiring blacks only. As a progressive, I am feeling the rigging of diversity/equity police setting without any sense of sound numerical goals. Uff Dah.
8
Good wrapup of current academic neo-Marxist thought. The ultra-left is trapped in a dilemma of its own making: pack individuals into externally-defined groups/tribes/classes, then mobilize the inevitable class/racial resentments and wait for the edifice to come tumbling down, to be replaced by the utopian state. We will all bask in the bright light of "equity," forgetting the timeless truth: the nail that sticks up will be pounded down.
The ultra-left, having let that genie out of the bottle, now finds that two (or hundreds, as society atomizes into clusters of resentment and revenge) can and will play that game. The politics of identity inevitably creates its mirror image. It's not pretty to look in that mirror and see...yourself.
10
Mr. Edsall, one root cause of the impression that whites have of non-white and immigrants is how the media report on both groups. If the media were to report on heinous crime by whites and economic boot-strapping by non-whites and immigrants, maybe -- over time -- whites would see that non-whites were just like them. THen again, probably not. Primarily because so many whites know deep down inside that their place in our society is predicated on their skin color at birth and has little or anything to do with what they actually accomplished. I call it the "sorry Vito, my brother's son needs a job so I have to let you go." A scene from Godfather part 2 where Vito has a job, but is forced out because a family member -- an in-group person -- has come and needs a job. That's how white people have existed in this country forever.
4
Twenty years ago I was working on my masters degree, an over 50 white male. I was going to school working almost full time in a job paying better than minimum wage, but no road to riches> I shared a house in the ghetto, so to speak.
At school was a financial aid bulletin board. Grants available for white women, and men and women if they were part of some minority. Black, Indian, Latino, whatever.
I never once saw an opportunity for me, just based on economics.
Multiply this experience by tens of thousands, and is it any wonder white men feel disadvantaged?
8
A huge part of the problem is the attempt to relieve guilt by making up for past discrimination. What many on the left fail to realize is that by relieving guilt they are at risk of creating new forms of discrimination. But now the discrimination is focused on a previously privileged group who will not only feel resentment but will also fight back vigorously - in whatever way they can.
The only answer is scrupulous avoidance of unfairness. But what is unfairness? To many people, including our president, what is unfair is anything that isn’t totally in their favor.
Pretty painful reading, really.
Of course they aren't going anywhere. Self-identified progressives increasingly play semantic games to exempt whiteness from their principles and intellectual frameworks. By definition, denigration of whiteness is righteous and just, desirable and courageous.
It would be hilarious if we didn't have Trumpism in the meantime.
3
I think all Americans have gotten less than what they deserve. Education is the foundation of life, and all levels of government are failing miserably at educating people. All people.
Another aspect. People should be able to dislike cultures they find alien, and that white americans may grow to like (or not) specific individuals is irrelevant. Political correctness should be removed from existence. It is diametrically opposed to freedom of expression.
It seems to me blacks are totally accepted now by society at large, only individual blacks are rejected, as are individual whites.
Further, all this attention paid to this subject only serves to confuse the public, making them believe there is a problem where there is none. However, we do have a culture, as, say, central america has a culture. But I want mine to prevail in my own country, and not theirs. They have their own country. Let me keep mine. Or is that totally incorrect, politically speaking?
3
There is a saying: "To the privileged, equality feels like oppression". Whites may feel they're only defending their interests (and that they're not racist), but for all intents and purposes, it means they're willing to defend institutional racism.
We've seen this before in South Africa. Whites used the mechanisms of a police state to enforce apartheid and maintain THEIR privileged status.
4
I am reminded, in this long-winded and conclusionless statement, of Hillary Clinton's much-maligned but factually accurate description of SOME (note that this word is almost always deleted from criticizing her) of Trump's acolytes being a basket of deplorables. There is indeed a basket of deplorables, and they are beyond convincing. The real question is how to address the rest of them. And in this regard, Mr. Edsall is either honestly or ingenuously clueless.
5
This bizarre left-right division is endemic to the USA. And I stand to my opinion that this aberration comes from the same ideological root: individualism.
On the left, you have the infinite power of imagination: any individual can be the gender he/she/them/it wants (can "identify") and can be of any "global tribe"/"minority" he/she/them/it wants.
On the right, you have the self-sufficient frontier man, with his guns, his farm and in an eternal struggle against the "government", to which his "safe space" (private property) it constantly tries to destroy.
The USA is simply nuts. I don't see any peaceful solution for this anti-dialectical mess, this grotesque cesspoll, the American people has put itself into. I just hope it doesn't go full-empire mode and try to wage hot wars against the rest of the world, but just self-destructs in civil war style.
First of all, the "white working class" election of trump has been debunked in innumerable studies that assessed the income levels of Dem and GOP voters, $58,000 vs $72,000, respectively.
However sociologists want to couch the current state of white identity, the fact remains that there are millions of whites of all economic and educational levels who are AFRAID... afraid of losing their status as the dominant force of America. This white fear has been the basis for institutional racism since Jim Crow, and as ethnic minorities gain economic status, the white fear has become more pronounced, as has the openness of the racism.
The hypocrisy is clear: as white society insisted that minorities "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", the same white society is fearful of the results of minority economic and educational gains, not because of less economic opportunity for whites, but fear of the increased social and political power of minorities. It will be interesting to see how whites react when America becomes a majority-minority country in 2042.
1
As hogwash goes, this article seems full of it. The basic premise is described as whites v blacks and browns for racist reasons. Even substituting Lithuanians the hypothesis pushed forward is nonsense. The real driver is insecurity, not racial insecurity, not status-driven insecurity, physical well-being insecurity, as in not being mugged, raped or shot, and having money to pay the bills and eat something 24/7/365 insecurity.
When your kids are visibly doing poorer than you or your parents, as has been the case since the end of the 1960s, your willingness to share the pie with anyone outside a shrinking group shrinks too.
When the other groups do not share your Protestant work ethic values, for reasons either of those values being nonsensical to them - because getting ahead that way is a one-in-a-thousand shot - or culturally unknown to them, talking about equity for those groups and assuming those groups want to join the Protestant work ethic ‘club’ is nuts. A rare few will succeed in joining, but it’s going to be a hideous struggle with their own group being as much or more of a problem than not and death a real possibility as the outcome for their efforts.
There is no solution visible, and this article and the authors’ cited certainly don’t mention any solutions. They just whine about ‘stuff’.
4
America's future has no place for illegal immigrants in it. Robots are replacing low-wage workers everywhere and America is paying for health care for everyone.
Who will pick the lettuce, you ask? Americans will pick lettuce for $75 an hour. And the USDA will subsidize lettuce growers to assure that you still only pay $1 a head for it.
2
Robots will be picking that lettuce too. And they will work 24 hours a day regardless of the weather.
So pretty soon the racial prejudice issue will be solved by being replaced by something different. I’m not sure what to call it, but humans are bound to feel superior to machines.
"Jardina acknowledges that “some scholars are critical of this framework” and “argue that racial resentment entangles conservative principles, like individualism, with racial prejudice.”
Keep writing this nonsense.
This Democratic centrist voted for Trump because Hillary would have been a continuation of Obama's hostility to Israel . further, Hillary would have been hostage to the Left, which to me is just as anti-Semitic as the Right wing fringe.
Gone are the days of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Scoop Jackson.
I harbor no more "racial animosity" than the average black person. And I grew up in a largely black community, before crack fractured everything.
But I have zero respect for Leftist politicians of all colors who revel in their own "identity politics" at every step, and have polarized not just the country, but my own Democratic party.
These politicians, like their allies at papers like the NYT, are living large during these days of division. The division is good for their respective bottom lines.
I'll return to vote for the Democratic Party when they focus again on working class values, unions, strength abroad and protecting and supporting allies without compromise, like the State of Israel.
Till then , put me down as just one more white person "desperately clinging to his guns and religion."
6
Read this series of comments, Tom Perez. Many of them reflect what I have been writing to you about -- a stronger social safety net -- for the lower 90%.
4
Another attempt to define "whites" by the identity-obsessed. Just because one can doesn't mean one should. The understanding that many Americans are simply sick of identity politics continues to evade them. It has led to a proliferation of identity charges (ex., racism, sexism, etc.) that have become meaningless from overuse.
7
If Hillary were not so vocal about her own identity politics and were less politically correct she would have been in the White House, instead of the national shame we have residing there today. Whites are no more or less prejudiced than any other racial group would be in the similar situation. Democrats can achieve many of their goals of helping minorities by winning and passing the laws of their liking by winning.
1
"...these whites feel, to some extent, that the rug is being pulled out from under them — that the benefits they have enjoyed because of their race, their groups’ advantages, and their status atop the racial hierarchy are all in jeopardy." To me this means: "Whites are more deserving than any other group". That seems racist to me (I'm white). By this belief, it is impossible to convince them (I've tried) of the fact that there are many more whites on federal relief, particularly in the South, than people of color, allowing for population differences, as the Harvard economists that were quoted here found. Maybe we Democrats should just ignore their racism and do what we did in the mid-term election, as Edsall noted. When we bring it up, it immediately works against us and they aren't going to listen anymore.
1
Why should white identity politics be confronted? It's just as legitimate as all other segments of identity politics. What's good for the goose of color is good for the white gander.
6
It is problematic for an elite to cite books that are "forthcoming" which we common people do not have access to yet. Or, to cite "working papers" that have not gone through peer review. The NYT should be more rigorous and disciplined in its reporting.
1
If white Americans are frightened by demographic change, its only because the news media purposely distorts Census Bureau data.
Census Bureau data shows the United States is currently 76.6 percent white, up from 75.1 percent in 2000. The Census Bureau forecasts that whites will make up 93.9 percent of the population in 2060. (Source: Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060 (Table 2: Population by Race and Hispanic Origin), page 9.) The reason is that most immigrants are white.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf
3
@Networthy
No. Non-Hispanic white will decline to 68.5 percent but whites together will grow to 93.9 percent of the population. The majority of U.S. Hispanics are white. Think Cameron Diaz.
1
This arcane article requires more rebuttal than comment space allows. But two points will have to suffice.
First, there is no such thing as "white identity." As anti-racist scholars point out, "whiteness" is a nebulous category, shifting over time. The only definition of "white" is one of exclusion - identifying those who are not white. There is no "white" culture. No "white" traditions. Being "white" simply means being embraced into the relatively privileged majority of those who are not "the other."
Jardina writes, "This racial solidarity now plays a central role in the way many whites orient themselves to the political and social world." Ask black folks to define the cultural aspects of "being black" that are sources of pride and pleasure. The answers will be enlightening. Ask white people. There is no answer. White racial solidarity is non-existent except as a way of not being black or brown.
Jardina's reference to Lithuanians is intellectually laughable. So, white folks are asked if Lithuanians should have to work their way up without favors. Yes they should!!!! Thereby I have proven that I am not racist. I hate affirmative action for Lithuanians too!! I don't even like affirmative action or social programs that help the Irish!!!
This has always been the masquerade of racists. "Discrimination is discrimination." "I don't see color."
TRUE or FALSE
“The great electoral opportunity of 2020 is not in the marginal number of repentant Trump voters you might be able to convert. It’s in the nearly 40 percent of eligible voters—many of them younger voters, rural residents, and people of color—who in 2016 did not vote at all.” --Katha Pollitt
1
While racism (as well as sexism and age-ism) is clearly a problem in the US, you also have to include the fact that "the other" (who are visible every day) is an easy substitute for the economic oppression 99% of us have been suffering for decades (and of course blacks and women much longer).
It is much easier to blame something visible, than to blame an economic system that masquerades as egalitarian, and that is difficult to understand.
That is the genius of today's capitalist elites----they are safe as long as the rest of us throw darts at our neighbors.
1
Outstanding, as always, Thomas. Thank you.
"…the mean level of racial resentment is 0.68 on a zero to one scale.” just blows my mind. Within the limits of my memory, I can think of only two times that I've heard people make blatantly racist statements. One was a stranger and the other was from a man who hates everybody of all colors. Am I just not registering racism, is it hidden, or am I hanging out with the right people?
1
First, "white" now has nothing to do with color of skin--very brown Italians and Greeks, for example, fall into that category--but rather means Western European, i.e., "white" is easier to abuse and hate. And second, the real problem for the DNC Politburo is that these "white" Americans are not so easily conditioned to follow the party dogma, i.e., a large majority haven't had the good fortune of being hammered into place by our nation's university Maoist reeducation camps, e.g., this professor's work, biased by diction and definition to fit the thesis, nothing to do with "science".
2
I fail to grasp the difference between racism and “merely” resenting the loss of benefits that once accrued to white people by reason of their race. Nor do I understand the desire of some academics to make excuses for the obvious bigotry of so many Trump supporters.
103
@lydgate And this is exactly the point of this piece -- your failure to understand these nuances, and labeling many Trump supporters "merely" as bigots. Dualistic thinking isn't helpful here, nor are monolithic proclamations. What's "obvious" to you is part of the problem.
11
@mary Well said. There is another part to this. Trump supporters know that liberals think they are racists and bigots. Of course, this only serves to harden attitudes. And then it becomes a matter of pride and autonomy to stand up to political correctness be called a racist.
I was a liberal. Now I am a ...
2
My question is, why is it okay to have a black identity or a female identity but not a white identity, which I think is being expressed here? We are what we are. As a Democrat, I think we would make far more progress if policies were presented that potentially benefit all disadvantaged individuals in an economic class. For example, it is hard for a child coming from a single parent family or a poor family to get a quality education, enabling them to improve their economic status. If the proposal assisted all low income individuals, I think there would be much more broad support. When a program is targeted toward a specific racial or social group, there is more likely to be opposition. Target educational opportunities for all lower income families and I think you will make more progress.
31
@DickH
Because white people having an identity is racist according to the left.
2
"For 50 years Republicans have battered the Democratic coalition, ...
From my perspective, having grown up and lived on the near east side of Detroit I can see that Edsall absolutely refuses to acknowledge many of the reasons folks left the FDR coalition. It's much more complex than Edsall's simplistic story.
One seminal incident that gave rise to the break up of the FDR coalition was the enforcement of school busing for the supposed desegregation of Detroit Public Schools. Judge Roth attempted to include the entire Detroit Metro Area in his solution scheme.
Here's part of what he wrote when attempting to order a multi-school district busing plan:
“Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of 45 minutes, one way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way. ...kindergarten children should be included in the final plan of desegregation.”
Talk about weaponizing the judiciary. The plan was subsequently limited to Detroit. Even in that case it all but destroyed that school system. I'm not talking about parents sending their children to magnet or private schools based on choice. And this is long before Betsy Devos.
Would you subject your 5 year old children to this sort of plan? You don't need to answer that.
Many working class whites became vigilant against any similar identity based schemes.
The Democratic Party destroyed the FDR coalition. And there's no racism or dog whistle to it.
13
No need to go down the rabbit hole of identity politics, no need to be divided over artifice. Democrats need to focus on three overarching functions of government:
Safety
Health
Prosperity
Everything, and I mean every single thing falls into one or more of these three categories. They are the backbone of our democracy and our belief system.
Over and over, Democrats need to stand up and say government function comes down to three essentials:
Safety
Health
Prosperity
Why do we need an EPA or FDA? Why does equity matter to me? What of climate change? Or gun safety? Why should we have the ACA?
Safety
Health
Prosperity
Add “Integrity” and you have SHIP, et al.
9
These Thinkers often neglect... perhaps intentionally?.... a very important component... Minorities, Immigrants, especially but not limited to, from Asia, Eastern Europe and South America, are not monolithic.
They do their best to assimilate. A Latino or Immigrant from Eastern Europe or Asia are NOT forever interested in being labeled a minority, in fact they make great sacrifices to come to and become American. They are not forever Democrat or Liberal. Second and certainly Third Generation Immigrants, whether White or not, itake on the characteristics and political leanings of Republicans and.or Conservatives. Whether it be Religion, Social or even Financial.
They work hard, move to the suburbs, Go to University, they want the best for their children, and have more in common with Suburban voters, then with recent immigrants.
8
Thomas B. Edsall consistent writes thoughtful, well researched, pieces. However, he tends to run long. I infer that his ultimate conclusions are that lots of people may have some logical grounds for fearing that in a zero sum economy, a win by some others can translate into a loss for them; or, whether that is logical or not, it is a view so endemic in human nature that politicians had just as well get used to it. I tend to agree with both points. The big however, however, is that it is impossible to determine today how much of that view has been ginned up by Republican promotion of the view, back to at least Goldwater, in modern times. That is what makes Democrats resistant to accommodating to this reality. I don't see that addressed, by Mr. Edsall or others, nearly as much as it should be.
2
Fear of the "other" dominates this discussion. People who are secure in their jobs and place in life have room for allowing upward mobility of people of different races and religion.
The white middle class and lower class have seen the economy and technology make their incomes and job security depleted. Instead of retraining people whose livelihood had disappeared like coal mining and factory work, politicians promise a return to the old industries. It will not be possible. Trump's promises could not stop world changes. Small farmers can not make a living. Coal miners and car factory workers have no security in the future.
We all long for a simpler time with simple solutions. Keeping out competition from immigrants for jobs is not the answer. Hatred always corrodes a society. Fear mongering only works for a while because it does not offer viable solutions to the problem. Automobile companies are closing factories in the rust belt.
'Republicans signature achievement has been the tax cuts for the rich and corporations. No financial benefits have trickled down to the lower and middle classes.
5
Missing from this analysis is the backdrop of increasing income inequality. Since it is so difficult to talk about class differences, American anxiety about increasing levels of income inequality transmogrifies into a discourse about race. Aggressive policy initiatives to address income inequality would dissolve much of the racial antagonism resulting from the struggle to get a piece of the shrinking part of national income going to the lower and middle classes. Trump's great gift to the plutocracy is to divert attention from income inequality and focus it as racial antagonism.
21
Science will never pin down human beings because we often lie, can't handle the burden of freedom and decision, and do things often which aren't in our best interest. And why must we rationalize a bleak point of view as though people's minds cannot change? The wholly static view of statistics can never quantify or qualify a changing culture or the decay of dead ideas. The oblique call for vigilance in this article stokes a reactionary view which will always be weak, short-sighted, and self-defeating. Positive energy has no equal opposition. And the belief in our fellow human beings is wholly necessary for any compassionate enterprise.
3
There are many multi-ethnic countries. It's ok to be Caucasian. The base problem is the paltry social safety net in the United States. Vote for progressives. Enact universal health care coverage/Medicare for All, cease the expenditure of vast sums of tax money on warfare, increase taxes on the wealthy. It is straightforward. We can have a stable, fair society if people would stop voting Republican and Libertarian.
18
@Eugene Debs I want universal healthcare too. And rising wages. A stable society that applies laws equally. We can have none of that without controlling immigration and holding 'immigrants' to at least to the same laws as citizens let alone allowing millions to freely violate.
13
Mark Blyth, global political economist at Brown University, points out that since out birthrate is dropping, the number of young workers to support our economy, earned benefits, etc. in our tax system is seriously declining. immigration is the only way we will build up our younger work force to support our growing needs. I'm on Social Security and rapidly fading into the woodwork. Life is increasingly unsustainable with rising drug costs, rising supplemental insurance costs. The CPI raises are not adequate ($14 per month in 2019, more than half of which is taken up by Medicare costs which have grown by a third in recent years). I would like to see, need, our economy thrive and I don't care what country of origin, language, and skin color is involved.
Of course, I'd like to see a few other current policies change too.
1
What does illegal immigration have to do with universal healthcare? People here illegally wouldn't be eligible, just as they're not eligible for ACA.
4
This is the argument of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" film. Only pragmatic compromise with one's political enemies will yield good things like the 13th Amendment. But the film shows that the presence of more radical voices was the agent of change, and that the head, Lincoln, only marshaled what was presented to him. It's not an either-or. We need folks advocating an unvarnished edition on the left: free community college, national health care, progressive tax policy, reduction in schools funded by local real estate tax, equity in education opportunity, strong labor laws, smart judges with integrity, decent treatment of asylum seekers, constructive work toward removing the causes of desperate emigration/flight from chaos and tyranny, and more. To compromise, one must first ask for what one wants.
7
Some of the animosity may come from concentrations of minority groups usually do to job availability, and a reluctance of whites to move to different areas for employment. Workimg classes, prior to the post WW2 era often moves for jobs if they did not own land. However, with home ownership, more became rooted to, and built up, small towns in key areas of industry. One can see this when observing places like Edison New Jersey. Many of the people I grew up with in Edison, mostly white of varying ethnic backgrounds, are identifying with Trumpism because they have, over the past 40 years, seen their town dramatically changed by a huge influx of immigrants from India. The Indian immigrants, often with high educations and coming from a higher social class, buy up working class homes, displacing the white working class, making them the minority. The Indian immigrants are usually chemists, engineers, and tech workers. They get hired for better jobs because their degrees are higher than most whites in the same field. Whites and their descendants are at a disadvantage that would be fixed with relocation. This is difficult when one's family has invested time and energy in building up a town from its inception.
The problems in New Jersey, however, are never directly addressed on a national level. The problem is always along the Mexican border. Whites in Edison seen brown skin and don't make a distinction. If their concerns were better addressed few would support Trump.
15
You have presented an important point, and it leads me to ask, what if the influx of new residents were still as educated and accomplished as the Indians you cite but were in fact Caucasian? The original Edison residents would still be displaced from the job market but by their (so-called) peers. Which leads the argument back to racism at some level. I’m not arguing with you; I just can’t reconcile what the difference is.
1
It takes a lot of initiative and pluck to emigrate. Thus immigrants actually do pose a threat, or at least a challenge, to the home grown workforce. Speaking very generally immigrants tend to show up on time, work hard and have a “good attitude” (in other words express appropriate gratitude for their employment). So I can understand the fear of losing ones job to an immigrant. There is also a more diffuse effect. The presence of immigrants means that in order to keep a job a worker must shape up, work harder and smarter, just to keep a job. A sense of ease and entitlement is lost. Immigration thus adversely affects the life of all native born workers. They lose jobs, they worry about losing jobs and jobs change, paying less and becoming more onerous. Add all this to the threat of losing jobs to outsourcing to a foreign country and a negative attitude to foreign workers becomes completely understandable.
Immigration, however, is essential to the US economy. Without it our workforce population would decline. Our birth rate, like the birth rate of most advanced countries, is just not sufficient to keep our population stable. This leads to the interesting intersection of conservatism and anti-feminism. If women knew their “place” and just stayed home and had babies then there would be no need for immigrants. American culture would no longer be diluted and America would become great again.
Alas, none of the studies reported on in the article explored attitudes towards women.
3
@P. P. Porridge People can be hard working and nice and still be liars, cheats and thieves who should be held to the same laws as native citizens. No one is above the law no matter how capable.
3
@P. P. Porridge Well over 50% of all immigrants are on some form of welfare.
3
@P. P. Porridge, Ya know what? There are millions of Americans who bust their humps each and every day at work in this country. Perhaps some of us are tired of this diatribe that we don't work very hard. When in fact most or the majority of us do.
3
@Bruce Rozenblit
"...Acquiring those skills requires education and training infrastructure, along with the personal responsibility to give it your best."
Personal responsibility is the crux of the issue after cutting through the race hatred and general anger exhibited by the majority of "white privilege" adherents.
Gutting education starting in the 1960's was the death blow to the middle class. Those people (mostly white) thinking they'll always be unskilled factory jobs didn't care that education was deteriorating before their very eyes. "Capitalism on steroids" came along and shipped the jobs first to lower wage states then overseas. Capital "trumps" labor any day of the week.
You can peel off a few white privilege folks, but the problem rests with education and in many cases spite.
6
I am a witness to the melting pot concept of America that worked and produced children who grew up as adults without racial prejudice. I am a white 64 yr old woman who from 1959-1963, at age 6 to 10 yrs., grew up overseas where whites were in the minority in the country (Japan) & where Truman's integrated military prevailed on military bases (Japan, Hawaii). My fellow students represented racial and ethnic groups from around the world. The first teachers I had for kindergarten, 1st, 2nd & 3rd grades, were white, African American, and Chinese American. Race was never an issue. *No one* among my classmates even noticed race. In other words, I grew up in a world where all around me were equally regarded as human beings worthy of dignity and respect. Every white American in this country should be so fortunate as to have such an experience. It renders one color-blind. To this day, I recoil and feel alienated from whites when they talk about their presumptions to superiority based on the color of their skin that they associate with a "culture," or, their fears of being "outnumbered." They don't get it. It's only melanin. My military dad, who grew up in poverty in the Depression and bootstrapped it from airman to full colonel in the USAF, had been around the world. He taught his children this one basic lesson, that has never left me: "At heart, all people are the same: they want to be able to feed their children and give them a better life than the one they knew."
20
@Dr. H, great story. But I want to argue two points: A) Not all people are "the same," IE good parents. If we are going to deal with systemic social problems, we must admit this. To use a headline-extreme example-- parents who leave their kids locked in cars all day while partying and ignoring their cries, have no interest in giving "them a better life." B) Our recent American culture has embraced this idea of giving more to kids than "they knew." This attitude leads to over-the -top legacy populations at selective schools, which then disproportionately rewards all who matriculate from same, no matter how they got there. This attitude is why we don't tax the income of heirs to, for instance, the Walton fortune as the income that it truly is-- we tax it as investment, which it is not. This attitude is why we have narrowed and will soon eliminate the inheritance tax. In short, this aristocratic entitlement (based on wealthy parents wanting the same "better life" for their progeny as MOST in the middle and lower rightfully strive for) is killing any aspiration, hope, or reality of wealth parity our society ever knew. The problem is, the white rubes who vote in the likes of trump and ryan will not admit that guys like this want more and more for themselves, to heck with the rest of us.
1
A regrettable but predictable situation. Increased emphasis on identity on the left creates the conditions for the same to flourish on the right. Good policy can address issues like poverty, education and healthcare with an equity lens ... without first sorting us all into groups first.
My guess is the sorting will continue, because politicians rely on it to build a base. But perhaps the rest of us (media included) can try to stay above the fray and work on issues that affect people … full stop.
29
"...the results of this year's midterm elections prove ... that these obstacles ...can be overcome."
Even with the insertion of that point, which would seem to have been done at the last minute, the results of the recent election make the whole article irrelevant.
Regardless of identity politics, Democrats consistently get more votes than Republicans. The only reason they are not in control of the White House, most state legislatures, and Congress is gerrymandering. That's where the real battle needs to be fought.
Don't forget that U.S. Senators represent districts (i.e. states) that are essentially gerrymandered districts. Progressive voters are effectively crammed into states like California and NY that have no more Senators than Wyoming and Montana. The Electoral College is a similarly anachronistic construct.
19
I think a lot of this wouldn't be relevant if there weren't the combination of 10.6 million people that came here illegally, mostly competing for jobs that citizens used to get paid a lot more to do. Rather than a wall, e-verify would do much to rid us of much of the support Republicans currently enjoy from blue collar white America.
I can ride my bike one mile from here to where over 200 single family houses are going up and find almost no one that is legally able to work here, probably a thousand workers on any given day. That's a lot of people put out of good jobs that will vote Republican. Do we really need 6,000 square foot houses to be built cheaper? Couldn't the 10% be just as comfy in a 5,000 square foot house?
33
How do you know that these workers are illegal?
2
@somsai So true. In the 80s, many citizens in Northern Va where I was in high school would do this work and other jobs, like painting. This mostly changed today. Often now you have undocumented immigrants doing the job for cheaper and an owner, often a citizen, taking advantage of lower wages. This has been going on a LONG time and chickens have come home to roost in the form of Trump.
3
Can you prove your figures on the illegals you mention? what is their ethnicity? how do you know they are illegal? I ask this because my hometown, Edison New Jersey is home to a sizeable population of immigrants from India, who many times purchase the McMansions you reference. They are here legally and they do take the engineering jobs that whites might have got if whites had the proper educations. Whites do not have the chemical engineering or backgrounds in chemistry to work in many of the industries in New Jersey. My point being that if you see brown skinned immigrants living in McMansions, they are here legally.
And the ones who aren't? they are living 6 to a two-bedroom apartment in a city your white self woukd not want to live in and work in hotel kitchens, hospital laundries, amd other places your white self,would not work. how do I know? I talk to people. Maybe you will want to try it sometime. You find out a lot more that way than mere observe and assume.
1
I continue to disagree that Democrats need to jettison "identity politics." The strength of the Democratic Party is in its diversity and inclusion. Anyone who votes Republican because he or she identifies primarily as a white person who is losing out is not going to vote for a Democratic Party candidate anytime soon. It is not "identity politics" that has hurt the Democratic Party but it's failure to be more inclusive than it already is (as one scholar mentioned in this article suggests). Different groups in this country have different problems and different needs. That those specific issues should not be openly addressed by the Democratic Party will make its mission meaningless.
9
I agree to some degree. However, the term "identity politics" is fraught with lots of stereotypes and a perceived insistence on changes in language and so forth to accommodate The Other. To make whites OK with that, they have to see an advantage to identity politics. Yet no advantage seems evident. There is often asking for accommodate from whites which leads to a sense that they are sacrificing too much, or a retreat into victimhood and assertions that they are being repressed. How identity politics can include whites without spurring on their sense of victimhood remains to be seen.
5
@EMiller, This Democratic diversity train often becomes a political train wreck though. Life is not entirely ALL about diversity.
Much of the issue comes from the sense of insecurity and scarcity. In one Congressional election this November, ads were run where Hilary Clinton said, "We are going to put a lot of coal miners out of work..." without the second part of the statement, that we need to have policies that help those people. We operate under the myth of rugged individualism, but the truth is, the economic policies of our state and federal governments impact our economic outlook. As long as we refuse to take a hard look at what can be done to make us more economically secure, we will look at others with fear. In many people, this fear is not for themselves but for their children or others that they know.
11
I cringe every time I see people say that Democrats 'need to put identity politics aside and focus on the big picture.' What they mean is: Let's default back to when identity politics went unnamed and favored wealthy, straight, white males.
Historically, we've always had identity politics. White men have been primarily the ones making the laws, benefiting from the laws, and enjoying over-representation in every part of society. And it was un-named which is how privilege works. It's only been when women, the LGBT community, and people of color want their needs and rights considered, respected and represented that people bemoan 'identity politics.'
So I'm glad to see this article and discussion.
23
@Anne..Perhaps " white men have been primarily the ones making the laws, benefitting from the laws, and enjoying over-representation in every part of society" because, as a group, they were always more qualified and able then other members of society. Perhaps equality of every identity group, in every human endeavor, has been overstated.
4
@Aaron Adams: Nope. Not buying it.
6
@Aaron Adams
White men are "more qualified" how? Smarter? More ethical? More beautiful? Closer to God? More creative?
You say white men have a monopoly on talent and goodness. Does that mean they're "superior?" (What else could "superior" mean?)
So, you that white men are "superior." That's not... white supremacy (plus some fun sexism to boot)...?
1
I have read that a large proportion of Trump voters were actually upper middle class white men - dentists, small business owners and the like. While these folks may have seen some decline in their business due to the Great Recession, they were not decimated, and in fact are the very ones who have benefited from cheaper goods from China and elsewhere over the past 30 years (since they have plenty of disposable income). While I agree that a focus on identity politics is a losing strategy for Democrats (both practically and morally), it really does boil down to racism for Trump voters.
12
All studies of 'white grievance', which essentially is the subject when surveying whites who voted for Trump in 2016, uniformly begin from the assumption that Trump's 'victory' was legitimate and therefore should be a benchmark of some sort. This assumption ignores all we know about Russians flooding ten million bots denigrating Trump's Republican primary opponents and especially the Democratic Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Also discounted is the relentless attempt within any state controlled by Republicans to suppress the minority vote. Also discounted is the disinformation campaign waged by Fox TV and many radio personalities such as Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Michael Savage, and others. And despite all this anti-democratic flak the difference was some 77, 000 votes across three critical electoral states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - two of which were run by Governors now stripping the incoming duly elected Democratic Governors of powers they had while Governor) and...and this is important....Hillary Clinton received 3 million more votes nationally than Trump. Nothing about Trump's victory' was legitimate, so starting from the assumption that he was legitimately elected skews all studies of the 2016 Presidential election. Stop Russian interference, end massive voter suppression, and counter the relentless disinformation from right wing media and you just might have a legitimate Presidential election where the voters prevail.
13
@alprufrock I agree completely; he did not win legitimately; right-wing white voters have been with us for a long time and will continue to be a minority. focus on the majority and our needs..
1
@alprufrock: "the difference was some 77, 000 votes "
Yeah, those might be the folks who saw their health insurance premiums and expenses sky rocket under Obama care. If the NYT had spend less time denying such folks existed we might be in a different position.
2
@Jp
The republicans were the only ones who actually listened to how angry Americans were about the changes to their health insurance under Obama. Die hard Obama supporters just kept telling themselves those other Americans didn't know what was in their best interests or had "junk" policies.
In other words, democrats ignored the discontent and received their mid-term shellacking as a result. To this day this same cohort probably still believes the criticism of Obamacare was just racism at work.
Denial runs very deeply on the left.
2
I admire the progressive ideal of being 100% blind to any differences in culture, skin color, and background, and certainly many people possess this vanguard trait. But the majority -- regardless of their own ethnicity -- understand that we are not all the same, and that we are drawn toward our own racial groups. The alternative to that is loneliness. We are tribal creatures. and there are important evolutionary reasons for that (by the way, don't liberals believe in evolution? -- I thought they did).
11
@Eugene
Color blindness is not a progressive ideal - or at least it shouldn't be. Color blindnesses allows people to believe that in America, racial differences don't matter and hard work alone will achieve success. That blindness then masks the very real obstacles that minorities face, despite working hard to overcome them.
Multiculturalism, on the other hand, allows for differences, in color and culture that celebrates those differences, and is inclusive where all people are valued, including white people.
2
Important point(s), Mr. Edsall, but TMI (too much information)--excessive quotations, insufficient analysis. White identity and resentment are indeed big problems, ones Trump magnified and capitalized on, while we Democrats, seeking to please their many identity-oriented supporters, failed to grasp. Some of the cited parsing studies may help clarify matters. However, in part because Democrats offer packages of particularized concern, if not real remedies, to sympathetic identity- focused voters--women concerned with sexual abuse, blacks with police brutality and job discrimination, recent immigrants focused on their peer group, etc.--they've been unable to present a large, embracing vision of a more harmonious, comfortable America. And without such a vision, plus programs to implement it, uncomfortable whites will feel unappreciated, their concerns denigrated vis-a-vis those with darker skins and more recent arrival.
Thus, for Democrats the problem of angry white racism, or racial bias, remains easier to condemn than deal with. And, Edsall's right here, it's not going away.
10
@Trashandsend I love his deep research and long form journalism. I like ALL the information. That helps me draw my own conclusions, too, and make my own analysis.
4
This analysis reminds me of a personal conclusion I came to during my graduate education in social psychology: there's no dearth of abstract, speculative, cleverly named cognitive or attitudinal constructs erected to explain human behavior. Sociologists seem to make them stock and trade.
So I question whether all the concepts cited here, from "laissez-faire racism" to "white consciousness," have any status other than as statistical factors extracted from survey questionnaire answers or the fruits of endowed chair speculation. Where are the jobs, the money, the "beef"?
I also dissent from the implicit assumption that we're dealing here with attitudes that can be changed, as "social constructs". Any dispassionate look at human history shows that humans are quick and ready to think in terms of in group and out group, whether it's race, gender, origin, religion, class or occupation. It's an evolved trait, buried in the genome, as ready to be wary of Lithuanians as of blacks -- or of feminists.
My other concern is that the nation is going down the toilet of discourse centered on how political parties can win or lose, can seize and hold power. The political parties are parasites of faction (Federalist #10). So long as we look at national welfare through the filthy lens of their corrupt and self serving motives, it will be downhill as far as the far seeing academic can spin his or her tales of concepts without bottom or anchor in reality.
9
Thanks for the article NYT. My concern:
Tribalism+Capitilism=Trump.
Glad some light is being trained on human nature’s worst instincts. And hope we can figure out equitable solutions before our planet implodes.
3
"...it's difficult to convince some whites that that there's something normatively objectionable about identifying with one's racial group and wanting to protect its interests". So, is it also "normatively objectionable" if folks from other racial groups identify with their particular race and want to protect their interests? Or does this "normatively objectional" defect apply only to white folks? Regardless, I do have to say that it's rather amusing to read the jargon-riddled papers of cloistered ivory tower academics arguing about what those Walmart-shopping aliens in America's trailer parks and hollers are really thinking.
40
Exploiting the fear of immigrants taking away jobs from Whites undoubtedly was a major reason for Trump's victory, but this scapegoating is a con, a red herring to distract voters from seeing that by far the main reason for the loss of decent paying manufacturing jobs are not the foreigners coming across our southern border, but the policies that for the past two decades have fostered the profitability of handing those jobs to foreign low wage workers living in countries in the Far East.
More significantly, scapegoating and misdirecting voter anger is how Republicans like Trump con voters into voting against their own best interests, and who then once they have gotten their votes and been elected turn their backs on the voters. While continuing to scapegoat, exploit and misdirect voter anger to keep them from realizing all they are getting is lip service, the charlatans they helped elect work instead for the interests of their wealthy special interests backers: lower their taxes, shift the tax burden onto the rest of us and our children, try to do away with safety nets, affordable health care, social security and medicare that only the very wealthy don't need, etc.
Allowing themselves to conned into electing charlatans, and not realizing they are voting against their own best interests, etc. should be the real fear of Trump's White base, not immigrants.
7
@ELB Actually it's both. Imported labor is for jobs that can't be exported.
3
Seeing as the G.O.P. has exclusively become the Party of Trump, and a racist construct all in its own right, it's hard to argue that "White Identity" hasn't been drawn into that camp and the genie has been let out of the bottle.
But as this march towards to the days of Jim Crow and total white supremacy continues, regardless of what the experts and the studies say -- most, if not all Blacks will tell you, "We aren't going back".
And if this so-called White Identity Politics also isn't going anywhere, there will be a Revolution.
And that's exactly where it's going to start.
1
Moderate, empathetic minority Democratic candidates (many of whom just won in the mid-terms) may be the answer here. Ideally with working class roots. If they identify with the working class, white and otherwise, people will feel they are being heard. And their very candidacy addresses the concern of progressives that we are not tackling racism aggressively enough.
14
@Cal Prof
I am in daily contact with a number of White working men, primarily in construction, who are trump supporters, but they have Black and Hispanic co-workers. When talking during breaks, the White guys talk about health care and working conditions. They believe the Texas state and the federal government care only about white collar workers. The anomaly?: they liked Beto O'Rourke. The point: perhaps working class issues can overcome "white" wedge issues.
6
@jim90.1 Indeed. When the Democratic Party stops playing reverse identity politics ( the working white is abominable) and starts addressing class issues, they will win big.
I always enjoy Edsall's writing on the political dynamics of the white majority. It is still the defining group in American politics. Progressives like myself have great consternation trying to understanding why poor whites and particularly white women, still vote for Republicans and Trump. Clearly there is "white identity" component that is strong, particularly for the middle and working class. This was historically hidden during most of American history, as both parties were "white" parties. Not until the civil rights movement did this identity category begin to emerge in some demographic groups. As minority ranks have grown, and have become integrated into the economy (versus being marginalized), whites have become more aware of their own identity as just another social category, and potentially the need to defend their position. I think the general point from Edsall is a good one, in that Democrats as a party should not be afraid to name whites explicitly as a group and acknowledge them as a group and culture with unique interests and needs. By acknowledging this group and including them in the discussion of policy positions, and how the Democratic platform addresses their needs, they may be able to break through whites adherence to the "anti-liberal" stance. Democrats are not just a pro-minority party, they are a pro-minority and pro-white party. They are not mutually exclusive. But acknowledging whiteness in the debate is important to making progress for Democrats.
14
@Anant Vashi Voting Republican isn't synonymous with voting Trump. I'm a life-long independent whose always voted Democrat. You lose sight of the fact that many Democrats couldn't bear to vote for HRC. Lose that, and you've lost the argument.
FWIW, I could perhaps "afford" to waste my vote living in NYC, but wouldn't compromise my principles. I voted for Evan McMullin.
4
@Factumpactum I think you make an important point. HRC was exploitable given her long history in politics, and she rubbed many people the wrong way. My point is that Republicans have been allowed to paint Democrats as only interested in minorities, and it is not true. HRC was a convenient scapegoat for many who voted for Trump. I do not think Democrats can convert all Republicans, or make up for flawed candidates, but I do think that historically pro-labor, pro-social equity whites can be brought back into the fold if explicitly addressed as an important demographic. It seems Democrats have been afraid to speak to this group directly and openly, which has hurt them.
1
In Psychology there is a field of study called Attribution Theory. Attribution theory research has shown that people tend to attribute the failures of others to their own weaknesses and lack of motivation; but, they attribute their own personal failures to the environmental "roadblocks" preventing them from being successful.
Republicans have used this attribution psychology to inform White People that black and brown people deserve to suffer because their failures are their own fault and not due to the environmental roadblocks they face. In fact, the Republicans have convinced their white supporters that black and brown people "ARE" the roadblocks to their own success.
This political strategy prevents us from addressing the roadblocks that exist for everyone regardless of race and it drives a wedge of resentment between the races.
27
The key to this terrific summary of the state of racism in American politics is the quote in the first paragraph: "For 50 years Republicans have battered the Democratic coalition, wielding the so-called southern strategy — built on racism and overlaid with opposition to immigration — to win control of the White House and one or both chambers of Congress." Sums up the truly evil actions of a party built on false victimization, racial lies, and spite . When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights act in 1964, he understood, and Republicans recognized, that they could stoke the bigotry proudly expressed in the South and latent in the North, and that this would be their path to power. Now it has become the whites-are-us party, led by clowns who can only survive through gerrymandering, voter suppression and outright theft of ballots.
Racism is a universal human failing and so are self-deception and ignorance. While Democrats should not go out of their way to antagonize white voters, nor should they cater to white supremacist fantasies nor white notions of victimization, rather Democrats should focus on lifting the weight of voter suppression and gerrymandering - since Republicans can no longer win most elections fairly.
202
@Mario As a mixed-race person, I hope that racism is not universal. I will concede, however, that it is prevalent.
While I agree with, and can appreciate, such well researched and refined points made by true scholars, everyday life in America seems far less inclined to think so carefully about race in America. Two things:
The three categories of whites seems to politely avoid mention of the flat out, screaming racists among us, those who may hold back when on the job or in a mix, but will erupt when (marching) within a group of like minded people, and this cohort is much admired from a distance by a far larger group.
Anyone any day can take few minutes and sample Fox News and hear the drum beating. Through careful selection of edited news stories followed by people on the air making reinforcing comments, Fox feeds the idea that whites are "outnumbered, disadvantaged, and even oppressed."
8
'Jardina acknowledges that “some scholars are critical of this framework” and “argue that racial resentment entangles conservative principles, like individualism, with racial prejudice.”'
It wasn't any academic who entangled these things. It was reality itself.
3
Where is the vision for a common citizenship of shared values and needs and concerns for a broader swath of Americans?
I'm thinking that the American experiment may be hard to actually make work.
I'm very liberal, Democrat. I'm white. But even I get uncomfortable sometimes with the constant barrage of messages on how "white" people do this or that. And although i support the aims of affirmative action and other set asides to address historical wrongs and present day problems, to pretend this won't lead to resentments is silly.
I don't think there is a solution.
And this research began with the premise, it seems to me, that racism is driving the identity and not exogenous factors. This will advance nothing. At least there is an arbitrary 3 clump group of white people---this kind of stuff by the way will further create "white identity."
If there is a solution, it is doubling down on American and not hyphenated American. The idea of a melting pot, even if partly myth, is a way to bring diverse groups together. I see not other ideas save factionalism and strife.
65
@Bill Your post would indicate that you are not, in fact, very liberal. Indeed, it has the same pattern as "I'm not racist, but..."
It's also disingenuous to imply that as a white (very) liberal Democrat, even you are dismayed by whites being lumped together. Of course you are. That is not exceptional. No one likes it when it happens to them.
It would seem you might be less liberal than you think.
3
@Bill
It might be useful to look at the top half of North America, to a country that calls itself a "mosaic" rather than a melting pot and that values multiculturalism. This helps to mute the tribalism that is inherent in human beings.
3
@Dan F. Ok Dan you seem to be engaging in some stereotyping. I'd be for reparations, for example, for decendents of slavery. I'm just pointing out in my post the obvious psychology and the challenge of holding groups accountable. but whatever.
1
You finish by writing, ". . . these obstacles are not insuperable and that they can be overcome." But what a challenge! For the Democrats to overcome the challenges your article outlines boggles my mind.
You cannot overcome basic insecurity with promises when hate speech packs such a wallop. Where will the Democrats find a charismatic and believable candidate? That's the issue.
5
Contemporary attitudes on the politics of race can be found in 1776 as much as they are present today. Then, the Colonists argued for freedom and the right to representation within England's Parliament. They even used terms like "abject slavery" to describe it, while simultaneously, fighting tooth and nail to defy end the slavery of Africans. That would persist for another hundred years before the Thirteenth Amendment, another century until the end of Jim Crow laws, and right up to the present with the Constitutionality of involuntary servitude. White Identity is at the heart of the American multiple personality disorder and explains Trump's nationalism. Whites have inalienable rights. Non-whites do not, according to the presumptions of the Founders. Taking that away from them has not been easy. They fight tooth and nail. Equality has never been their goal. The freedom to enslave, through slavery, racism, and involuntary servitude is one they continue to meet.
3
@Max & Max The year is 2018. Slavery/involuntary servitude ended in the US in 1865. Slavery has been against the law in the US since 1865.
6
@me: Come on! Surely you are aware that there is a big difference between de jure law and de facto practice? Slavery was legally abolished in 1865, but it continued in various forms (sharecropping, black prison labor, Jim Crow etc) for at least 100 years after that. White/European privilege was written into the American constitution via the 3/5s provision, was explicitly confirmed by Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and continues in various forms to this day. The enraging, (albeit tragic) part is that the privilege has become so deeply rooted in some parts of white American culture that any progress made the visible minorities is easily morphed into a ridiculous sense of white "persecution".
1
@me
Not to contradict you, but the nested clause within the Amendment is contradictory and has been interpreted as restoring the authority of the States and the Federal Government to enslave. The Draft, might be yet another example of the slavery model (involuntary servitude). The case against the Affordable Care Act might be viewed as well as imposing involuntary servitude upon non criminals, however. If so, the Draft, and forced labor by prisoners would also have to change.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
The American Revolution sought to end the Colonies status "abject slaves" to London while simultaneously preserving the slavery of Africans. That motive, of using freedom to deny others their rights is a major part of White American Identity.
1
I’ve been a political activist for nearly 40 years. Knocked on tens of thousands of doors for myself and other Democratic candidates. For the last twenty-five years, I lived in, what charitably can be called “mixed communities” in downtown Springfield and Peoria.
The Harvard study captures my experiences. D.C. Democratic messaging infuriate the white working class by labeling them “racist,” when their feelings mostly represent the studies conclusions … “In short, we find that modern racism questions appear to measure attitudes toward any group, rather than African-Americans alone.”
23
We sow in one season. We reap in another.
4
The social, cultural and racial issues are not apart from the economic issues. The right-wing ultra-rich want to reverse all the progress made by minorities to provide hard-pressed middle and lower class whites with a easily visible population group that is clearly and permanently on the absolute bottom. Again. That way, the crumbs non-rich whites receive will, supposedly, taste sweeter and they will be content being serfs. (Well, it's worked in the South since the country was started.)
It should be obvious from a study of history that there is significant white racism and resentment in this country. Each assault against non-white peoples -- such as the genocide of native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, Jim Crow, lynching, mass incarceration, Japanese internment, sundown towns, exclusionary acts, and on and on -- is accompanied by rationalization and justification for these actions in mainstream media, from political parties, and among whites in general.
Those researchers who cannot see racism as a core feature of white identity are ignoring history.
6
White Americans who feel victimized economically and/or legislatively need only take a look at the “identity” of those they’ve been sending to Washington for two centuries to (supposedly) represent their interests and those who hold sway over the U.S. economy via their seats at the top of corporate towers and in financial houses. It ain’t the person of color stocking shelves at Walmart and getting by paycheck to paycheck who’s controlling things.
Trump’s tapped into an old agrarian strategy of control that’s as old as this country: Wealthy land owner convinces poor dirt farmer that the even more destitute black sharecropper down the road is the source of his ills, and not said wealthy landowner who’s actually fleecing him to the point of indentured servitude.
As for whites fears of becoming a minority, whites have always been a minority—on the planet. Yet, to my knowledge, the only time whites have been subjected to genocidal aggression has been at the hands of other whites—in particular by a certain group of whites who were (and are) acutely attuned to their “white identity”. Go figure.
Alas, we Democrats have been trying to use rational arguments to allay irrational fears and that never works. A different tack is required.
7
I cannot dispute Ms. Jardina's findings without reading her book. That said, Mr. Edsall's description of her work makes it appear that she leaps to big conclusions from small observations and that this is just another effort to paint conservatism as white fear of ascending minorities.
As a Black American I feel that the progressive movement sets Black people up to bear the brunt of mainstream revulsion to progressive policies. The left frequently argues that the browning demographics of our nation will ultimately create a permanent electoral majority to mandate a progressive utopia of anti-capitalism, wealth confiscation and redistribution, mandatory identity politics and political correctness, and destruction of the norms that have made our society successful. In as much as most Americans don't want our country transformed in that manner, Blacks and other minority catch the brunt of the backlash. Because minorities so reflexively flock to Democrats, we are the pawns of progressives whose real agenda actually is antithetical to the interests of the Black Americans most mired in poverty.
Fortunately, as long as progressive intellectuals remain in their echo chamber refusing to believe that there are any non-racial bases for the rejection of their agenda conservatism will remain alive among thinking Americans who believe that free enterprise, liberty and personal accountability are what make America great.
41
@AR Clayboy I applaud your analysis. There is a strain of thought on the Left that their political foes will die out, that demographics will take care of "the problem". This thinking is counter-productive and needs to cease.
8
@AR Clayboy
So are you denying racism exists?
2
The reason Democrats have had a problem with white resentment is because they expect conservatives and “independents” to have a fully functioning empathy gene. They are not moved by compassion for “others”.
Democrats need to talk to them about who they are passionate about – themselves.
You don’t frame arguments on healthcare about how many millions of Americans are going to be covered.
You frame the argument about how the Affordable Care act was designed to slow the cost curve of healthcare by taking the poor away from expensive emergency room care and setting them up with far less expensive primary care.
You talk about how their diabetes is not going to be a reason they are denied healthcare.
Also, if pandemics have taught us anything, it is that everyone’s healthcare is intertwined. Isn’t it wise to get patients into the system so pandemics can be caught quickly and not spread to the conservative’s family?
The way to get conservative and “independent” whites to overlook their resentments is to talk about the issues they care about which are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
And by the way – the Vichy GOP wants to cut all three of those programs.
5
@Mike N Sorry, but Obama and his Democratic appointees tried multiple times to cut SS by changing the COLA formula, and it was Obama who chose Alan Simpson for his senior hostile "catfood commission". Obama's "health care tsar" Emmanuel stated publicly that he considers senior a waste of health care resources, he designed measures called IPAB and MACRA which cut Medicare benefits.
7
If Dems could address working class issues for everyone, it would contribute to breaking hee strangle-hold corporate America has on the Republican party and, currently, the white house. A narrative that effectively makes the case that there is more which unites working people than divides them would constitute a good beginning for a party platform. Next. Candidates would have to do more than mouth such a narrative. Effective legislation and administration would have to follow. A list of common problems could include: job dislocation due to technology and outsourcing; low wages resulting from the former; an opioid epidemic which cuts across all groups; police reform; effective but fair harassment rules; finally, a mutual respect for each other not exacerbated by race-baiters on the right and racist-baiting elites on the left. President Obama practiced such a narrative whose effectiveness was proven in two successful reelection campaigns. HRC did not. Programs which bring opposing groups together to practice mutual listening skills such as, Better Angels (with whom I am not associated), offers a parallel to a coalition building which would help smoother the demagogic fracturing which serves corporate America and harms working - class citizens.
4
You are a gift to us all, Mr. Edsall. I read and parse everything you write. Well done once again.
Tolerance and a willingness to cede ground to Others is and always has been a luxury item. It occurs, when it occurs, in a population which feels buoyantly secure in its place in history and in its economic success now and going forward.
Therefore the arc of history in the US (and other developed Western democracies) could have been predicted. When I was born in the 1950s "We" were a homogeneous world that looked, to the uncritical eye, white and coherent in its needs and outlooks.
That small and powerless minorities scuttled about the fringes of the Center concerned us little. They didn't count. And, of course, things stay the same until they don't. Deeply buried in constructed realities of our own design or ones handed to us, the large, but shrinking centers slumbered on.
Then ensued a series of collisions with reality including frenzied consumerism (requiring ever more non-taxed income to feed it), automation, an accelerated slow-motion stampede to the cities, and the (What?!) rise of formerly invisible non-white nations culminating in the neutron-bomb election of Barack Obama, a deeply moral, intellectual insufficiently white man.
Voila, snap, and the long dream was over. The invulnerable bubble of security popped, and fear rose up. That much of this fear is misdirected or unjustified is irrelevant.
Shame will not reduce this fear. Something else is needed.
2
Nobody wants to become a minority. Especially when they were never asked or consulted about if they wanted to become a minority. This is just basic human nature.
White Identity politics in both Europe and America is not going anywhere. Trump has brought the issue to the forefront. May and Merkel and Macron will soon be up against same forces that promoted the rise of Trump.
The Democrats don't have a clue what they are up against.
28
Well, the author certainly had the stomach for reading more about white voters (of which I am one) that I would ever care to.
From my smaller town here in northwest Georgia, I see the typical "rural white" voter every day. I don't believe they are all racist, but any discussion of race raises a defensive wall immediately. It then deems me the racist because I brought up the issue in the first place. I also see these same folks moving heaven and earth to help their minority neighbors and coworkers when called upon.
So yeah, white identity politics are a minefield for sure.
But the idea that the Republican Party has a vise grip on these voters? Nonsense. The first Democrat to figure out how to advocate a compassionate immigration policy that recognizes the reality of those who are here already and employs a firm but humane process at the border will be the one who neutralizes the issue as well as endorses a sane response that will appeal to many.
(I think Beto may be the go-to guy here; he excels at communicating about complex issues like this.)
4
[Ashley] "Jardina reports that they also stress “the importance of whites working together to change laws that are unfair to whites.” Excuse me? "Laws that are unfair to whites?" Will or can someone explain to me what these laws might be?
When last I checked, there were no voter disenfranchisement laws on the books on any state against whites voting. There were no closing down of polling places on weekends. There were no identification laws on the books as there are in so many red states where a white voter had to prove that he or she was eligible to vote.
The laws in the criminal code are, on their face, applicable to any citizen or corporation who breaks the law. The punishments to not stipulate a harsher sentence for any group of persons. Yet, as we all know, the reality of the criminal code leans heavily toward harshness and incarceration for longer periods of time for non-whites. So, I ask once again, "laws that are unfair to whites?"
Perhaps what the respondents in this second of three groups that seeks to more closely define racial resentment really mean is the preference, called affirmative action, of universities or businesses or governments to tilt the playing field toward non-white applicants to ensure a more level field of opportunity. But Republicans have armored themselves against this and have done so successfully since Ronald Reagan came out against it.
Given America's entrenched racism, the Republicans have a weapon that they will not soon relinquish.
My heritage is eastern European and I spent a lot of time tracing my family tree, traveling and meeting my relatives overseas, learning the language, etc., so in a sense I have a very strong "white" identity. But that identity and pride isn't hooked to a resentment of other ethnicities. I really don't understand why it has to be tribal. I see America's melting pot as our greatest strength. They don't, they see people as tribes and enemies. I'll never buy into that.
9
Liberals have only themselves to blame. At some point after MLK, the notion of a trans-racial society was abandoned while the uncritical young minds of those sitting in race and gender theory classrooms were drawn to the dead end concepts of racial politics and intersectionality.
The tables have now turned, and rural whites are clinging to these same concepts.
My dear reader, how do we ever seek to eliminate racism if all we seem to care about these days is race?
32
@The Libertine "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
He, and racism, are still there, even if one doesn't look.
2
So long as Democrats are perceived as fending for illegal immigration, they will continue to falter at the polls. No one claims to support illegal immigration, yet the politics is such that Democrats are saddled with this perception.
25
The best way to counter white identity politics by the Democratic Party is not to turn it in a female/minority obsessed party.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
For instance don't oppose the republican voter restriction law by saying it is is against blacks/minorities.
Oppose it because it hurts all Americans who don't have enhanced ID, mostly because they are in the lower economic class, many of them white.
15
I appreciate Mr. Edsall's literature review of whiteness; it is good to acknowledge and stay current with this re-birth of white-identity politics -- which had gone underground for a while in polite white society after the Civil Rights laws passed in the sixties.
With that being said, judging from the tenor of many of the books quoted, this re-birth will be a weary diversion away from the primary reason for whiteness now as compared to when it was in vogue to talk about it, identify with it and act upon it (which in America was anytime pre- the Great Society era).
Originally whiteness was a Western European phenomena (mainly England and Germany) imported to America and propped up by three pillars: religion (Protestant's predestination), science (too much quackery to list) and capitalism (economic warfare and genocide in its unregulated form which created tribal privilege). When it suited Colonial landowner-whites' $ interests, they bequeathed whiteness to other European immigrants.
Now whiteness is solely propped up by capitalism as shifts in religious thinking and better science have caused those other poles to collapse as rationalizations for it.
Thus any new book that does not include a serious integration of the way in which 1% white elites use other whites (who are economically less fortunate) to wage a racial war -- so as to fend off a class war -- will continually miss the primary reason why whiteness exists as a reality and ain't going nowhere any time soon.
Maybe an analogy will help express what I learned from this article. Imagine sagacious tomes written about subjects who are on death row across the world. Some are likely innocent. No two cases are alike. Someone acted out of anger, other from revenge, others for unexplained reasons. It does not matter; they are all on death row.
So too whites. Some are racists, others are anxious, some are neither. Most are segregating when possible, think (all nonwhite) immigrants are unworthy and socioeconomic leeches. The deconstruction offered here is useless in crafting political strategy. Dramatic differences among whites exist - for sure - but it does look like a majority of them are too far gone. Location clearly trumps race. College educated white men and women overwhelmingly vote republican - if they don't live on the coasts or away from city center. Virtually every white person south of the Mason Dixon votes republican. What difference does a nuanced understanding of their motivations make?
I can see only one useful implication from the socio-demographic deconstruction; i.e., democrats should lead on streamlining immigration. Currently, regardless of intent, democrats are promoting totally open borders, a corrupted sense of political correctness that will not open anyone to criticism (regardless of how legitimate it might be), and offering to change our society to accommodate anyone. Worse yet, they are arguing for one-shot, free solutions that work a 100%.
3
White identity politics won't go away until the Democrats stop emphasizing identity politics for other groups - minorities, LGBTQ, etc. Even this opinion piece recognizes that "white identifiers" have followed the lead of other identity groups.
I would also argue against the questions used to measure racial resentment. One can agree that lower class blacks (and whites) face additional obstacles while still being opposed to racial preferences that benefit middle and upper class blacks. (How many poor inner-city black youths get into Harvard because of racial preferences?)
15
@J. Waddell
Pushing for equal rights is not "identity politics."
Such a thorough article to consider something that in one respect is ultimately rather simple;
If we constantly beat the drum of identity politics -- which is precisely the Democratic party strategy -- then eventually whites will also abide identity politics. And why wouldn't they?
A deeper inspection suggests;
While the country indeed had a history of pernicious discrimination against blacks; 1. discrimination (if not its effects) has predominantly ended 2. no other minority group suffered the same levels of discrimination (as blacks), yet the Democratic approach is to essentially lump everybody into either 'white' (oppressor) or 'of color' (victim).
Mass immigration compounds the issue, because its 'benefits' largely accrue (at least briefly) to the coastal urban elites. These benefits include 1. a bigger government (with more spending and intervention in people's lives), 2. cheap labor -- especially domestic help and 3. a compliant bloc of voters, worked up by jealousy (tinged by racial resentment) who are willing to support the elite's 'boutique' issues in exchange for the promise of 'wealth and power redistribution'.
Interestingly, the article notes "The results obtained using groups other than blacks are substantively indistinguishable from those measured when blacks are the target..."Which tends to disprove the entire premise that whites are inherently racist. Rather it suggests that they start from a point of rejecting identity politics.
15
Academic hogwash. Focus on people who believe that judgement should be based on ones character NOT their skin color. Political correctness and it’s derivative intersectionality disavows character assessments and rewards or penalizes color among other immutable traits. If slavery were the original sin, political correctness is the second sin.
11
Considering the numerous and disparate ethnicities in the US, not to mention the regional differences, our society is doing REMARKABLY WELL. No other nation has even tried it. Even Canada formally separates the French and English.
The Left’s insistence on constantly taking inventory on how diverse everything is, and suggesting that all whites are guilty and need to step aside, will only hinder further progress
16
Another variable, which was not discussed, is where those angry white folks live. Many midwestern red states are overwhelmingly white. They are resentful of a strawman who doesn't live in their state, and they want a wall in MY state to keep people out of their lily white state. (See Steve King R-Iowa, District 4/94% White)
Manhattan is 48% white and voted overwhelmingly for HRC. as did my AZ county which is 52% white. So white people who live in diverse communities don't seem to have the same resentments as those midwestern whites who are clustered together with their resentment that feel "to some extent, ... the rug is being pulled out from under them — that the benefits they have enjoyed because of their race, their groups’ advantages, and their status atop the racial hierarchy are all in jeopardy."
So it seems that sharing the white privilege of historical America in places where there a few non-whites anyway is the real problem for resentful whites.
4
Here's a question: why are you treating whites differently than everyone else? Ethnic/racial pride is seen as perfectly acceptable within non-whites, but is viewed with alarm in whites.
If someone describes themselves as a "proud Latina," does that necessarily mean they're anti-(everyone else)?
36
@Jon
When you make the rules, you get to decide what's bad and what's acceptable. It's how the left manages to trash Israel while claiming it's not anti-Semitic while attacking anyone who criticizes blacks, women, gays as racist, sexist and homophobic. One set of rules for them and another for everyone else.
I happen to think all these rules are contrived and ill-fitting but find the double standard particularly galling.
3
@Jon
One, I think "white pride" got a bad rap (see: Nazis), and sounds much more threatening/belligerent than, say, "Italian pride" or "Irish pride," which reference specific cultural traditions rather than white supremacy.
Two, what is the "white culture" that you lament not being able to be proud of? I see in the US there is NE culture, southern culture, Rocky Mt culture, the Italian/Irish/Polish/Russian cultures, etc. All distinct, all beautiful. But what is "whiteness" apart from referring to white supremacy, the socially constructed category of "NOT slave" invented to during colonialism to legitimate and codify a political and economic system built on human slavery, which, I hope you can agree, is unsavory to say the least.
The issue, Jon and AACNY, is not that you're being deprived of ANY identity or ANY pride, but that generally speaking folks don't like white supremacy anymore and don't tolerate it ("Oh, the intolerant Left!" I can already hear you saying. You know what else I don't tolerate? Child abuse. Yes, I'm awfully intolerant...).
By trying to conflate white supremacy (with its roots in slavery and the holocaust -- you can't just make history go away because it doesn't fit your agenda) with ANY pride/identity, you may think you're pulling a clever slight of hand but you just look disingenuous, if not secretly racist.
Go ahead, be proud of your Czech or Scottish or whatever culture. But that's not "whiteness." Whiteness is a code for white supremacy.
4
@Tired Extremely well said.
Systemic racism, the engine that propels white privilege, is different from overt racism and must be addressed differently.
White privilege has both social and economic dimensions. The social dimension includes having white leaders and putting white voters first in line to have the potholes repaired and the drug dealers driven from the streets in their neighborhoods. The economic dimension includes being the first to be hired, being the best paid and being the last to be laid off.
The election of Barack Obama put a black leader into the White House. Democrats challenged systemic racism and threatened white privilege in small but significant ways. The overtly racist Republican campaign recaptured the White House in 2016. Some call it white backlash.
Democrats cannot abandon their ideals of justice and equality without confronting systemic racism and white privilege. That why it's not easy to be a Democrat.
113
@OldBoatMan Given that Trump only won thanks to the Electoral College, we might want to challenge that particular institution as racist.
3
@lurch394,
Good luck with that. Next time, everyone knowing what the rules of the election are and have been since the founding, it would be more expeditious to wage a better campaign.
7
@OldBoatMan,
The Republican candidate won the presidency in 2016 because the Democratic candidate waged a terrible campaign. Bernie Sanders would have demolished Trump, but the Democratic party elites barred his road to the nomination. That is the only reason we're talking about this at all.
4
Mr Edsall gives a very nuanced and well researched argument to why white resentment occurs. In my view (I have no research to back this) poor rural whites left behind, compete with for the same "resources" that some colored people do. The resentment comes from this direct competition. As a good example one can look at affirmative action in college entrance.
Although affirmative action may be greatly reduced, the perception that it exists is still very broadly held in many circles. This perception could be the reason for the resentment.
This is an excellent piece, thanks for all the references to recent work on this topic. Regarding the argument that rural white Americans feel they are victims and that it's all about race doesn't match with my personal experience. I'm white and grew up in very poor, right-wing, rural southern Illinois in the 1960s where the only viable job options for non-college-educated folks was coal mining. My dad was a coal miner. And he was a die-hard Democrat and union member who believed in equal opportunity and equal pay, and who sent all his kids to college and grad school (one, to Harvard). He may have been a racist, too, but he didn't espouse those views in front of us. What he did regularly complain about was how he thought Chicago, including its suburbs, got all the benefits of his tax dollars and our region got none. So I definitely think he felt he was a victim of discrimination and that he had to work harder to protect what he had, while living with crumbling infrastructure and other nonmodern conveniences. Of course, no one could ever win an argument with him over this by pointing out that, based on population alone, Chicago would of course receive more of the state's tax funding than rural areas. Even while also noting that his kids all went, with government assistance, to land-grant state institutions in Illinois. I think this victim thing is a lot deeper than race.
9
White people think they should be doing better than they are. And indeed some white are doing better. But the American Dream of upward mobility seems to be blocked off to many whites. The sense that White people are entitled to do better and to get ahead because they are white has met with frustration. The 2016 election has shown that unsavory white superiority had a strong effect on the election results. This is where Trump and Bannon succeeded in reaching this raw nerve with unmistakably racist outreach in the election.
3
@c harris Why do you call Trump and Bannon "racist", but give BLM a pass?
Despite all of the racial jargon in this article and its attempt at showing that most white people harbor secret racial animus towards minorities, the fact is that since the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, minorities have made great progress in their advancement in the American economy and culture. One needs only compare the employment statistics, college entrance admissions and housing records to note the strides that have been made in minority achievement in this country. Although we may not be able to state that there is absolute racial equality in America, we cannot overlook how far we have come since 1970 in making the country truly racially blind.
The corporate media and its social counterparts delight in constantly reminding us of our current racial shortcomings, but rarely mention the strides that have been made in reaching the goal of true racial equality. This may be the result of the fact that formerly discriminated minorities have reached a point where they have obtained the political and social power to achieve that goal.
25
The right wing ploy of making the Democratic Party not merely a party which, as any truly American political party should, includes Black Americans, but which represents the interests of Black Americans to the exclusion of others has been an enormous success. The so-called Southern strategy, which the Republicans initiated in the ferment of the 1960s began a process which evolved into the "identity politics" construct which came to characterize the Democratic Party as almost exclusively preoccupied not only with the interests of Black Americans, but all so-called minority groups and then to expand to women, immigrants, (supposedly only illegal immigrants but a distinction that was often ignored), homosexuals, bisexuals, transgenders, the disabled, the incarcerated, the poor, etc. What has made this phenomenon serve the interests of the right wing even more is that there are some Democrats who are perfectly happy with this being the agenda of the party and others who see identity politics as merely a device to divide and conquer and, more to the point, make the party more a civil rights organization that forgets to go after those forces in our society which block any real progress while gaining and protecting herertofore unheard of hoards of treasure. The one percent can sit in their board rooms or luxury hi-rises and have a good laugh about the noble battle for such as transgender bathroom rights or the struggle to distinguish between a liberal and a progressive.
7
@Vincent Amato I agree except that the Democratic Party's current brand (described in your first sentence) isn't a "right wing ploy", it's the path the party itself has chosen.
7
@Vincent Amato
Identity politics is a feature of the modern Republican party, where cultural identity is very important. The Democratic party on the other hand is a collection of interest groups. Cultural identity explains in large part why Donald Trump can do no wrong. Democrats have no such illusions about their leaders.
Let's not forget from which party the bathroom issue arose, and which group continues to try to make hay with it. The solution to Republican identity politics and its consequent demonization of various groups within the Democratic coalition is not for Democrats to abandon those interests as you suggest, but to continue to further them. They can do this best by responding to right-wing lies in a more succinct and blunt fashion than has been their polite manner in the past, and still remain focused on economic issues.
1
The underlying cause of rural white Americans characterizing themselves as victims, as underserved and feeling displaced in the workforce by immigrants and people who don't look like they do must be addressed. The solution to combating this sort of ignorance is education. Educate these people and the world opens up for them. They would find understanding about other cultures and that they have no need to feel threatened. A well rounded education also gives people the tools to find jobs and to feel comfortable enough in their skin that they develop empathy. Guess it sounds like a fairy tale. It seems that fixing the American education system is even less of a priority than fixing the infrastructure.
9
That’s rather condescending. There’s nothing uneducated about seeing immigrants (particularly illegal ones) as competition - for jobs, government resources, etc, whether not the immigrants “look like them”.
12
Hillary Clinton's campaign was in a sense a test model on how NOT to run a Presidential campaign. Her campaign focused exclusively on women, people of color and public unions in that order. One could argue that a simple better candidate could have pulled it off and more than probably could have against someone like Trump. Regardless, it was a highly risky strategy. There is no reason why a Democratic candidate can't appeal to ALL demographics including white males if the Candidate demonstrates it effectively. Senator Amy Klobuchar states the next Democratic nominee needs to be a candidate that has appeal in the Midwest AND the Coasts. Sen. Klobuchar states the obvious and for all our sakes. Democrats HAVE to win in 2020.
34
Dr. Jardinia’s study explored a fascinating insight into tribalism versus racism, and should be studied further.
From an evolutionary perspective, tribalism was essential to our survival. Most (I hope) would argue that's no longer the case. That said, we don’t shed hardwired survival behaviors simply because they are no longer needed. An analogy: In 2000, Malcom Gladwell wrote an essay for the New Yorker in part on the dangers of “excessive” ovulation (i.e. cancers of the reproductive organs), now that Western women no longer spent the bulk of their reproductive years pregnant or lactating. In short, some scientists are now arguing mother nature’s got it wrong, that ovulation is dangerous, and we must find methods of contraceptive that put young women into daily intermittent menopause to avoid cancer and other illnesses.
That view is simply wrong. We have a biological imperative to survive, reproduce, and ensure our offspring survive to reproductive age. Women’s bodies are perfectly designed to do just that. Nobody informed mother nature to stop with all that ovulation business because women are busy with educations, professions and leadership, and/or want to limit family size. The solution to women's life choices is birth control, not demonizing doctors or biology.
Stop mixing cause and effect. Just because we are wired for a particular behavior, doesn’t mean it doesn’t serve a purpose. The goal is understanding it, then purposefully trying to change it.
8
This is an article I will save and revisit regularly in order to digest all the nuances. But could someone please tell me why, in the rural areas or former manufacturing strongholds, people do not appear to demand solutions from their local and state officials. What was the line from Scrooge - 'time and tide wait for no one'. It's true for most of us.
7
Eric Kaufmann writes, "White majorities are retreating towards places where they are relatively concentrated."
Given the rural-urban divisions that cause so many problems, the concentration of white people in the rural Northeast and Midwest, even in rural California, the crisis that has been building in rural USA affects politics. Rural white people are in trouble and anxiety about that trouble makes them vulnerable to appeals to hate and fear.
I don't think that those white majorities are "retreating" toward those rural redoubts. I think it's more that they have been left behind as people of promise, whatever their color, move toward urban centers for opportunity and a better quality of life. A lot of the left-behinds are older, retired people who still have pensions and are able to exist relatively comfortably, but they are worried about the changes they see. The younger people who remain are too often damaged in some way and unable to engineer changes to their lives. They resort to drugs and live in squalor.
That's the reality and the challenge. Republican ideology can't fix the problem. Market forces will just continue the downward trajectory for rural communities and individual responsibility will continue to diminish the human capital that would be required to effect change.
22
Opposing white identity politics should be non-negotiable for Democrats. Democrats should compromise on other social and economic issues to build a big tent of everyone who opposes white identity politics. While I don’t agree with Macron’s policies, his election campaign where he won a 2-1 victory over Le Pen by focusing on attacking her ethno-nationalism is the model for Democrats to follow.
7
@Aoy Why? Why just oppose white identity politics? If identity politics are odious, then shouldn't they be squashed for everyone?
3
@Jon I agree that all identity politics are odious, but whites are the majority so they are the only ones who can put their identity politics into practice. For example, Trump openly campaigned on banning Muslims from the United States and most Republican primary voters supported this proposal; I doubt someone running on a platform of banning white Christians from the United States would get even 0.1% of the Democratic primary vote. White identity politics is a bigger problem than minority identity politics for the same reason authoritarianism in China is a bigger problem than authoritarianism in Turkmenistan.
This is really a rehash of an older issue, best exemplified by Jerald Podair in his book, The Strike That Changed New York, about the 1968 New York City Teacher's Strike, which pitted African American parents and community leaders against the teachers' union, which at the time was heavily white and Jewish, both historically groups that were the object of discrimination, and both stalwarts of the Democratic Party.
In the 1960s, minority students were falling behind in terms of their education relative white students.
According to Podair, the teachers had succeeded in moving up the socio-economic scale from working class to middle class and exemplified "middle class culture and values". They personified the Protestant work ethic, and they believed that minority students should strive for the same goal. Minority parents and educators felt the teachers were demeaning towards Black culture and the lack of progress on the part of minority students was due to the teachers' focus on their own materialism.
The teachers felt the students' lack of progress was due to the minority families lack of belief in that same Protestant work ethic.
The issue was culture, not racism.
The teachers did not hate the students; rather, the teachers and parents looked for different solutions to the same problem, based on their cultural backgrounds.
(I highly recommend the book; it reads like a novel, and is surprisingly relevant to understand today's politics)
54
@G
The teachers did not hate the students
Have any cites for that? Most white teachers of that era were racist, as were most whites.
The reason shows like "Welcome Back, Kotter" and the "White Shadow" were so popular with blacks in the 70s is because they portrayed the teachers we wanted, not the teachers we had.
3
@G
You nailed something I never see mentioned: It's the cultural differences, stupid. (Not you, obviously!) Besides the obvious physical differences between peoples of different geographic and ethnic origins, what really makes them what they is culture.
And culture's clash. Been saying this for decades. Sometimes cultures are economic. An Ivy League country club culture vs. high school grad drowning in joblessness in Appalachia.
I live in a very small, homogeneous neighborhood. Yeah, white suburbanite. Of 216 homes, there are only two that constantly have unregistered cars, junk trailers and/or metal accumulating in their driveways, messy, no pride in their homes. Yes, minorities, two different ones.
Am I racist because I notice that fact, or do I just dislike the cultures exemplified by their lower economic class lifestyles and they happen to be non-white? Would I notice the same behaviors with a white household?
I sure hope so.
2
The issue with identity politics within the Democratic Party has always been that, as the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Human nature being what it is, there is little chance that our society, or any others, will eradicate prejudice, racism, or fear of the “other.” But many Democratic voices convey — often in strident, uncompromising terms — that nothing less than total acceptance of the idea that any law, regulation, monument or politician that is prejudiced must be stripped away, repealed, or torn down.
If you are searching for a Democrat who voices a much more positive and reasoned position, look to Sherrod Brown. He talks with conviction about opportunity for all, achieved by putting aside differences and focusing on how all boats are lifted by offering solutions to decrease economic inequality. Brown suggests that programs alone will not solve our societal woes, but they can help to bring our society together around what ails all of us: economic insecurity, which he believes is at the heart of our current national angst.
51
@PaulB67
Brown's problem is that his beliefs are not those of the party. The latter is obsessed with equal outcomes, so-called "equity." What? No left handed female midgets -'scuse me, little people - in the NFL? SOMEthing is wrong and must be addressed!
A couple of days after Trump got elected, I went to the monthly county Democratic dinner and meeting. Here we are, looking down the political and cultural black hole of our nation, and who is our speaker? A transgender woman.
I don't want anyone to be discriminated against because of the cards life dealt them. But making an issue out of something by best estimates affects one in 2000 Americans is partially responsible for voters walking over to the Republicans. Who at least pretend to care about their economic, real world, daily problems.
2
@PaulB67 As one of this black Dems who demands we "eradicate racism"--I pointedly refused to vote for Hillary because of her 2008 Presidential Primary antics--you just turned me off of Sherrod Brown, whose politics and rumpled look I have a soft spot for.
The article is quite interesting, but refers to work that is far from scientific. As I read the various quotes and summaries from the various authors, I kept wishing that Mr. Edsall had identified the sources' races.
Nothing with findings that are not reproducible can be considered science. Many "social scientists" today seem to have a POV which they then bolster by finding numbers that agree with that. There are simply too many variables at work in human interactions to make amy social authoritative. As some of the article's source point out, the entanglement between non-racial core beliefs and racial outcomes does not necessarily imply racism.
33
@vineyridge
You speak volumes of truth regarding the difference between the findings of social sciences and hard sciences. But you are from Mississippi and therefore suspect on any matter of race. (That was sarcasm for those who needed sarcasm).
I did google the sources before commenting. I always do so as it gives the reader some context for the source; noting that race of the source is an inconsistent factor.
The race of the source matters more to confirm or surprise the preconceived expectations of the person checking the source. In that respect it's a gut check on just how objective a reader's reaction to the published opinion might be.
More typically, it is the background, the profession, the publications of the source that matter.
But your concluding sentence is spot on.
5
@vineyridge
I'm only posting because I see some bien=pensant already jumped on your comment by linking race and Mississippi.
I not only check race, I also check religion. Prof. Eric Kaufmann is the only one who makes sense here (father Jewish, mother Catholic). He believes in "Whiteshift", i.e. intermarriage between groups the old South Africans considered honorary whites (Japanese), white Latinos, and so on, leading to a continuation of "white" majorities in the US and perhaps in Europe. Of course that fails to explain why Jews in Europe were always kept at a distance even though visually indistinguishable from the locals, unlike, say, gypsies.
Civil war seems more probable than Whiteshift - esp. since Kaufmann appears to have convinced few of his fellow liberals so far. He's never going to convince the right wing.
More concisely, this is pure bunk. In everyday America there is very little of what all of these concocted “studies” purport. Such “identity” studies are a liberal ruse, with little foundation in reality.
2
This simplistic view of white identity is always going to be a fail. We are rural and urban-- north and south, east and west, coastal and inner, young and old, gay and straight, educated and non, upper and lower income, male and female... We do not share a monolithic view about anything, and politics least of all. I believe simplistic analysis of the 2016 election is dangerous. Yes, we see that racism exists and white people on the left need to be doing all they can to dismantle it, but racism, alone does not explain the trump victory. Democrats lost because democrats stayed home after an uninspiring (and at times nauseating) 2016 election. When democrats show they are wiling to fight for their base (and that includes all of us) their base on issues we care about, voters turn out with enthusiasm, as in 2018. We don't need racist white voters in our coalition. We have enough of a base to win every election if we are willing to fight for it.
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@Mel True: Racism alone does not explain Trump's victory. Racism alone explains Trump voters.
The Electoral College explains the victory.
2
@Nirrin Weird, sounds bigoted to consider an entire monolith as racist. So I supported Bernie and was also referred to as a racist for doing so. Do you also consider Bernie supporters racist?
It amazes me that many decent, intelligent Americans need studies, none of them very extensive or of long duration, to tell them things that are obvious. White flight is half a century old. Rural-Urban differences are thousands of years old. Threats to privilege and to status, however meager, provoke the threatened. White Rhodesia, white South Africa, Unionist Northern Ireland, rural France, unemployed white English people make up a short list of the players in the roiling of modern democracy. The US Senate has just passed its first anti-lynching act. Voter suppression has grown across red states. MI and WI seek to lock down the power of rejected officials. And both major political parties are still adapting to the modern world. The GOP chose racism, forcing the Democratic Party to find a new platform. But the demographics keep changing, making the challenges new decade by decade. Fall back on the advice: "To thine own self be true..." And for the Democrats to be true, they must embrace as their goal the simple slogan of "justice for all; economic and social justice." And if they're challenged by the idea of a rural population, they might look at Ireland and the old slogan: "Save the West."
14
The Democrats face a very difficult internal contradiction.
On the one hand they could overcome the emphasis on racial, ethnic and gender identity with a New Deal for the 80% (and this time without the intentional racial discrimination embedded in the housing, education and jobs programs of the 1930s-mid-1960s). Lots of us would welcome that re-focus.
But the Democrats are really run and funded by the 20%. The educated elites, urban and suburban, who form the "meritocracy" which has become a multi-generational aristocracy. Sorted by ability and then mating to combine educational, cultural and wealth advantages. Now in its 3rd adult generation.
And the economic and political power of the 20% depends on their ability to keep the 80% down and controlled. Automation, AI, globalization, 529 plans, home mortgage interest deductions, expensive higher education, SALT deductions to pay for economically-segregated "public" K-12 schools, snob zoning, estate planning to avoid gift and inheritance taxation, high levels of arrests and incarceration of males from the 80%, and rampant credentialism are the tools that protect the 20% and their progeny against, and segregate them from, the 80%.
Any attempt by the Democrats to actually help 80% of the population will require the dismantling of the structures of "meritocratic" segregation on which Democratic donors, organizers, and suburban voters take as their God-given right in their daily lives.
Good luck with that.
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No mere polemic, your argument is bolstered by observed facts. We’ve had no meaningful social legislation since Medicare in 1968. Public support for university education and research has declined. Taxes have become less progressive. Democrats embraced welfare “reform” (dismantlement) and globalization. Where is the Democratic proposal for workers’ rights or protection from loss of income due to national policy? Where is the free university education available in most other industrialized countries?
A lot of Trump’s constituency abandoned the Democratic Party long after the Democratic Party abandoned them. We need federal laws supporting unions — requiring unions — and compensating workers suffering from economic dislocation. We need progressive taxation reflecting the income inequality that is a direct result of globalization. And we need universal healthcare.
Real support for the 80% requires more than lip service. It requires taxes, taxes on the Democratic Donorship. Until they say yes, Trump’s voters will say no.
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@James K. Lowden 'Where is the Democratic proposal for workers’ rights or protection from loss of income due to national policy? '
Lost completely when they decided to support and enable the free flow of illegal labor for their own political gain
23
@Frank,
What's your alternative plan?
*Of course* people who are born to educated and financially sound families have an advantage. However, this is not the same as traditional aristocratic advantage, or racial advantage, or gender advantage.
The normative value of this group is merit, and eschewing prejudice. So, it is much more likely that someone who is not born into this advantaged sub-group, but still has high educational achievement, can find acceptance and "join".
They will not be automatically rejected because of how they look; they will not be prohibited, for example, from marrying into the group, or living where the group lives, which was the previous norm.
It seems obvious that Democratic policies are consistent with spreading meritocratic opportunity, contrary to your somewhat incoherent list.
How does equal pay for women, for example, create discrimination against the "80%"?
Or, say, oversight of local police agencies that discriminate against African-Americans, as established in the Obama administration?
No, as I think some other commenter said, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. It's silly to suggest that in three generations we have established an impenetrable barrier to progress for individuals in the general population. Quite the contrary.
13
It's just blatantly wrong to say: " Democrats have struggled to piece together a coalition strong enough to deliver an Election Day majority " - Dems have outvoted GOP'ers in each of the last 3 presidential elections, and only egregious GOP'er gerrymandering keeps the House in GOP'er hands despite the overwhelming tides of more House Dem votes than GOP'er votes.
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@R. Law You're counting only Presidential elections. But there's this thing called "Midterms".
4
@Nirrin
It's not about the Presidency; its about the Senate. There is currently NO CHANCE that Dems get to 60 in the Senate . . . . . ever. Ok. Say we abolish the filibuster entirely. That would only be fair. Still, unless we add D.C. and P.R. as states, there is no way even to approach a working Democratic Majority powerful enough to survive long enough to sustain real policy change. . . . .
. . . Unless we appeal to the voters many commenting here want to dismiss as racists. That's where we are.
Now you understand Lincoln's politics from 1856-1863!! And why it all fell apart after he died.
5
As long as Democrats, or any progressive-minded group, allow the GOP to define them as "identity-based", they will struggle to gain control, and will only do so when conditions approach the breaking point, as in the midterms. The fact is, the middle and lower classes have far more in common with each other than they do with the economically privileged. This is now an corporatist oligarchy, period. Policies over the last forty years created it. I voted for Obama twice, but under his administration not a single financial industry executive went to prison for outright fraud. The people know that, and it is repulsive. Clinton (Bill) signed bills that damaged the working classes, and the people sense that, and it is repulsive. Comes the GOP with its race-based Southern strategy" and its increasingly unsubtle racial and xenophobic attraction, coupled with the repulsiveness of the Democrats' being seen as corrupt, led to this dangerous juncture. It will require an FDR to successfully articulate a truly progressive approach to once again galvanize the citizens sufficiently to overcome latent racism. Can it be done? Time will tell, but right now I see scant signs that the Democrats get it.
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@Michael I am thinking about this repeated trop re: the Democratic elites, but have difficulty coming to a final conclusion. Probably there isn't one. What does come to mind, and I am not a political scientist by any stretch, is that this theme is really about the nature of Capitalism. The structure we have has nurtured a highly educated, moneyed class dependent on Wall Street investments and big pocket donors. I don't think this has been only venal as this class has contributed mightily to some of the best aspects of this country. Now, a different direction is needed and I haven't seen a cogent analysis of how to get there. Yes, we have policies to help and promote all kinds of beneficial programs. What, exactly, we are supposed to dismantle and build anew? Answers anyone?
8
@Renee Hack I absolutely agree. We, the West, needs to re-think our current economic system. I don't have the answers either. I do know that so far capitalism is the best economic system that has been devised to create wealth. The question is: how do we make it fairer? Where we are now is not sustainable.
We can't have a system where 10-20% of people have most of the wealth and the other 80% struggle just to put food on the table. Affordable housing is now a national crisis. Our homeless rate of families has gone up. The working and middle classes are in economic crisis. If we don't do something soon, our society will pay the price.
28
@Michael I have always found it remarkable that the policy that had the greatest redistribution effect since LBJ's Great Society was the Affordable Care Act. Nothing that Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or the remainder of Barak Obama's administration accomplished came close to helping the bottom 80% (at the expense of the top 20%) more than "Obama-care." But you would never have known that from listening to Barak Obama, anyone else in his administration, the Democratic Congress or from the Clinton Democrats. Rather than proclaiming the redistributionist effects of helping the bottom 80% and its New Deal ancestry, the Democrats ran from that categorization like the plague - terrified that the Republicans would call them Socialists or, with decreasing subtlety, that the Democrats were helping the "minorities". As a life long small government Republican, I supported the ACA (admittedly with some latent reservations) since it was the best way I could see to help the 80% who are getting crushed by Three Horsemen of the Middle Class Economic Apocalypse - globalization, automation/computerization and high levels of immigration (whether lawful or not) that is making maintaining an American standard of living increasing difficult and rare. I see little appetite in the Democrat Party for another FDR and raises the question - Do we really have two Parties of the 20%?
12
So the core of white identity politics is that these people don't hate others because of their specific race or ethnicity. Their position is that they are being short changed because they are white. The masters have become the victims.
In a free market, capitalistic society, each individual is tasked with acquiring the skills necessary to compete and thrive. I'm here pay me doesn't work in that kind of society. With the demise of unskilled labor jobs, just being a body isn't good enough to secure a job anymore.
Acquiring those skills requires education and training infrastructure, along with the personal responsibility to give it your best. As this article states, many oppose government programs because they help nonwhites. They openly reject Democratic policies that help them because they help others.
With an attitude like that, there is no way to help these people. They cannot be reached. They need to join the modern world and accept that they are no longer the masters but have to compete with everyone else. Most of the world is nonwhite.
Global white dominance is in retreat. The good stuff is no longer reserved just for whites. We can help them to compete, but they have to accept that this help will assist others too. Or, they can continue to vote Republican and keep lining the pockets of the rich, while they are tossed a few crumbs.
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@Bruce Rozenblit
I was waiting for someone to make this connection.
I can only add that it is a denial of reality to claim that whites, as a group, are experiencing more disadvantage than other groups experience. It flies in the face of almost all the social science out there regarding job interviewing and hiring, police conduct and social control, and educational funding.
The problem is that in an increasingly competitive economic environment, unskilled people of any background are at a disadvantage. But, because, in the past, there were mechanisms in place to keep non-white people from gaining those skills, and more recently these mechanisms are weakening, if not completely gone, it appears that now whites are being disadvantaged compared to the considerable advantages they had in the 20th century.
I'm not saying that this perception isn't powerful in its own right and useful in analyzing voting behavior, but it needs to be analyzed in light of what can be objectively documented (and I still hold that there is an objective reality that can BE documented).
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@Glenn Ribotsky Interestingly 'whites as a group' is an oxymoron.
2
@Bruce Rozenblit Meritocracy may be inevitable, but it's not an unalloyed good. If each of us has to prove ourselves with each task we perform not only to be competent but to be the best available, it doesn't leave much room for being human.
I see this now in kids competing to get into the best schools.
We'll probably all soon be replaced by machines anyway, I guess.
Also, white dominance may be in retreat, but I'm not sure what we've gained if it's only to be replaced by Asian dominance.
2
I read this article, and the statistics et all, but I still have the same basic thought.
That is, white people know that black people and other minorities have been mistreated by a system/culture/history ..and they have benefitted from this status quo, whether or not they want to admit it.
As attempts are made to address structural racism (and misogyny) they fear they will be treated as they have treated others, plain and simple, despite a history of black people expressing enormous capacity for forgiveness, whether after a church massacre or yet another unjust killing.
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@Ellen
Very true.
There is definitely the perception that minorities "will take revenge" for the long period of having been repressed and denied.
But that of course brings the question of: if you think this is the inevitable consequence of a shift in power dynamics, why support that power dynamic in the first place? It may work for and advantage you temporarily, but if payback is inevitable, shouldn't a system have been set up in which power imbalances are minimized, to preclude in-group/out-group shifts by not having them at all?
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@Ellen
I like the way you roll.
7
@Ellen So can I ask what exactly are you proposing to "address structural racism"? Does this mean passing over people for a job based on their skin color? Are you proposing that we institute a race-based tax? What, exactly, does that entail? I don't understand why people expect white men to basically just throw up their hands and say "Wow we are so horrible, please take things from us". I am an individual, and I have a right to pursue happiness in my life, and I am under no compulsion to right all the wrongs of the past.
9
Not enough attention paid, I think, to how white identity is attached to rural and exurban living.
As several recent NYT articles have revealed, rural life is dying. And the vast majority of rural Americans are white. Rural people of all political persuasions feels that the rug has been pulled out from underneath them, and no one has any solutions.
In my state, where there are few truly rural areas, white identity and resentment thrives in the working class communities where people have long commutes to low paying and/or temporary jobs. Their property taxes are sky high and the quality of the schools is mediocre at best.
Even in Massachusetts, over 25% of the municipalities had a Trump majority in 2016 - all exurban or rural. The Democrats have zero chance winning over these folks, even though these voters have a lot more opportunity in their lives than truly rural folks in West Virginia or similar state.
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@Cousy Because the Dems have 0 chance of winning them over they're that much easier ignore.
This is a thorough article exploring a wide variety of intellectual angles on this phenomenon. I agree with (most) other commentators here that what Dems need to do here is not an either/or approach: not just double-down on a base of minorities & women OR just emphasize outreach to working-class & exurban white men. Rather, Dems must offer a vision of optimism and hope that includes ALL Americans and makes it clear that expanding opportunities helps everyone. And rhetoric makes a difference: I know many white men feel that Dems pay them less attention than they pay minorities & women, contributing to a sense that they're being ignored. Dem political candidates & pundits need to visibly reach out to and support ALL Americans, white & otherwise.
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@Brian A. That is, what Barack Obama did.
Almost every time I talk with one of my fellow working class white friends across the country, I get very similar responses that echo the article; "an insidious illusion, one in which whites claim their group experiences discrimination". Add to that, their inherent distrust, fear and erroneous assumptions about any non white. They use anecdotal information they cherry pick from interactions they have had as the basis for their entire belief and seem to live in a fact free world. What strikes me as most curious is how much the lower working class regardless of race have the same problems, fears, and aspirations across all races. Why the white working class would think they are any different from the minority working class is a puzzle. The service job or assembly line worker regardless of race or geographic location face the same problems, getting by from paycheck to paycheck.
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@tom - Agreed, however, "Why the white working class would think they are any different from the minority working class is a puzzle." I suggest it's because the (R)s have been feeding them a steady diet of racial hatred since Goldwater.
Humans are certainly subject to manipulation after 65 years of racist messaging.
9
@tom
Cherry-picking is a long-standing, bipartisan activity: http://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between-factual-and-opinion-statements-in-the-news/ ("Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News," Pew Ctr, 18 June 2018). The piece does note that those more politically aware (they attempt to define this) and digitally savvy do a bit better, but they note:
" The main portion of the study, which measured the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that a majority of Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses. Far fewer Americans got all five correct, and roughly a quarter got most or all wrong. Even more revealing is that certain Americans do far better at parsing through this content than others. Those with high political awareness, those who are very digitally savvy and those who place high levels of trust in the news media are better able than others to accurately identify news-related statements as factual or opinion."
2
@JSK entirely correct, but my statement was about individual personal interactions with others of a different race, not what they read in the media. I have found if a person has one or two "bad" interactions, they have a much greater probability of stereotyping in any further interactions.
3
As someone who has always lived in a Southern state, I am well aware of racism, racist politics, and the effect that racism has on politics and life. In most elections in large parts of the South, the first question in every election is
probably related to race . Generally, unless there are unusual circumstances, white voters vote for white candidates and black voters vote for black or black-friendly candidates. This has pretty much been the case for a hundred years or more; many people consider the republican party the part of white people and the Democrats the party of non-white people.
The republicans decided to use race in politics when Nixon adopted his Southern strategy. This was in reaction to the Democrats (LBJ) having supported voting rights and civil rights legislation. The "southern strategy" has worked for the republicans, but at first it was talked about in code -- terms like "law and order" , " forced busing". Now The Con Don and his faithful are more open in their use of racial/cultural/religious antagonism.
While the use of racial/cultural/religious antagonism wins elections in the South and some other places, it turns people off in others. In the 2018 election, some people think that The Con Don's views energized his base but turned off many voters in the suburbs (particularly women and the educated). The Democrats were able to decisively win the House even with voter suppression and the gerrymander.
17
@Aubrey A tremendous problem for the Democrats is turnout. There have been many elections in recent years in which the Democrats could have won if their supporters and people who lean progressive has just shown up at the polls. It is amazing that Stacy Abrams came close to winning the Governor's office in Georgia and Andrew Gillum came close in Florida. Both might have been Democratic wins if the elections had been honest/accurate.
In short the Democrats are not going to overcome racism in large parts of the South and West but they can win in other places. And in some states such as Georgia, Texas, etc. the electorate is slowly changing. The Democrats need good candidates and good voter turnout. Like Mr. Edsall, I am optimistic about the country in general.
12
@Aubrey. Democratic politicians need to campaign for all people but their governing should punish their opponents. Republicans are very successful at doing this. Democrats always revert to kumbaya. Republicans are authoritarian and will actually respond to punishment by voting for the punishers.
1
@David S I agree that Democrats think that politics is like going to a meeting of the "League or Women Voters" or the "Good Government Society." They don't seem to realize that to be successful, a candidate needs to get out and hustle for votes and campaign on pocket book, economic, health issues, etc. Things that everyone is interested in.
Many people don't like Nancy Pelosi, but you have to hand it to her. She grew up in Baltimore (where her father and brother ran for Mayor) as a real street politician who knows how to count votes.
Thanks for your comment.
At least Mr. Edsall's comments end on an optimistic note. The Democratic Party may be the experimental lab showing us how to move forward as the nation inevitably becomes more diverse. In addition, the racial (hence socioeconomic) tensions might be eased if we could deal with our escalating economic inequality.
Do polls help us deal with these issues? Are they used by political consultants to polarize and manipulate us? Maybe a bit of both, but one has to be suspicious of methodologies that frame both questions and answers, that require a short-term response to long-term problems.
2
@JSK
Well said. I have been polled, and the forced categorical responses often do not reflect my opinion. When I tell the interviewer that, and ask to give my true opinion, I am told “just pick the best answer.” Then I hang up.
Some pretty interesting compare and contrasts. Not clear we will soon sort out the motivating factors.
But we do know that if we can get more Dems to register and vote, we can at least make the laws nullifying the worst of white identity and privilege even if we don't understand its reasons.
Donate, work for Dems (any Dem is better than any Rep), vote.
6
@larry Exactly what do you mean by "nullifying white identity"? What laws do you want, specifically?
2
Until we acknowledge the reality of race-based differences, we will analyze these race-related social and political issues fruitlessly, with no useful conclusions nor clear understanding. Data-based logical analysis is rendered useless by the need to adhere to the principles of political correctness.
24
@Peter Johnson first you have define "race". Biologically speaking. Go ahead give it a try. We're waiting. We'll hold our breath even.
2
@Nirrin
Races are defined as ancestral lines -- as used for example in 23andme reports, or ancestry.com, or any human genetics lab. The professor at Stanford who did the DNA work for Elizabeth Warren can provide useful and scientifically rigorous ancestral line categories.
@Peter Johnson
What is race? What are race based differences?
The point that needs to be made is that Democrats will not need a large percentage of former Trump voters to both win back the presidency and forge a lasting legislative majority; but they will need some percentage of those voters, especially if they want to retain that legislative majority in non-Presidential years (as well as take back and retain more state houses and state legislatures).
IMHO, Democrats need to deploy a more tough-love progressive stance - one in which help is legitimately available to all who wish to improve their status in life, but that help is not tied to one's membership in any specific ethnic or racial group, but rather to an authentic need coupled to a desire to grow.
The fact is that many (if not most) Americans will need to change careers multiple times in their lifetimes - and thus economic dislocation must be considered a passing stage in one's professional experience rather than the determining event.
The more that Democrats can emphasize a "we're all in this together - but only you can make the difference in your own life" posture, the more that they will make inroads with the all important American swing voter.
25
The problem with nearly all of these discussions is that correlation does not imply causation. We have two things going on at once; economies have been becoming more unequal since the early 1970s and there has been a roughly contemporary international wave of migration during the same period. This makes it very difficult to untangle whether economic inequality or racial animus is driving political results. In fact, there is some evidence that economic inequality can worsen racial bigotry, so they may be intertwined.
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@Keith - Absolutely Keith! For nearly 40 years, we've been trickling-up our nation's wealth to the Needy and Greedy pluto-corporatocracy to the detriment of ordinary citizens. From (R)onald (R)eagan, through Bush the Lesser and now, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, we've pursued policies that make the (R)ich richer and everybody else poorer.
At the same time, the (R)egressives have done everything they can think of to eliminate any and all safety nets that provide us some degree of protection from disease, job loss, economic downturns.
I view this as a marketing problem as much as anything else. The (R)s have successfully created side-issue distractions like race, sexuality, immigration etc. and convinced the ill-informed to vote against their best interests. The (D)isorganized (D)s can't seem to figure out how to present a convincing alternative.
3
@Keith. The bigger migration is on the horizon. Climate change migration will undo us all
1
It may not be so much white identity as English identity, Irish identity, and German identity. It's plain to see in the media, from the TV show "Vikings" to "Lord of the Rings."
The strange thing about America, and it has always been there since the Constitution, is that American identity is to be determined simply by being a citizen here. The American Revolution was a more profound event than most realized; we were set on a cultural path away from that of Europe. To understand American identity requires one to look to the future rather than to the past.
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@Epaminondas The future is Asian. Who is studying hard enough and participating in international math and science competitions? Asian Americans. Chinese and Korean American kids are eating everyone else's lunch. From my area, 7 kids were accepted early action to MIT. 6 are Asian, 1 is 2nd gen European. No white kids; no black kids. Plenty of smart white and black applicants, but they don't take Chinese math on Sundays. They compete in robotics and Model UN, but not math and chemistry. Two of the students admitted don't read any books for fun; just textbooks. White and Black Americans are playing football and instagramming each other while the Asians are tooling night and day. That's our meritocracy.
@Epaminondas Brilliant. Well stated. Just look back 100 years to WW1 to see how ethnomilitarism brought the Old World to its bloody knees. Not here. Not ever. As long as we focus on laws, values and the beacon in the night.
1
Racism is part of the American fabric, and demographic change does provoke fear among many whites and immigrants who would be white. These are questions of status, loss, and perceived rapid change. A similar phenomenon happens in countries that receive many immigrants and feel the very nature of "their" country is being changed and taken from them. Whose country is it? The vote is for the perception that a candidate will help their "them". It seems to me that both on-going education is needed and stronger labor, housing, health care, education, and social programs for all are needed, particularly for all making less than six figure salaries. And a president who works for "all" Americans. E Pluribus Unum anyone?
10
Another terrific column by Edsall. Yes, racism is a crucial driver in American politics and in Trump's election. To me, the lesson for Democrats is clear: the party should base its electoral appeal on the commonalities of economic interest rather than ethnic identity. That means creating proposals to improve economic security and opportunity for working class whites, blacks and Latinos alike -- for everyone in the lower 80 percent of the population. Virtually everyone in non-college America has been hurt by adverse economic trends and policies over the past 30 years. These trends include foreign competition, offshoring American jobs and yes, historically high immigration. The advent of robotics and AI now threatens very large permanent job losses in the foreseeable future -- possibly as many as 50 million jobs. The combination of these large economic shifts increases income inequality, decreases social mobility and threatens democracy itself.
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@Tom You can't fight racism by treating the failures of capitalism. They're 2 different "isms".
And if you don't fight racism you're not going to mobilize the minority vote--as we saw in 2016 and Clinton's lackluster turnout of minority voters. Many minorities doubted--in light of the Clinton Crime Bill and Hill's 2008 Presidential Primary Campaign--that the Clintons seriously cared about ending racial discrimination.
So, no, your proposed strategy is insufficient. The only sufficient-- and just--strategy is mitigating capitalism's shortfalls AND eliminating racism.
I and other minorities will stand for nothing less.
13
@Nirrin
Social research shows how very powerful group identity is. Culture is everything.
I know many Southern Republican Trump supporters who oppose discrimination of African Americans, want them to succeed, and accept attempts at affirmative action and merit-based immigration, but they see no problem with honoring the Southern ideals of the Confederacy (but hate the legacy of slavery). The South is their culture.
They don't hate minorities, they just don't relate to them. They don't understand them. Everyone is experiencing economic difficulty but it's group identity that causes the mistrust. "They" are getting an unfair advantage. Not fair! Illegals should wait in line like everyone else to get in to the USA, not the cheaters who run across the borders.
Hard work, playing by the rules, fitting in, respecting the law, etc. are the values that drive votes more than the economy. Democrats need to speak to the values of voters, not just their pocketbooks.
9
@Tom Exactly right. Add ageism - even well educated people over 50 are being driven from the workplace. The Democrats could form quite a big coalition - if they gave up the slicing and dicing.
10
There seems to be one key point here: for some, current racial and anti-immigrant attitudes are entwined with a sense of unfair personal (or group) loss. For this particular segment it is seemingly not historic, standalone bigotry at work (for many others it is). Injury has simply been given an outlet. The linking of personal dissatisfaction to perceived outsiders is as old as the hills. But this segment can be reached and this connection weakened.
7
One caveat to these academic analyses is that an answer to a survey question or a focus group is not the same thing as day to day life engaging with others shoulder to shoulder at work or in social settings. Big picture demographic analysis is statistical and inferential.
16
Stick to kitchen table economics. Do not make social issues front and center. Mobilize and get the vote out. Does anyone truly believe that Republicans will ever do anything but lot the Treasury for the advantage of the top 2%?
Biden/Obama in 2020.
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@Mark Obama can't run for Vice President, having already served 2 terms as President.
The only way for him to become President again is for the Vice President to resign or die in office. Then the President could appoint Obama to be Vice-President, and then either resign or die in office themself, at which time Obama would become President again for the remainder of that term.
It's actually pretty interesting. The 22nd Amendment bars someone from running for President if they have already served two terms,but it does not bar them from actually BEING President. It also says you can't run for VP if you're ineligible to be elected President, which is why he can't be on a ticket the way you suggest. But there's nothing that says he can't be appointed VP and then succeed to the Presidency. However if that happened, he still wouldn't be able to run for re-election.
4
@Mark Which Obama? Would Barrack be allowed to serve as VP? Could he become President again if Biden was incapacitated? On the other hand, I would vote for and volunteer for Michelle in a heartbeat.
1
@sam: I think he means Michelle Obama. And it's not a bad idea. She -- unlike the current occupant of the white house -- has the virtue of being sane.
Trump's election was largely driven by backlash against the first black President. Nothing more that "let's elect the most obnoxious and incompetent white guy we can come up with, just to put those people back in their place." It would be entirely appropriate for the next President to be of a visible minority as a backlash against that.