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" I'm Done Trying to Empathize With Poor White Clinton Voters.!"
Richard
On 11/25/2016 1:52 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
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I'm Done Trying to Empathize With Poor White Trump Voters
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ite_trump_voters_20161124/
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Posted on Nov 24, 2016
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Donald Trump-themed buttons for sale in Nevada in January. The
president-elect's voting base has been closely scrutinized since his Nov. 8
victory. (Darron Birgenheier / Flickr
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/darronb/23680251633) (CC-BY-SA
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/) )
Since the election of Donald Trump, many news analysts have exhorted the
left to understand the plight of rural white working-class voters who went
for the Republican candidate because their communities were struggling with
poverty and unemployment. A thoughtful and nuanced book by Berkeley-based
academic Arlie Russell Hochschild called "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger
and Mourning on the American Right
(http://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land) " has been widely
touted as a good starting point for liberals to break out of their
ideological bubbles. I read Hochschild's book before the election and
interviewed her on my show (http://www.risingupwithsonali.com) to explore
the reasons why so many poor whites would back a billionaire demagogue.
A Nov. 10 publication
(https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-
class?gig_events=socialize.login) in the Harvard Business Review by
University of California, Hastings law professor Joan C. Williams went
further than Hochschild, taking great pains to lay out the many ways in
which working-class whites take offense politically and explaining that
liberal misunderstanding of those offenses were part of the problem.
According to Williams, concepts like feminism and welfare rub up against the
"manly dignity" of these folks, and we ought to understand that such
perspectives exist.
On Nov. 15, Vox published a lengthy piece by German Lopez
(http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/15/13595508/racism-trump-research-stu
dy) about how to talk to white folks about racism. Lopez valiantly
attempted to offer research about what has worked-a crucial starting point
for activists who want to use evidence-based strategies to make real change.
But we are told the word "racism" is not a good opener for conversations
because "for white Americans [it's] often seen as coded slurs" and "a
justification for lawmakers and other elites to ignore their problems."
I have tried very hard to push down my revulsion against Trump voters after
the election. I read all I could, including the aforementioned publications,
to educate myself on a missing piece of my analysis in order to make sense
of the election. But a pattern has emerged within this thread of analysis:
Nonwhite Americans-the ones with the foreign-sounding names, the ones with
the darker hair and eyes, the ones that have struggled harder than whites to
be recognized for our work and our worth-are being told to be more
understanding of the suffering of poor whites (never mind that "middle-class
and wealthy suburban whites
(https://newrepublic.com/article/138754/blame-trumps-victory-college-educate
d-whites-not-working-class) ," who enjoy even more privilege, voted for him
in huge numbers as well).
But study after study shows that no matter how wealthy or educated you are,
whites fare better than nonwhites, even the poor ones. A longitudinal study
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-white-kids-are-
less-likely-to-go-to-prison-than-rich-black-kids/) that began in 1979 found
that wealthy black kids are disproportionately likelier to be imprisoned
than poor whites. "About 10 percent of affluent black youths in 1985 would
eventually go to prison," while only "2.7 percent of the poorest white young
people" would be incarcerated, it noted. Another study
(https://thinkprogress.org/a-black-college-student-has-the-same-chances-of-g
etting-a-job-as-a-white-high-school-dropout-b7639607fdf1#.vvbh1r74q) based
on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that "African-American
students need to complete two more levels of education to have the same
probability of getting a job as their white peers." In other words, a white
high-school dropout had the same chance of being employed as a black college
graduate.
Another study on discrimination in employment
(http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html) discovered that "Job
applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one
callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes
to get one callback." Yet another study
(http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african-americans-with-
college-degrees-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-unemployed-as-other-graduates/4309
71/) concluded that "African-Americans with college degrees are twice as
likely to be unemployed as other graduates," and that "White men with recent
criminal histories are far more likely to receive calls back than black men
with no criminal record at all."
Even among those blacks who are employed, a study
(http://www.epi.org/publication/black-white-wage-gaps-expand-with-rising-wag
e-inequality/) released just weeks before the election found that,
"relative to the average hourly wages of white men with the same education,
experience, metro status, and region of residence, black men make 22.0
percent less, and black women make 34.2 percent less." Simply being white
even helps you live in better neighborhoods, with one report
(https://s4.ad.brown.edu/Projects/Diversity/Data/Report/report0727.pdf)
finding that "Affluent blacks and Hispanics live in poorer neighborhoods
than whites with working class incomes." One's neighborhood impacts the
quality of life, of schools and education, and more. I could go on and on.
Upon examining this research, are people of color, liberals, city dwellers
and Democrats supposed to empathize with the average Trump voter and their
struggles? Where is the outrage from conservative whites about the systemic
bias facing African-Americans in particular, and people of color at large?
(Are they perhaps busy reading, believing and sharing fake news articles
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fa
ke-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/)
that claim the opposite of these studies? Do they perhaps lack the savvy to
vet such fake news?)
It is precisely these discriminatory factors affecting so many crucial
sectors of society such as education, employment and incarceration that have
fueled so many people to organize for a better nation that works for all
Americans, not just white Americans, poor or rich. From the very beginning
of the nation's formation, white Americans have been statistically likelier
to enjoy success than the rest of us, because American society was designed
to bolster them.
When I hear about all the whining over the plight of poor whites, I'm
reminded of Abigail Fisher, the white student who sued the University of
Texas at Austin because she didn't have good enough grades to be admitted.
To Fisher the fact that she was denied while some nonwhites managed to get
admitted was not a mark of her own failure but of a system that was rigged
against her. Never mind that in the year when Fisher applied, 47 students
who also did not meet the school's academic standards were given
discretionary admission, and of those students, a whopping 42 were white.
Never mind that "whites are over-represented in the nation's 468 most
selective and well-funded colleges," according to a Georgetown University
study
(http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/07/31/report-higher-education-crea
tes-white-racial-privilege) . Fisher's sense of entitlement suffered a
massive blow when she saw people of color succeed where she failed, even
though she wasn't good enough to begin with. Like white Trump voters, Fisher
believed she was the victim in a society that actually privileges people
like her above others.
Now the purported victims of affirmative action are fighting back, and Trump
is their valiant leader. Richard Spencer, a neo-Nazi leader and president of
the innocuous-sounding National Policy Institute laid out this sentiment in
plain language at a prominent event in Washington this week. According to
Spencer
(http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/richard-spencer-speech-
npi/508379/) , "America was until this past generation a white country
designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our
inheritance, and it belongs to us." Afterward Spencer proclaimed, "Hail
Trump, hail our people, hail victory!" while the crowd offered Nazi-style
salutes.
Undoubtedly, most Americans would distance themselves from white nationalist
neo-Nazis like Spencer. But didn't Trump voters express the same opinion as
Spencer through the ballot box? In ignoring the overwhelming evidence, and
the lived experiences of systemic and institutional racism felt by people of
color in the U.S., and putting their own pain above everyone else's, Trump's
supporters are telling us this is their country, their creation, their
inheritance, and that it belongs to them. They are telling us they don't
care if Trump enacts policies that devastate our already precarious
well-being, maybe because that was the idea all along. Trump is leading
these voters to "take their country back" and helping them "make America
great again."
America was created with the idea of whiteness as dominant over indigenous
communities, enslaved black folks, poor and indigent Mexicans, Chinese and
so many other nonwhites. The perceived loss of that dominance is what so
many white Trump supporters fear, rather than recognizing that their skin
color still affords them privileges the rest of us lack. Indeed Spencer, in
an interview, revealed another strain that appears prevalent among the
triumphant millions that voted for Trump when he said, "Fairness has never
been really a great value in my mind. I like greatness and winning and
dominance and beauty. Those are values. Not really fairness." (Excuse me,
Mr. Spencer, but valuing dominance over fairness simply means you're an
asshole.)
If America is about racial domination rather than fairness, then let us come
out and say it openly. Rather than obscuring the reasons for Trump's win
behind the facade of poor white victimization, the billionaire's fans ought
to say to us (just as Spencer is saying in calling for "ethnic cleansing"),
"We don't want the rest of you here." And then the rest of us-progressive
whites included-can retort, "We are going nowhere. Let the fight begin."
Noam Chomsky: Those Who Failed to Recognize Trump as 'Greater Evil' Made a
'Bad Mistake'
Delving Into America's History of Organized Genocide Against Native
Americans
Russians Want to Know: Is Trump 'Pro-Russian'?
How the Republican Party Rules a Nation That Hates It
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