tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/white-working-class-33132/articlesWhite working class – The Conversation2020-10-28T17:28:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472672020-10-28T17:28:27Z2020-10-28T17:28:27ZWho exactly is Trump’s ‘base’? Why white, working-class voters could be key to the US election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366033/original/file-20201028-13-szi9jn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Evan Vucci/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>US President Donald Trump’s path to re-election requires maximising the support of his oft-mentioned “base” — white voters without college degrees — in the key battleground states where he eked out victory in 2016. </p>
<p>This is because Trump’s support among other voters has slipped. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/10/09/the-trump-biden-presidential-contest/">According to the Pew Research Centre</a>, he still holds a 60-34% lead over Democratic challenger Joe Biden among whites without a college degree, but Biden has substantial leads among college-educated white voters, as well as Black, Hispanic and Asian voters. </p>
<p>As a result, Trump has a very narrow path to victory that will require high voter turnout by so-called “working-class whites” in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan. <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/">Based on the current polls</a>, this path is increasingly unlikely. </p>
<p>But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/featured/sns-nyt-can-trump-squeeze-more-from-pennsylvania-20201012-qcj3wsun45bbpawuhuterpj4ba-story.html">According to Dave Wasserman</a>, an elections analyst from the Cook Political Report, Trump’s base is key. </p>
<p>In Pennsylvania, for instance, he estimates there are about 2.4 million non-college-educated white voters who did not cast ballots in 2016, but could do so this year. As Wasserman notes,</p>
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<p>the potential for Trump to crank up the intensity of turnout among non-college whites is quite high.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366045/original/file-20201028-19-c5twq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366045/original/file-20201028-19-c5twq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366045/original/file-20201028-19-c5twq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366045/original/file-20201028-19-c5twq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366045/original/file-20201028-19-c5twq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366045/original/file-20201028-19-c5twq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366045/original/file-20201028-19-c5twq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Trump has spent much time campaigning in Pennsylvania, a state seen as key to his chance of re-election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gene J. Puskar/AP</span></span>
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<h2>Who are ‘white working-class’ voters?</h2>
<p>Whites without a college degree in America are often referred to as the “white working-class”. In truth, this label is used rather loosely. </p>
<p>The “working class” has long been thought of as “blue-collar” factory, trades and construction workers. </p>
<p>But according to US political scientists, the working class today is <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/white-working-class-and-the-2016-election/CAA760DEB0CC41BA02ADF2131EFA508F">defined</a> by both education and income levels:</p>
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<p>those who do not hold a college degree and report annual household incomes below the median, as reported by the Census Bureau (in 2016, for instance, the median annual household income was nearly US$60,000).</p>
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<p>Under this definition, small business owners and various “white collar” workers (those in service jobs) and “pink collar” (jobs traditionally held by women such as caregiving roles) are also considered part of the American working class. </p>
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<p>
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Read more:
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<h2>Working-class voters have long held the key</h2>
<p>Working-class voters have long played an outsized role in US elections, despite the fact they <a href="https://lithub.com/populism-nationalism-socialism-charting-the-political-moods-of-our-time/">have been a minority</a> among wage and salary earners since the 1920s.</p>
<p>Working-class voters, particularly those who belonged to unions, were once steadfast supporters of candidates on the political left. These days, however, the left feels largely abandoned by these voters, while the right is increasingly dependent on them to win elections. </p>
<p>As working-class voters have drifted to the right, the labels used to describe them have changed. In the 1970s, they were called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/nyregion/hard-hat-riot.html">hard hats</a>”. By the 1980s, they were known as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Democrat">Reagan Democrats</a>”, and in the early 2000s, “<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/among-nascar-dads/">NASCAR Dads</a>”.</p>
<p>In the UK, they have been known as “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/588640">working-class Tories</a>”, and in Australia, “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/federal-election-2016-what-happened-to-john-howards-battlers-20160705-gpywp2.html">Howard’s battlers</a>”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366047/original/file-20201028-17-5i6v33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366047/original/file-20201028-17-5i6v33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366047/original/file-20201028-17-5i6v33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366047/original/file-20201028-17-5i6v33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366047/original/file-20201028-17-5i6v33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366047/original/file-20201028-17-5i6v33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366047/original/file-20201028-17-5i6v33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A Trump rally in small-town Wisconsin this month.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/EPA</span></span>
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<p>The story of working-class whites abandoning left-wing parties makes for catchy journalistic copy. Each election cycle, there are numerous articles and television vox pops featuring machinists or miners who have moved rightwards, feeling disillusioned with the parties of their parents. </p>
<p>Books like <a href="https://movies2.nytimes.com/books/98/06/14/nnp/freedman-inheritance.html">The Inheritance</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-lives-of-poor-white-people">Hillbilly Elegy</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning/dp/1536684937">Strangers in Their Own Land</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X">What’s the Matter with Kansas?</a> have also tried to capture the essence of this changing working class and why these voters have drifted to the right — and at times, voted against their own economic interest.</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-could-win-again-without-cheating-144539">Trump could win again (without cheating)</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Working-class voters are more complex than we think</h2>
<p>The only problem with this narrative is that it is all too neat. In reality, the voting behaviours of the white working class is more complex.</p>
<p>Take for instance Trump’s supporters in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton. As the <a href="https://quillette.com/2018/01/01/serwer-error-misunderstanding-trump-voters/">data below show</a>, Trump didn’t earn his largest share of votes among the poorest whites in America, but among those in the “middle class” (that catch-all label used to describe everyone between the rich and those living under the poverty line). </p>
<p>More than 10% of white voters with incomes under $30,000 actually voted for a candidate other than Trump or Clinton.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366025/original/file-20201028-15-ekuvxu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366025/original/file-20201028-15-ekuvxu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366025/original/file-20201028-15-ekuvxu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366025/original/file-20201028-15-ekuvxu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366025/original/file-20201028-15-ekuvxu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366025/original/file-20201028-15-ekuvxu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366025/original/file-20201028-15-ekuvxu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">American National Election Studies</span></span>
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<hr>
<p>So, while Trump won large numbers of white working-class votes compared to Clinton, experts say it <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/16/economic-marginalization-reality-check/">isn’t clear he motivated more of these voters</a> to the polls.</p>
<p>Other factors may also have come into play in 2016 that weren’t related to either income or education. </p>
<p>As this <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/">chart shows</a>, non-college-educated voters split their voting preferences evenly between Democrats and Republicans as recently as 1996.</p>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366031/original/file-20201028-19-49r2g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366031/original/file-20201028-19-49r2g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366031/original/file-20201028-19-49r2g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366031/original/file-20201028-19-49r2g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366031/original/file-20201028-19-49r2g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366031/original/file-20201028-19-49r2g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366031/original/file-20201028-19-49r2g3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pew Research Center</span></span>
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<p>An accelerated shift to the right began then, resulting in a remarkable 39% margin of support for Trump over Clinton in 2016. For many scholars, this “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-fresh-look-back-at-2016-finds-america-with-an-identity-crisis/2018/09/15/0ac62364-b8f0-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html">diploma divide</a>” was the single most important explanation why Trump won. </p>
<p>But many <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/9/15592634/trump-clinton-racism-economy-prri-survey">commentators</a> have also pointed to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/">racism</a> and xenophobia to help explain Trump’s rise among these white working-class voters.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Identity-Crisis-Presidential-Campaign-Meaning/dp/0691174199">Identity Crisis</a>, a widely praised book on the 2016 election, Trump successfully “racialised economics” by promoting to white Americans </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the belief that undeserving groups are getting ahead while your group is left behind. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Biden shows empathy with working-class voters, but few new ideas</h2>
<p>Have the Democrats tried to woo back these white working-class voters in recent elections?</p>
<p>In recent elections, former President Barack Obama, Clinton and Biden have focused much of their economic rhetoric on industrial and construction employment, even though these sectors only make up <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/270072/distribution-of-the-workforce-across-economic-sectors-in-the-united-states/#:%7E:text=The%20statistic%20shows%20the%20distribution,per%20capita%20for%20more%20information">20% of all jobs</a> (the rest are in the services sector).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366050/original/file-20201028-15-17pg2kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366050/original/file-20201028-15-17pg2kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366050/original/file-20201028-15-17pg2kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366050/original/file-20201028-15-17pg2kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366050/original/file-20201028-15-17pg2kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366050/original/file-20201028-15-17pg2kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366050/original/file-20201028-15-17pg2kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Biden speaking to union members in Pennsylvania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Harnik/AP</span></span>
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<p>Most politicians lack the language to explain the reality that most jobs are service jobs. Because of this, it is hardly surprising they also lack good ideas to address unequal wages and poor working conditions within the services sector.</p>
<p>Policies that address economic inequality are the best way to guard against the white working class being drawn to populist figures like Trump. Biden has not offered these voters much more than Clinton did, with the possible exception of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/joe-biden-reaches-out-to-working-class-calls-donald-trump-an-elitist-20200922-p55xxx.html">more empathy</a>.</p>
<p>But Biden may not need to win over working-class white voters to defeat Trump. With minority voter turnout expected to be high, and fewer white women and elderly voters expected to support Trump, the president’s hopes of winning on a shrinking base are looking ever more remote.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-has-changed-america-by-making-everything-about-politics-and-politics-all-about-himself-146839">Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself</a>
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</em>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147267/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brendon O'Connor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump has a very narrow path to victory that will require high turnout by so-called “working-class whites” in key states. This group, however, is not so easily defined.Brendon O'Connor, Associate Professor in American Politics at the United States Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1200682019-07-29T12:24:48Z2019-07-29T12:24:48ZWhy Trump’s stoking of white racial resentment is effective – but makes all working-class Americans worse off<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285554/original/file-20190724-110166-aahcot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump's largest base of support comes from white men. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump/ebeac91b95f34e3492554fef0b061eb7/12/0">AP Photo/Gerry Broome</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many white men <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-americans-think-theyre-discriminated-against">say</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/28/17913774/brett-kavanaugh-lindsey-graham-christine-ford-backlash">they feel</a> <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/white-men-react-poorly-women-and-minorities-power-positions-study-finds-839862">threatened</a> by the increasing presence and success of minorities in the workplace.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.umass.edu/issr/eric_hoyt">social</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6IIFqigAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scientists</a>, we wondered if there is any evidence to support this perceived economic threat, a perception that can provide fertile ground for current rounds of racist and xenophobic political messaging. </p>
<p>Our work at the <a href="https://www.umass.edu/employmentequity/home">Center for Employment Equity</a> at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, involves using Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data to explore workplace discrimination and diversity in states and cities across the U.S. Our aim is to discover and promote more equitable workplaces. </p>
<p>In our most recent report, called “<a href="https://www.umass.edu/employmentequity/diversity-reports">Race, States and the Mixed Fate of White Men</a>,” we examined the connection between minority populations and the job prospects of white men in private-sector companies. </p>
<h2>White male privilege</h2>
<p>Social scientists generally agree on three research findings about white men in the U.S. and the notion that they are losing their unearned but expected racial privileges.</p>
<p>First, white men at every education level are more likely than women and non-Asian minorities to get access to <a href="https://www.epi.org/data/#?subject=wage-education">higher-wage jobs</a>.</p>
<p>Second, while wages of average working-class people in the U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx043">have stagnated in recent decades</a>, and economic insecurity has grown, earnings for middle- and upper-class jobs – which are dominated by educated whites – have soared. </p>
<p>A third and more recent finding is that working-class white men are the group that is most <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/explaining-the-trump-vote-the-effect-of-racist-resentment-and-antiimmigrant-sentiments/537A8ABA46783791BFF4E2E36B90C0BE/core-reader">racially resentful and most opposed to further immigration</a>. This finding is based on analyses of survey data of the whole U.S. population examining both voting behavior and attitudes toward blacks and immigrants, zeroing in on President Donald Trump’s core supporters and the content of his political messaging to them.</p>
<p>This resentment probably explains why working-class whites, particularly men, are <a href="https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-v5-10-234/">so receptive</a> to President Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist messages – and why <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12315">he targets them</a>.</p>
<p>We suspected that the reception to racist and xenophobic messages might be a reflection of a growing competition between working-class whites and minority men for increasingly insecure, low-wage jobs. </p>
<h2>White men dominate the executive suite</h2>
<p>In our study, we compared different racial groups’ share of specific occupations with their percentage of their state’s workforce. In other words, we wanted to see how over- or underrepresented white, black and Hispanic men were in various jobs. </p>
<p>In general, we found that while some white men are prospering in executive and managerial roles, there is another group of white men with very different employment experiences.</p>
<p>At the top end of the labor market, our data showed that in every state, white men were overrepresented in executive and managerial jobs. But this white male privilege varied substantially by state. White men got even more of the top jobs in states with larger minority populations.</p>
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<p>Texas, where minorities make up a third of the labor force and white men slightly more at 37%, was the most extreme. White men held 85% of private-sector executive jobs, making them overrepresented in top jobs by 138%. </p>
<p>Other states with sizable minority populations, such as California, New Mexico and Mississippi, similarly showed white men are especially advantaged in their control of the executive suite.</p>
<p>We found the same, if less extreme, pattern of white male advantage in private-sector management jobs.</p>
<h2>Working-class competition</h2>
<p>The pattern shifts dramatically, however, when we look at lower-paid working-class jobs. </p>
<p>These include machine and factory operatives, manual laborers and service occupations. Such jobs typically require high school degrees or less and tend to pay low wages. We find that more than half of these jobs pay below the living wage target of US$15 per hour.</p>
<p>In every state, black men were overrepresented as machine operatives, manual laborers and service workers. Hispanic men were overrepresented in machine operative and manual labor jobs in every state except Hawaii. </p>
<p>Working-class overrepresentation for minority men tends to be higher in states with <a href="https://www.governing.com/topics/urban/gov-majority-minority-populations-in-states.html">small minority populations</a>, such as Vermont, Maine and North Dakota.</p>
<p>But we wanted to get more directly at the degree to which working-class white men are competing for the same low-wage jobs as minority men. So we compared the number of black, Hispanic, Native American and native Hawaiian men performing operative, laborer or service jobs versus white men. In all states except Hawaii, these minorities are mostly black or Hispanic or both. </p>
<p>We found that in almost all states, working-class white men were competing for jobs with relatively large groups of minority men. And in 20, there were more minority men in these working-class jobs than white men. This pattern was most extreme in Washington, D.C. and California, where there were more than three minority men in these jobs for every white man.</p>
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<h2>Improving working-class lives</h2>
<p>This does not mean that working-class whites have lost their entire racial advantage, but rather that it is more tenuous and exists in a context of wage stagnation and increased insecurity. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/american-non-dilemma">Research</a> shows that many whites attribute being stuck in low-wage, insecure jobs to competition with minorities but are unaware of the larger trends of wage stagnation and growing insecurity for all working-class jobs.</p>
<p>So it is perhaps not surprising that this combination of visible competition and misplaced blame creates fertile conditions for stoking racial and immigrant resentment, particularly at a time of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx043">stagnating incomes</a>, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.95">falling unionization</a> and a <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/000312240907400101?casa_token=APOLn-6H_kYAAAAA:Ky6iXAV-mH5oYuZoxn_aL26VAHhKdtN46gA0GtvV6MJujA35vfeX19aZsbNxvdF5JDdhB-Q4zjz46w">growing lack of job security</a> – problems that have done the most harm to the working class, regardless of race or national origin. </p>
<p>Perhaps it is politically simpler to encourage workers to see each other as rivals, but <a href="https://www.epi.org/research">policy solutions</a> that will actually make a difference need to focus on shared economic security – rather than blame games. </p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald Tomaskovic-Devey is the director of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Center for Employment Equity, which receives funding from the W.K Kellogg Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Hoyt is the research director of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Center for Employment Equity, which receives funding from the W.K Kellogg Foundation.</span></em></p>Two social scientists investigate why working-class white men are particularly receptive to President Trump’s racist and anti-immigrant messages.Donald T. Tomaskovic-Devey, Professor of Sociology; Director, Center for Employment Equity, UMass AmherstEric Hoyt, Research Director of the Center for Employment Equity, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/890482017-12-13T11:22:37Z2017-12-13T11:22:37Z3 myths about the poor that Republicans are using to support slashing US safety net<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198817/original/file-20171212-9451-1baw0sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sen. Chuck Grassley recently seemed to suggest some poor people spend all their money on "booze or women or movies."</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Republicans continue to use long-debunked myths about the poor as they defend <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2017/12/02/economists-say-the-trump-tax-plan-will-have-disastrous-consequences/#207ea56c4209">lower taxes for the rich</a> and <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/363642-ryan-pledges-entitlement-reform-in-2018">deep cuts to the social safety net</a> to pay for them. In so doing, they are essentially <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/12/04/two-ugly-quotes-from-republicans-reveal-the-truth-about-their-tax-plan/?utm_term=.07ba3f41345c">expressing scorn</a> for working class and low-income Americans. </p>
<p>Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/04/grassley-explains-why-people-dont-invest-booze-or-women-or-movies/">justified</a> reducing the number of wealthy families exposed to the estate tax as a way to recognize “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”</p>
<p>Similarly, Sen. Orrin Hatch <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/dec/05/context-orrin-hatchs-comments-about-chip-people-wh/">raised concerns</a> about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.</p>
<p>These statements, the likes of which I expect we’ll all hear more of in coming months, reinforce three harmful narratives about low-income Americans: People who receive benefits don’t work, they don’t deserve help and the money spent on the social safety net is a waste of money. </p>
<p>Based on my <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423540">research</a> and 20 years of experience as a clinical law professor representing low-income clients, I know that these statements are false and only serve to reinforce misconceptions about working class and poor Americans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198811/original/file-20171212-9451-1gx6e1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198811/original/file-20171212-9451-1gx6e1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198811/original/file-20171212-9451-1gx6e1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198811/original/file-20171212-9451-1gx6e1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198811/original/file-20171212-9451-1gx6e1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198811/original/file-20171212-9451-1gx6e1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198811/original/file-20171212-9451-1gx6e1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Food participants get an average of $125 a month, hardly enough to feed a family without earning money as well.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Most welfare recipients are makers not takers</h2>
<p>The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are “takers” rather than “makers,” is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.</p>
<p>Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/people-food-stamps-snap-decline-participation-640500">42 million Americans</a>. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-introduction-to-the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap">are working</a>. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal – hardly enough to justify quitting a job.</p>
<p>As for Medicaid, nearly <a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/understanding-the-intersection-of-medicaid-and-work/">80 percent of adults</a> receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.</p>
<p>In early December, House Speaker <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/06/politics/paul-ryan-entitlement-reform/index.html">Paul Ryan said</a>, “We have a welfare system that’s trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.” </p>
<p>Not true. Welfare – officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – has <a href="http://www.aphsa.org/content/dam/NASTA/PDF/CRS-RPT_R44751_2017-02-01.pdf">required work</a> as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit/do-i-qualify-for-earned-income-tax-credit-eitc">earned income tax credit</a>, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.</p>
<p>Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among <a href="http://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/">the most productive in the world</a>, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen <a href="http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/republican-tax-plan-slams-workers-and-job-creators-in-favor-of-the-rich-and-inherited-wealth/">no income growth</a>. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has <a href="http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/">grown almost six times</a> faster than wages. </p>
<p>In addition to wage stagnation, most Americans are spending more than <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm">one-third of their income</a> on housing, which is increasingly unaffordable. There are 11 million renter households paying more than <a href="http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/harvard_jchs_state_of_the_nations_housing_2017_chap1.pdf.">half their income</a> on housing. And there is <a href="http://nlihc.org/oor">no county</a> in America where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom home. Still, only <a href="http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/OOR_2017.pdf">1 in 4</a> eligible households receive any form of government housing assistance.</p>
<p>To be sure, there are recipients of public benefits who do not work. They are primarily children, the disabled and the elderly – in other words, <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/who-really-receives-welfare-4126592">people who cannot or should not work.</a> These groups constitute the majority of public benefits recipients.</p>
<p>Society should support these people out of basic decency, but there are self-interested reasons as well. To begin with, all working adults have been children, will someday be old and, at any time, might face calamities that take them out of the workforce. The safety net exists to rescue people during these vulnerable periods. Indeed, most people who receive public benefits leave the programs within <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-97.html">three years</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, many public benefits pay for themselves over time, as healthier and financially secure people are more productive and contribute to the overall economy. For example, <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-introduction-to-the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap">every dollar in SNAP spending</a> is estimated to generate more than $1.70 in economic activity. </p>
<p>Similarly, Medicaid benefits are associated with enhancing <a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/understanding-the-intersection-of-medicaid-and-work/">work</a> opportunities. The <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/eitc-and-child-tax-credit-promote-work-reduce-poverty-and-support-childrens">earned income tax credit</a> contributes to work rates, improves the health of recipient families and has long-term educational and earnings benefits for children. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199016/original/file-20171213-27588-15tfh1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199016/original/file-20171213-27588-15tfh1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199016/original/file-20171213-27588-15tfh1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199016/original/file-20171213-27588-15tfh1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199016/original/file-20171213-27588-15tfh1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199016/original/file-20171213-27588-15tfh1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199016/original/file-20171213-27588-15tfh1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The current federal minimum wage is hardly enough to feed a family.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What the needy deserve</h2>
<p>The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand. </p>
<p>This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out. </p>
<p>Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile – the poorest 20 percent – will stay there. And the same “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/06/striking-new-research-on-inequality-whatever-you-thought-its-worse/?utm_term=.074d818b5336">stickiness</a>” exists in the top quintile. </p>
<p>As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/the-mobility-myth">quintile</a> in their lifetimes.</p>
<p>The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesn’t accomplish its goals. </p>
<p>In fact, poverty rates would <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/blog/safety-net-cut-poverty-nearly-in-half-last-year;">double</a> without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/chart-book-accomplishments-of-the-safety-net">38 million</a> people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.</p>
<h2>The facts of welfare</h2>
<p>In trotting out these myths, Republican lawmakers are also tapping into long-standing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/08/republicans-are-bringing-welfare-queen-politics-to-the-tax-cut-fight/?utm_term=.8d360a5ce417">racist stereotypes</a> about who receives support. For instance, the “<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423540">welfare queen</a>” – a code word for an African-American woman with too many children who refuses to work – is a fiction.</p>
<p>The facts of welfare are that most recipients are white, families that receive aid are smaller on average than other families and the program requires recipients to work and is tiny in relation to the overall federal budget – <a href="http://econofact.org/welfare-and-the-federal-budget">about half a percent</a>. Yet, the welfare queen is an archetype invoked to generate public antagonism against the safety net. Expect her to make frequent appearances in the months to come.</p>
<p>Americans should demand fact-based justifications for tax and entitlement reforms. It is time to retire the welfare queen and related tropes that paint needy Americans as undeserving.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michele Gilman is affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and the Women's Law Center of Maryland.
</span></em></p>As the GOP prepares to slash spending to pay for tax cuts, lawmakers have been bringing up claims about the poor that don’t stand up to scrutiny.Michele Gilman, Venable Professor of Law, University of BaltimoreLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/689612017-01-09T01:32:56Z2017-01-09T01:32:56ZChicago 1969: When Black Panthers aligned with Confederate-flag-wielding, working-class whites<p><em>Editor’s note: This article was published on Jan. 8, 2017.</em></p>
<p>In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won the white vote across all demographics except for college-educated white women. He did especially well among working class white voters: <a href="http://college.usatoday.com/2016/11/09/how-we-voted-by-age-education-race-and-sexual-orientation/">67 percent of whites without a college degree voted for him</a>. </p>
<p>Some post-election analysis marveled at how the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-the-white-working-class-votes-against-itself/2016/12/22/3aa65c04-c88b-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html">white working class could vote against its own interests</a> by supporting a billionaire businessman who is likely to support policies that cut taxes for the rich and weaken the country’s social safety net. Since the New Deal, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/28/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-voters-republicans-democrats">the Democratic Party has been seen as the party of working people</a>, while Republicans were considered the party of the elites. Donald Trump was able to flip this narrative to his advantage. Election 2016 balkanized issues and made it seem impossible to work on racism, sexism, poverty and economic issues all at once. A core question moving forward for social justice advocates and the Democratic Party <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/how-democrats-rebuild-2016-214533">is how they can move beyond identity politics and attract working-class voters of all races</a>, building stronger coalitions among disparate groups. </p>
<p>One place to look for inspiration and instruction might be 1960s social movements that understood the power of alliances across identities and issues. During this period, a radical coalition formed that might seem impossible today: A group of migrant southerners and working-class white activists called the Young Patriots joined forces with the Black Panthers in Chicago to fight systemic class oppression. </p>
<p>So how did this alliance form? And how can its lessons be applied to today’s political moment?</p>
<h2>An unlikely alliance</h2>
<p>In the post-civil rights era, a militant Black Power movement emerged, with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/27-important-facts-everyone-should-know-about-the-black-panthers_us_56c4d853e4b08ffac1276462">forming in 1966</a>. Inspired by Malcolm X and other international black thought leaders, the group embraced armed struggle as a potential tool against organized racial oppression – a radical break from the philosophy of nonviolent protest. A large faction of the group developed in Chicago, where one of the party leaders was a young man named <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-panther-fred-hampton_us_55e8929ce4b0aec9f3569514">Fred Hampton</a>. </p>
<p>Chicago in the 1960s was a brutal place for poor people. Black, brown and white people all dealt with poverty, unemployment, police violence, substandard housing, inadequate schools and a lack of social services. Ethnic and racial groups each <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-young-patriots-organization-hideout-jon-langford-ent-0209-20160208-column.html">created their own social service and activist networks</a> to combat every kind of oppression. </p>
<p>One was the Young Patriot Organization (YPO), which was based in <a href="http://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-post/2016/09/24/Revolutionary-Hillbilly-An-Interview-with-Hy-Thurman-of-the-Young-Patriots-Organization">Hillbilly Harlem</a>, an uptown neighborhood of Chicago populated by displaced white southerners. Many YPO members were racist, and they flaunted controversial symbols associated with southern pride, such as the Confederate flag. But like blacks and Latinos, the white Young Patriots and their families experienced discrimination in Chicago. In their case, it was because they were poor and from the South.</p>
<p>In his short time as a Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton wanted to advance the group’s goals by forming a “Rainbow Coalition” of working class and poor people of all races. </p>
<p>Former members of the Chicago Panthers and YPO tell different versions of the same story of how the groups connected: Each attended the other’s organizing meetings and decided to work together on their common issues. Over time, the Black Panthers learned to tolerate Confederate flags as intransigent signs for rebellion. Their only stipulation was that the white Young Patriots denounce racism.</p>
<p>Eventually, Young Patriots rejected their deeply embedded ideas of white supremacy – <a href="http://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-post/2016/09/24/Revolutionary-Hillbilly-An-Interview-with-Hy-Thurman-of-the-Young-Patriots-Organization">and even the Confederate flag</a> – as they realized how much they had in common with the Black Panthers and Latino Young Lords. </p>
<p>Assumed to be natural enemies, these groups united in their calls for economic justice. In the Aug. 9, 1969 issue of The Black Panther newspaper, the party’s chief of staff, David Hilliard, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/sds-bpp-2.htm">admiringly called the Young Patriots</a> “the only revolutionaries we respect that ever came out of the mother country.” Recalling his work with the YPO, former Black Panther Bobby Lee <a href="http://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-post/2009/12/05/YOUNG-PATRIOTS-AND-PANTHERS-A-STORY-OF-WHITE-ANTIRACISM">explained</a> that “The Rainbow Coalition was just a code word for class struggle.”</p>
<p>In the end, the Illinois Panthers <a href="http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/the-original-rainbow-coalition-an-example-of-universal-identity-politics">brought together various elements</a> of the black community, Confederate flag-waving southern white migrants (Young Patriots), Puerto Ricans (Young Lords), poor white ethnic groups (Rising Up Angry, JOIN Community Union, and the Intercommunal Survival Committee), students and the women’s movement. The disparate groups under the coalition’s umbrella pooled resources and shared strategies for providing community services and aid that the government and private sector would not. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-young-patriots-organization-hideout-jon-langford-ent-0209-20160208-column.html">Initiatives included</a> health clinics, feeding homeless and hungry people, and legal advice for those dealing with unethical landlords and police brutality. </p>
<h2>In 2016, a stark racial divide is exposed</h2>
<p>Almost 50 years after the original Rainbow Coalition, the U.S. electorate remains divided along racial lines. Even though Donald Trump <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/19/politics/donald-trump-african-american-voters/">asked black Americans</a>, “What do you have to lose?” by voting for him and abandoning the Democratic Party, it didn’t work: Only 8 percent of black voters (and 28 percent of Latino and 27 percent of Asian voters) <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls">cast ballots for Trump</a>. Blacks and Latinos are well-represented in the working class, and people of color <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/the-changing-demographics-of-americas-working-class/">will become the majority in the working class in 2032</a>. </p>
<p>Much 2016 post-election attention has focused on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/upshot/why-trump-won-working-class-whites.html?_r=0">working-class white voters</a>, who have been characterized as “forgotten” and “angry” for being left out of the economic recovery. Yet African-Americans have been far worse off; since the 2007 recession, the unemployment rate of African-Americans is <a href="http://myjournalcourier.com/news/103764/editorial-below-surface-lies-a-disparity-in-joblessness">nearly double that of Hispanics and more than twice that of whites</a>.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton was the candidate who collected the most diverse voter base – the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia looked like the Rainbow Coalition redux – and she was expected to win the election. However, that visual hid racism’s <a href="http://billmoyers.com/story/2016-election-exposed-deep-seated-racism-go/">residual and deeply entrenched place in U.S. society</a>. One of the lessons of the 2016 election is that the country is not as advanced in its work on ending racism and discrimination as most would like to believe. Donald Trump did not have to do much to capitalize on this. </p>
<p>The Rainbow Coalition members in 1960s Chicago understood how difficult it is to build coalitions across identities. Former Black Panther Bobby Lee <a href="http://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-post/2009/12/05/YOUNG-PATRIOTS-AND-PANTHERS-A-STORY-OF-WHITE-ANTIRACISM">recalled working with the Young Patriots</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It wasn’t easy to build an alliance. I advised them on how to set up ‘serve the people’ programs – free breakfasts, people’s health clinics, all that. I had to run with those cats, break bread with them, hang out at the pool hall. I had to lay down on their couch, in their neighborhood. Then I had to invite them into mine. That was how the Rainbow Coalition was built, real slow.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The coalition, bringing together seemingly polar opposite Black Panthers and Young Patriots, showed that real interactions allow people to understand that their struggles are not essentially different. Donald Trump probably was sincere when he invited African-Americans to join his movement. He simply didn’t realize that a glib invitation would not produce the same results as real coalition-building over a period of time. </p>
<p>The lesson to learn from studying 1960s social movements is that lasting change toward economic and racial justice will probably be built brick by brick, person to person and “real slow.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colette Gaiter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this article from 2017, a look at the coordination of strategy between white and Black activists to fight systemic class oppression.Colette Gaiter, Professor, Department of Africana Studies and Department of Art & Design, University of DelawareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639672016-12-20T14:16:37Z2016-12-20T14:16:37ZThe gap between rich and poor students going to university has reached record levels<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150343/original/image-20161215-26065-rc617q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Working class students are turning their backs on a university education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news that <a href="http://home.bt.com/news/uk-news/record-gap-between-rich-and-poor-students-winning-university-places-11364121540221">Bristol university plans to lower entry grades</a> for disadvantaged students living in the city, comes as <a href="https://www.ucas.com/corporate/news-and-key-documents/news/record-numbers-18-year-olds-accepted-university-year-ucas-report-shows">new figures</a> show the gap between rich and poor children winning degree places has reached record levels. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucas.com/corporate/news-and-key-documents/news/record-numbers-18-year-olds-accepted-university-year-ucas-report-shows">The new UCAS statistics</a> show that children who receive free school meals – a key measure of poverty – are less than half as likely to enter higher education, which makes it the biggest gap in recent years.</p>
<p>The report also reveals that students from lower income backgrounds – mainly white working-class young men – are less likely to even apply to university. And that this may well be down to the fact that a lot of these young people live in areas where <a href="https://www.ucas.com/corporate/news-and-key-documents/news/record-numbers-18-year-olds-accepted-university-year-ucas-report-shows">going to university isn’t the norm</a>.</p>
<p>But although the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/record-gap-social-mobility-rich-and-poor-students-going-university-vince-cable-theresa-may-gender-a7475256.html">headlines focus</a> on young white working-class men, it seems that young white working-class women are also <a href="https://www.ucas.com/corporate/news-and-key-documents/news/ucas-data-reveals-numbers-men-and-women-placed-over-150-higher#">underrepresented in certain sectors of higher education</a> and in higher education overall.</p>
<h2>The education problem</h2>
<p>These figures also leave aside the fact that these young people’s withdrawal from education can often be pinpointed to much earlier <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmeduc/142/14204.htm">negative experiences in the classroom</a>. So it may well be that these young people never intended to go to university in the first place – regardless of the lack of grades to get them there.</p>
<p>And so these figures may well exaggerate the extent to which the white working-classes are “missing” from higher education. Because after all, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2015.1102865">university isn’t the only form of higher education</a>. And indeed going to university isn’t the only way to succeed in life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150344/original/image-20161215-26027-1ij1o9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150344/original/image-20161215-26027-1ij1o9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150344/original/image-20161215-26027-1ij1o9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150344/original/image-20161215-26027-1ij1o9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150344/original/image-20161215-26027-1ij1o9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150344/original/image-20161215-26027-1ij1o9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150344/original/image-20161215-26027-1ij1o9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Among poorer white children, just a quarter of boys and a third of girls achieve the benchmark of five good GCSEs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Higher education is often believed to offer golden rivets for social cohesion and silver bullets in the heart of inequalities and disadvantage. Academic research also often operates within the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0305764X.2015.1102865">same cultures of valuation</a> that produce these myths and tends to accept the terms of the dominant view – of higher education as something that is worth aspiring to. </p>
<p>Academic research on higher education can appear <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2015.1102865">nostalgic about the past</a>, or it sacrifices understanding of <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/18685/1/bis-13-1244-things-we-know-and-dont-know-about-the-wider-benefits-of-higher-education.pdf">what higher education actually is</a>. It is overly concerned with an idealised version of what higher education “might” or “ought” to be. It also pays insufficient attention to what education actually does in the here and now – and that is primarily to give people opportunities to develop skills, knowledge and experience.</p>
<h2>Lack of aspiration?</h2>
<p>The absence of white working-class young people from the seminar rooms and lecture theatres of our universities is often taken as a sign of their “lack of aspiration”. This belief is in turn reflected in political rhetoric and policy initiatives. </p>
<p>But for well over a decade now, there have been a number of <a href="https://www.offa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Literature-review-of-research-into-WP-to-HE.pdf">policy interventions</a> to help get more white working-class young people into education. And yet the statistics, flawed as they may be, remain stubbornly impervious to change. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150342/original/image-20161215-26062-bmkmqj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150342/original/image-20161215-26062-bmkmqj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150342/original/image-20161215-26062-bmkmqj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150342/original/image-20161215-26062-bmkmqj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150342/original/image-20161215-26062-bmkmqj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150342/original/image-20161215-26062-bmkmqj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150342/original/image-20161215-26062-bmkmqj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The gulf between rich and poor children winning degree places has reached record levels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That being the case, it would seem a change in thinking is now overdue. Perhaps it is time to ask where the deficiencies lie – with the (non)applicants to higher education, or with higher education itself? After all, when middle-class students decide against higher education, their aspirations, or whether they are aspirational at all, is seldom called into question. </p>
<h2>Low pay, high debt</h2>
<p>To understand what’s really going on, we need to work out why higher education is so unappealing to some young people. Especially given that <a href="http://www.aviva.com/media/news/item/uk-generation-regret-over-a-third-of-millennials-who-went-to-university-regret-doing-so-as-they-struggle-with-debts-and-squeezed-finances-17653/">a recent study</a> revealed that over a third of millennials who went to university regret doing so – most likely because of a perceived future of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/19/degree-graduates-low-pay-high-debt-students">low pay and high debt</a>. Lack of aspiration is not the culprit here. </p>
<p>It is clear then that understanding white working-class “non-participation” is key to a differentiated, not diminished, sense of what higher education can and does do. And asking questions about what, rather than who, is missing from higher education is similarly long overdue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvonne Downs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Working-class students are put off by a perceived future of low pay and high debt.Yvonne Downs, Research Fellow in Financial Ethics and Governance, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/697582016-12-13T03:55:15Z2016-12-13T03:55:15Z1990s Oregon campaigns anticipated Trump’s politics of division<p>The white working class surprised many pundits and social scientists by supporting Donald Trump, leading some to describe the election results as a “whitelash.”</p>
<p>The fact that the president-elect successfully mobilized this population was far from inevitable. After all, a fair number of Trump supporters <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/how-trump-pushed-the-election-map-to-the-right.html?_r=0">once voted for Obama</a>. A good many of them, when questioned, explained that they “didn’t really like either candidate,” or that they “wanted a change.” History certainly shows us that populist fervor can shift left and right.</p>
<p>Consider Oregon. That Portlandia-style bastion of crunchy granola togetherness also has a long history of racism, such as early 20th-century laws which permitted blacks to pass through towns but required them to leave by <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/sundown-towns">sundown</a>. More recently, anti-government <a href="http://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/">militia</a> groups have consolidated their influence there. Many of its residents share a great deal in common with other Americans who live outside of cities: Their lives are more precarious today than they were even a few decades ago.</p>
<p>Twenty years ago, <a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Stranger-Next-Door-P468.aspx">I interviewed</a> dozens of residents of a small town that had been swept up in a local populist rebellion, part of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Ballot_Measure_9_(1992)">statewide campaign against gay rights</a> that predicted Trump’s politics of division. Timber communities like Cottage Grove, in the middle of the state, became laboratories for a right-wing populism that appealed to nostalgia, exploited people’s fears and distrust of elites, and turned neighbors against one another. But it also gave rise to a progressive populism, at least for a while.</p>
<p>Economic anxieties make people more susceptible to political messaging that exploits social divisions, promising simple solutions to complex problems. But the experience of Oregon shows that the appeal of reactionary populism ebbs and flows, and can be mitigated by grassroots political organizing. </p>
<h2>A populist campaign</h2>
<p>As I describe in <a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Stranger-Next-Door-P468.aspx">my book</a>, the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest once created jobs that were secure, unionized and paid enough to support a family. A sense of economic security made rural Oregon a pretty live-and-let-live sort of place.</p>
<p>But in the 1980s, automation, tougher environmental regulations and a sluggish national housing market, coupled with globalization, led to the collapse of the timber industry. While the city of Portland enjoyed a high-tech fueled upswing, middle-aged men and women in rural Oregon were forced to settle for low-paying service sector jobs, or leave their hometowns in search of work. People started camping in vans, thrift stores cropped up everywhere and evangelical Protestantism became a refuge.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148460/original/image-20161202-25653-1w4kf77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148460/original/image-20161202-25653-1w4kf77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148460/original/image-20161202-25653-1w4kf77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148460/original/image-20161202-25653-1w4kf77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148460/original/image-20161202-25653-1w4kf77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148460/original/image-20161202-25653-1w4kf77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148460/original/image-20161202-25653-1w4kf77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oregon Citizens Alliance founder Lon Mabon holds up a draft of ‘The Family Act’ in Brooks, Oregon, Thursday, June 6, 1996, a measure that would bar same-sex marriages.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Shane Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The following decade, an organization called the Oregon Citizens Alliance sponsored a series of ballot measures that promised to turn back the clock. It managed to convince many Oregonians that by fighting gay rights they could take a stand against the “elites” who were eroding their small-town values, and restore the “natural” dichotomy of the sexes.</p>
<p>Though few area residents had ever met an openly gay person, this issue had surprising resonance. Families stopped their kids from playing with those whose parents were on the opposite side of the issue. Fistfights broke out at the high school. Practically overnight, the question of whether gays and lesbians should be recognized in the law, and given legal protections, became a central way small communities defined themselves.</p>
<p>The campaign offered a space where people could openly voice prejudices against sexual minorities, people of color and elites. By asserting their superiority over these groups, they could feel powerful, at least for a moment. </p>
<p>The campaigns did little to address the material insecurities they faced, however. When I questioned them, supporters of the anti-gay measures admitted as much. They weren’t certain that outlawing gay rights would address their problems, but they were willing to see whether it could. Though the ballot measures passed in rural Oregon, they <a href="http://bluebook.state.or.us/state/elections/elections21.htm">failed statewide</a>, and were ultimately declared <a href="http://www.glapn.org/6013OregonAntiGayMeasures.html">unconstitutional</a>.</p>
<h2>Organizing for human dignity</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, an organization called the <a href="http://www.rop.org/">Rural Organizing Project</a> appeared on the scene.</p>
<p>The Rural Organizing Project reached back into the tradition of progressive populism, which had been a formidable influence in late 19th-century America. It brought together conservative Christians, loggers, people of color, laborers, office workers and farm workers, fostering relationships among people who hardly knew one another, though they often lived in the same small communities. And it challenged the belief that “white working-class” people march in lockstep.</p>
<p>“Human dignity” groups cropped up throughout the state, dedicated to the principle that targeting the “other” would not alleviate their problems. They trained people in the techniques of democratic process and small-group consensus, and changed the public conversation – at least for a while. </p>
<p>Twenty-odd years on, the majority of Oregonians may have voted for Clinton but most of the state’s <a href="http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/oregon/">rural citizens</a> chose Trump in November. </p>
<p>Decades of neoliberal policies have eroded the economic power of vast numbers of Americans and <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/hillary-clinton-and-the-populist-revolt">failed to protect them</a> from insecurity. Calls to deport illegal immigrants and build a wall around Mexico appeal to those who feel excluded by the current economic order, and who wish to address the corrosive affects of globalization. </p>
<p>“We’ve lost ground during the past 20 years, but without dialogue and a place for people to confront extremism, we’d be a lot worse off,” Kelley Weigel, executive director of the Western States Center, a Portland-based organization dedicated to progressive community organizing, told me recently. “The Rural Organizing Project and groups like it are critical to our collective future.” </p>
<h2>Resisting the politics of division</h2>
<p>While racism and sexism have deep roots in this country, <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/12/afl-cio_one_of_oregons_largest.html#incart_river_home">labor unions</a>, grassroots progressive organizations and the Democratic Party have, at times, enabled people to better understand the structural sources of their insecurity. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.12157/full">recent study</a> of 16 European nations found that a college education and union membership help inoculate workers against the far right’s message that immigrants, or racial and sexual minorities, are stealing our jobs. </p>
<p>“We’ve had a number of wins, which have resulted in cities and states passing policies that increased the minimum wage, offered paid sick leave, expanded public education, and protections for same-sex marriage,” says Weigel. But many of the organizations that could counter the appeal of right-wing populism are today struggling. </p>
<p>In the post-World War II era, one in three American workers <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-decline-of-unions-and-the-rise-of-trump.html">belonged to a union</a>. In today’s “gig economy,” only <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-americas-labor-unions-are-about-to-die-69575">one in 10</a> does. During the past three decades, as the share of the work force in a union fell sharply, inequality in hourly wages increased by over <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/how-to-help-working-people.html">40 percent</a>. If his nominees for secretary of education and transportation are any indication, Trump’s administration will be staunchly anti-union. And the Democratic Party, a potential bulwark against reactionary populism, has yet to put forth a viable national plan to alleviate <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/hillary-clinton-and-the-populist-revolt">economic inequality</a>.</p>
<p>In this climate, the politics of division will continue to be an ever-present threat. Positioning the white working class as inevitably racist and sexist, however, may play into the very divisions that Trump’s campaign so effectively exploited. As Oregon’s story shows, organizations can help people understand the real sources of their insecurity, and challenge them to acknowledge their own racial privilege.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arlene Stein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A professor takes us back more than 20 years, to when struggling white working-class voters in Oregon were convinced that a conservative social agenda would help bring back timber jobs.Arlene Stein, Professor of Sociology, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/690292016-11-30T19:18:39Z2016-11-30T19:18:39ZShame as a political weapon: Donald Trump and the US presidential election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147687/original/image-20161128-32026-6wnmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By sustained rhetorical attacks on women and minorities, Donald Trump absolved white working-class shame.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Segar</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many reasons are still being advanced to explain <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-trumps-win-means-for-the-rest-of-the-world-68249">Donald Trump’s win</a> over his experienced, accomplished, much-fancied-in-the-polls rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. White working-class anger has received a lot of attention, but Trump’s success exploiting anger’s inner manifestation – shame – should be getting a lot more focus.</p>
<p>Shame has a political pedigree in modern US politics. So strong has been its impact that merely a tincture is usually enough to have big consequences:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Joseph Nye Welch, chief counsel for the US Army, is credited with turning the tide against Communist witch-hunter and senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1eA5bUzVjA">declared during a hearing</a>: “You’ve done enough. Have you no decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”</p></li>
<li><p>Democratic vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen called out Republican rival Dan Quayle <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWXRNySMW4s">during a debate</a> in the 1988 presidential election campaign, when Quayle compared himself with John F. Kennedy, with: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Quayle replied: “That was uncalled for, senator.” Perceptions of Quayle never really recovered from Bentsen’s put-down.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>By comparison with what might be described as surgical shame strikes, Trump’s use of shame in 2016 was more carpet-bombing in nature. Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild says Trump employs a <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/28/arlie_russell_hochschild_on_strangers_in">“choreography of shame”</a> that diminishes everybody – except working-class men.</p>
<h2>Strangers in their own land</h2>
<p>Hochschild spent five years interviewing poor Louisianans – most of whom were Democrat voters, but who have now travelled to the Trump camp via the Tea Party. </p>
<p>Her recent book, <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land">Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right</a>, provides an empathic account of working-class men and women who not only feel without hope but, worse, misunderstood, or – worst of all – not seen or heard at all. </p>
<p>The profile of white, blue-collar men – the demographic which by a considerable margin <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/09/how-trump-won-the-revenge-of-working-class-whites/">voted most strongly for Trump</a> – that emerges in Hochschild’s research goes some way to explaining their vote. They feel crunched by technological change and economic crisis on one side, and perceive their remaining white male privilege subsiding in absolute terms simultaneous with its redistribution towards women and minorities. </p>
<p>This much has broadly registered and been understood on both sides of politics. But it receives a complex mix of empathy and aggravation on the progressive side of politics: empathy for obvious class-based reasons; aggravation because women and minorities are due a fair share of that privilege whether it is subsiding or not.</p>
<p>Hochschild is going for something more in her research, however, than the topline economic and demographic facts. She pursues, too, an understanding of the “emotion in politics” of her subjects’ situation, of how they feel and what they are getting emotionally out of their move from the political left to right. </p>
<p>Hochschild wants their “deep story”. After repeated interviews with scores of subjects over a period of years, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/books/review/strangers-in-their-own-land-arlie-russell-hochschild.html?_r=1">she summarises it thus</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You are patiently standing in a long line” for something you call the American dream. You are white, Christian, of modest means, and getting along in years. You are male. There are people of colour behind you, and “in principle you wish them well”. But you’ve waited long, worked hard, “and the line is barely moving”.</p>
<p>Then “Look! You see people cutting in line ahead of you!” Who are these interlopers? “Some are black”, others “immigrants, refugees”. They get affirmative action, sympathy and welfare – “checks for the listless and idle”. The government wants you to feel sorry for them.</p>
<p>And who runs the government? “The biracial son of a low-income single mother”, and he’s cheering on the line-cutters. “The president and his wife are line-cutters themselves.” The liberal media mocks you as racist or homophobic. Everywhere you look, “you feel betrayed”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, you are resentful, and perceive yourself as ridiculous to the rest of America; you can’t hold your end up economically, therefore neither socially nor familially either; and you feel ashamed.</p>
<p>But shame is a secret emotion; pride prevents its utterance. Could this be the key, perhaps, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-how-did-the-polls-get-it-so-wrong-68500">most pollsters’ failure</a> to capture the full extent of Trump’s support? </p>
<p>Here lies the likely explanation for that hidden vote. By sustained rhetorical attacks on women and minorities, Trump negated – absolved – white working-class shame. And, by winning the election, he relegitimised white working-class men’s place in American society. </p>
<p>Trump’s campaign slogan – <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/make-america-great-again-is-a-great-slogan-and-other-lessons-from-brexit-for-the-us-election-20161011-gs05gm.html">“Make America Great Again”</a> – was not simply a narrative of national decline typical of proto-fascist political campaigns: it was also code for “Make White Working-Class Males Great Again”. In restoring them to the centre of the national narrative, Trump turned women and minority group members into strangers in their own land.</p>
<h2>Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous</h2>
<p>Like Hochschild, feminist legal scholar Joan C. Williams <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class?utm_campaign=harvardbiz&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social">also has a deeper take</a> on what is happening in the “white working class” – which she sees as driven by a “class culture gap”.</p>
<p>Among other things, this makes more advantaged Americans blind to several features of white, working-class culture – including a resentment of “professionals” alongside what seems, at first blush, a paradoxical admiration for the rich. </p>
<p>Poses Williams:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable – just with more money.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump personifies Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous; Clinton personifies the professional class perceived to boss the white working class around. Trump promises – and embodies – a return to the era:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… when men were men and women knew their place … it’s comfort food for high-school-educated guys.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Wallace receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Donald Trump employed a ‘choreography of shame’ that diminished everybody – except white working-class men.Chris Wallace, ARC DECRA Fellow, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/695752016-11-30T03:03:28Z2016-11-30T03:03:28ZWhy America’s labor unions are about to die<p>I’ve <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-labors-decline-opened-door-to-billionaire-trump-as-savior-of-american-workers-60689">written before</a> on how the decline of <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/labor-power-15530">organized labor</a> beginning in the late 1970s gave birth to the backlash that fueled Donald Trump’s election. </p>
<p>Labor’s deterioration weakened worker protections, <a href="https://theconversation.com/america-doesnt-just-need-a-raise-we-need-a-new-national-norm-for-wage-growth-46831">kept wages stagnant</a> and caused <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-and-the-rise-of-the-top-10-percents-share-of-income/">income inequality</a> to soar to the <a href="https://eml.berkeley.edu/%7Esaez/saez-zucmanNBER14wealth.pdf">highest levels in over eight decades</a>. It also made workers feel they needed a savior like Trump. </p>
<p>In other words, his unlikely victory follows a straight line from the defeat of the <a href="http://www.d.umn.edu/%7Eepeters5/MAPL5112/5112%20Articles/Fink-Labor%20Law%20Revisions%20and%20the%20End%20of%20Postwar%20Labor%20Accord.pdf">Labor Reform Act of 1978</a> to the election of 2016. That bill would have modernized and empowered unions through more effective recognition procedures accompanied by enhanced power in negotiations. Instead, its death by filibuster became the beginning of their end. </p>
<p>It’s a sad twist of irony that Trump’s election and Republican dominance across the country may finally destroy once and for all the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-us-labor-unions-and-why-they-still-matter-38263">institution most responsible</a> for working- and middle-class prosperity. It will likely be a three-punch fight, ending with a fatal blow: the expansion of right-to-work laws across the country that would permanently empty the pockets of labor unions, eroding them of virtually all their collective solidarity. </p>
<h2>How we got here</h2>
<p>In 1980, union membership density stood at 23 percent of the work force; some 40 years later, just over 11 percent of American workers <a href="http://www.unionstats.com/">belong to unions</a>. During the same period, wealth inequality in the U.S. continued to accelerate largely on a <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/684273">social class basis</a>. </p>
<p>White males without college degrees reacted to their ongoing misery in 2016 with a political transformation unrivaled since <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/09/10/the-most-consequential-elections-in-history-franklin-delano-roosevelt-and-the-election-of-1932">Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s electoral victory in 1932</a>. The election’s <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/politics/why-donald-trump-won/">postmortem pundits</a> offered differing explanations for Trump’s victory, including racism, sexism and the ennui of Hillary Clinton supporters.</p>
<p>A popular narrative argues that deteriorating economic conditions provided the fuel for the Trump conflagration as it swept through the former union strongholds of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio. </p>
<h2>Three blows for labor</h2>
<p>Despite the enthusiasm of his working-class supporters, Trump’s economic policies would bring them a raw deal, not a New Deal. Three key areas will play a crucial role in union diminution and workers’ bargaining power during Trump’s administration, with further declines in real hourly earnings.</p>
<p>The first is regulatory. On his inauguration, Trump has the opportunity to appoint two new members to the National Labor Relations Board now controlled by Obama appointees with administrative discretion to <a href="https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/nlrb-issues-numerous-decisions-against-employers-hirozawas-term">implement pro-labor decisions</a>. With their new majority, Republican appointees <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/reports-guidance/rules-regulations">will have a smorgasbord of past cases and regulations</a> to repeal and replace. Trump’s future replacements undoubtedly will promote a business-friendly agenda, and the board’s shift in emphasis will be immediately apparent. </p>
<p>The second is the Supreme Court. If Trump fills the vacant seat with someone in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia, the new court will likely uphold what in my view is the <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/labor/256728-supreme-court-justices-at-work-bashing-unions">rickety constitutional theory</a> of union dues put forth by Samuel Alito in Knox v. SEIU. Alito’s rule holds that public sector union members have a constitutional right to decline dues payments unless they consent to do so. Or, in Alito’s words, dues payers will be deemed to “opt out” of dues unless they “opt in.” </p>
<p>In early 2016, the <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/labor/269488-right-to-work-takes-a-time-out-in-the-supreme-court">Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case</a>, which would have mandated a constitutional right-to-work rule, stalled out with Scalia’s demise, but <a href="http://www.nrtw.org/blog/janus-v-afscme-update11212016/">a similar case is moving through</a> the lower federal court system that raises the matter once more. The litigation will eventually work its way back to the Supreme Court, and the new Trump justice can affirm the undoing of public sector union dues. </p>
<p>The third and most lethal blow against unions, along with board and court hostility, is the expansion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-misleading-arguments-propelling-right-to-work-laws-38265">right-to-work laws</a> as a by-product of Trump’s victory. </p>
<p>Trump ran on a platform of making America great again by <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/08/08/488816816/donald-trump-looks-to-turn-the-page-on-bad-week-with-economic-speech">restoring incomes through innovation and deregulation</a>.</p>
<h2>The road ahead for right to work</h2>
<p>Trump’s plan meshes perfectly with the ideology of right to work, which promotes itself as a tool of development and economic advancement, even though <a href="http://econweb.umd.edu/%7Edavis/eventpapers/ozbeklikright.pdf">recent evidence shows</a> the claim is dubious. </p>
<p>Twenty-six states have now enacted right-to-work laws, which forbid compulsory payment of union dues by workers who are covered under a collective bargaining agreement. Among other adverse consequences, the laws create a <a href="https://theconversation.com/right-to-works-rapid-spread-is-creating-more-union-free-riders-38805">free-rider problem</a> because under the exclusive representation doctrine, employees who do not pay dues must still receive the same wages, benefits and protections as those who do. </p>
<p>Republicans in the past election won a <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/State_government_trifectas">legislative trifecta</a> in the states of Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio and New Hampshire. Those states are presently not right-to-work, but such conditions will not long stand.</p>
<p>In Missouri, <a href="http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/right-to-work-likely-coming-to-missouri/article_d20b0ad2-97af-5c6a-a6a4-c9bca440d3dc.html">Republicans legislators said</a> they expect to pass a right-to-work law that bars mandatory union fees early in 2017, and the incoming GOP governor says he will sign it. </p>
<p>Legislators in Kentucky followed a slightly different route by focusing on county rather than statewide legislation. Their gambit paid off in November when a federal appeals court <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/appeals-court-upholds-local-work-law-kentucky-43646335">upheld the validity</a> of a county right-to-work law. Expect the entire state to adopt the policy soon.</p>
<p>New Hampshire has traditionally followed the principle of collective security and defeated right-to-work initiatives in 2011 and 2015. But with the election of a Republican governor and legislature, the issue could prevail, which would make the Granite State the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442125/2016-election-results-right-work-wins">first in New England</a> to institute right to work.</p>
<p>And in Ohio, a Republican legislator introduced a bill in April to ban compulsory dues payments, <a href="http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/04/13/brinkman-unions-ultimate-zombies/82807378/">declaring</a>: “Over the past three-quarters of a century, unions have become the ultimate zombies.” While Governor John Kasich is not enthusiastic about right to work, he could yield to political reality if the bill passes.</p>
<p>Clearly, right-to-work supporters have seized the initiative and are marching on the offensive. With enough political momentum, the battle for right to work could soon migrate to the federal level, where a <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/612">national right-to-work bill</a> is pending in Congress. Republicans have the votes to pass it in the House. In theory, it could face a filibuster in the Senate, but as a practical matter, the legislative dumpster fire during Trump’s first year will burn so hot and bright that right to work may become an early casualty in the battle for Democrats’ political survival.</p>
<h2>How will it all end?</h2>
<p>Since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, class forces in this country have fought for supremacy over the political and economic machinery as Republicans attempted to roll back the consequences of the New Deal legislative revolution. Right to work figures importantly in the struggle between labor and capital. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4410C">I show in my book</a> on the subject, right-to-work laws are statistically correlated with lower rates of union membership, lower levels of human development, lower per capita incomes, lower levels of trust and less progressive tax schemes. In short, the empire of right to work leans toward further entrenching the power of corporations, not the economic emancipation of American wage earners.</p>
<p>The voters who brought Trump to the big dance would be the ones who suffer when he leaves with his wealthy and glamorous friends. As an <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/11/09/trump-economy-taxes-immigration/">article in Fortune</a> suggests, Trump’s plan for deportations and broken trade agreements will inflict serious injury on the economy in general and in particular on those industrial sectors that elected him. The rest of us will be collateral damage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raymond Hogler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labor’s decline has steadily eroded the prospects of working-class Americans, fueling the backlash that propelled Trump. His election, however, will likely deliver unions a knockout punch, hurting his supporters most.Raymond Hogler, Professor of Management, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/686212016-11-10T15:33:53Z2016-11-10T15:33:53ZSouth Africa must take heed: ignoring inequality and race got Trump elected<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145442/original/image-20161110-25055-1vkgefx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Barack Obama entering the Oval Office. Americans have not come to terms with deep racial fissures, despite electing a black president.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Joshua Roberts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We don’t know what a <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-things-that-explain-donald-trumps-stunning-presidential-election-victory-66891">Donald Trump presidency</a> will mean for South Africa. But what South Africans should know is that America has just elected its most dangerous president ever because it has not dealt with two problems the country has also ducked: inequality and race. </p>
<p>Our future, too, may be perilous if we ignore this warning.</p>
<p>Whatever Trump does in office, the stark reality is that America has elected a bigot and demagogue with a deep contempt for women. When he takes over, the world will enter a time of great danger because we will have no idea whether a president who ignored the constraints of decency when he was a candidate will respect them in office.</p>
<p>And since the future is so uncertain, South Africa’s best response to Trump’s election is to learn the lessons of its causes.</p>
<h2>Inequality</h2>
<p>The first reason why America’s voters (or almost half of them since Trump did not win a majority of votes) chose the unthinkable is inequality. Trump was not elected by those who have most suffered from American inequality – the racial minorities who mostly voted for his opponent. But he was helped over the line by a swing away from the Democratic Party by white working class voters – this was probably why he won the <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/videos/2016-11-09/election-upset-what-happened-in-the-rust-belt-states">“rust belt” states</a> of the mid-West.</p>
<p>While white workers are better off than their black and Hispanic counterparts, they have taken a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-working-class-poverty/424341/">massive economic hit</a> over the past decades – wages have stagnated or declined and jobs are no longer secure. Their world, in which they could rely on a steady job with rising pay, has collapsed. The effect has been famously measured by Nobel laureate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/upshot/why-angus-deaton-deserved-the-economics-nobel-prize.html?_r=0">Angus Deaton</a> and his wife <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078.abstract">Anne Case</a>, who found that the new realities were playing havoc with the <a href="http://www.nber.org/reporter/spring03/health.html">health and wellbeing</a> of working class whites.</p>
<p>These workers are not nearly at the bottom of the pile – if they were, they may have blamed the economic system. But they have lost their relative privilege and so they blame those below them in the pecking order - racial minorities and immigrants. The MIT political scientist Roger Peterson has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/02/03/no-ones-looking-out-for-the-white-guy-heres-what-political-science-knows-about-trumps-appeal-to-ethnic-resentment/">shown</a> that right-wing authoritarian movements grow when groups who enjoy power and privilege believe that it is threatened by other groups. They react by resenting the upstarts who may knock them off their perch – American white workers fit his theory.</p>
<p>The lesson for South Africans is that this was caused by an economic approach which has widened inequality by dumping protections for workers and the poor. Angry white workers blame globalisation. In fact the real culprit is policies which have torn up the deal which spread the benefits of growth more fairly. The South African parallel is the continued unwillingness or inability of key economic actors to negotiate a growth path which will include many in the economy.</p>
<h2>The racial divide</h2>
<p>The second reason for Trump’s triumph was that America’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/americas-racial-divide-charted.html">racial divide</a> remains probably the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-white-rage-driving-our-racial-divide/2016/06/22/fbeec9fc-22a8-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html">key driver</a> of its politics. </p>
<p>Workers were not the only <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/who-voted-for-donald-trump-white-men-and-women-most-responsible-for-new-president-elect-voting-data-a7407996.html">white voters</a> who were important to Trump: he won among almost every group of white voters, including college educated men who were said to hold him in contempt. The only white group to reject him was college educated women and then by a small margin. So many white voters for whom Trump showed contempt were willing to vote for him – and the reason is surely that they wanted a president who would protect whiteness.</p>
<p>When Barack Obama was elected, commentators waxed lyrical about a post-racial America which had ditched its prejudices. It did not take very long to show how <a href="http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1177&context=facpub">off the mark</a> this was. </p>
<p>For eight years, the Republican Party and its white support base waged an unceasing war against Obama, even when he introduced measures such as health insurance which massively benefited poor whites. As research by the pollster Stanley Greenberg <a href="http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaug-2014/why-the-white-working-class-matters/">showed</a>, the key motive was Obama’s race.</p>
<p>Again, Peterson explains this. Many American whites believe the America they and their parents knew is disappearing as racial minorities become more numerous and more mainstream – whites are projected to become a minority in the next few decades. Obviously many whites do not feel this way but the resentment is growing: many who did not vote against Obama chose Trump.</p>
<p>Again there is a parallel with South Africa. In both countries, elites duck the racial issue which is its most serious divide. The fact that Obama was harried because he was black was ignored in the mainstream – every explanation was advanced expect the obvious one. </p>
<p>South Africans are constantly urged to “move beyond race” when it continues to divide the country. In the few years before 1994’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/south-africas-first-democratic-elections">first democratic election</a>, elites in the country took race seriously – once it had a democratic constitution and a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-trc">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>, the problem was declared solved and they lost interest. But it wasn’t – racial division and anger remain the country’s most serious challenge, threatening its universities and obstructing its attempts to grow as an economy and a society.</p>
<h2>The threat posed by inequality and racism</h2>
<p>Could South Africa’s failure to address inequality and race threaten the country’s politics too? It already does.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-patronage-and-state-capture-spell-trouble-for-south-africa-64704">patronage politics</a> which plagues the African National Congress has threatened the National Treasury and has produced the politics of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/zuma-and-anc-run-out-of-road-as-bad-news-piles-up-68197">state capture</a>” which is a symptom of the country’s inequalities. South Africans who are included economically don’t need political bosses to hand them goodies – the many who are still excluded do. This fuels those politicians who want to use public money to build political support.</p>
<p>Racial divides also give the patronage politicians a ready excuse: they can claim that taking money from the powerful <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-05-07-the-beginners-guide-to-the-guptas">Gupta family</a>, who are close to South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma, is a rebellion against white capital. A growing chorus from this faction insists that they are being prevented from taking over the National Treasury not by a concern to protect public money but at the bidding of <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/gordhan-represents-white-capital-western-imperialism-mngxitama-20160902">white tycoons</a> who do not want black people to become rich.</p>
<p>And they have, particularly on the country’s campuses but elsewhere too, produced a brand of politics which justifies violence and bullying directed mainly at black people and – you guessed it – women on the grounds that privileged whites are determined to silence black people seeking to express themselves.</p>
<p>Here, ignoring inequality and race may not ensure the election of a dangerous president – although it could do that at the next ANC conference. But, as in the US, South Africans pay a price for it. It poses a constant threat to the economy and society which the country can only tackle if South Africans negotiate a more equal economy and show the same willingness to address race and racism as some did 25 years ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the future is so uncertain, South Africa’s best response to Trump’s election is to learn the lessons of its causes.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.