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Class and culture are inextricably linked. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Great Society legislation only happened because working- and middle- whites felt co

by wahern 8y ago

Class and culture are inextricably linked. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Great Society legislation only happened because working- and middle- whites felt comfortable with their economic security.[1][2] The loss of well-paying blue collar industrial jobs may have been partly compensated with cheap domestic goods.[3] But nothing has compensated for the loss of jobs that one could reasonably expect to last for decades, if not for one's entire working life. You're not going to give on cultural issues if you feel that you're losing on the economic front. Quite the contrary, you're going to become extremely defensive and even cynical. I'm not excusing racism and prejudice. Quite the opposite--I'm saying that it never left, its expression in popular politics only temporarily diminished. [1] It helped that the poster children for Great Society legislation were, literally, white Appalachian children. [2] I'm sure the same could be said for immigration in the U.K. It was tolerated or even affirmed by a working class who felt economically secure. Once they felt threatened economically by immigration, and as memories of the Empire faded along with a sense of intrinsic superiority, relatively dormant ethnic animus returned to the fore. [3] As conservatives infamously argued during the 2016 election; that quality of life has remained undiminished or has even improved, notwithstanding stagnant wages, by pointing to A/C and refrigerator ownership rates. That's true to an extent but largely irrelevant to how people perceive equity and fairness.

barberousse 8y ago
Another point on this line is W.E.B. DuBois' "Black Reconstruction in America", wherein he writes extensively on how post-civil war racist discourse was designed to not only persist discrimination of blacks, but to also convince poor whites that blacks were the problem, and not the rich white capitalists that were _actually_ screwing them over. So its fascinating that we see, amidst a climate of economic, social, and political uncertainty, exactly that tactic return in the election of Trump, who convinces the white working class that "he's a straight shooter", "he tells it like is", and my favorite, "he's honest" (paraphrasing CNN Presidential Election night coverage, interviewing Trump voters after his win) and pandering latent racist biases, while guaranteeing further entrenchment of the standing politico-economic order.

by wahern 8y ago

barberousse 8y ago

Another point on this line is W.E.B. DuBois' "Black Reconstruction in America", wherein he writes extensively on how post-civil war racist discourse was designed to not only persist discrimination of blacks, but to also convince poor whites that blacks were the problem, and not the rich white capitalists that were _actually_ screwing them over. So its fascinating that we see, amidst a climate of economic, social, and political uncertainty, exactly that tactic return in the election of Trump, who convinces the white working class that "he's a straight shooter", "he tells it like is", and my favorite, "he's honest" (paraphrasing CNN Presidential Election night coverage, interviewing Trump voters after his win) and pandering latent racist biases, while guaranteeing further entrenchment of the standing politico-economic order.