Thursday, September 20, 2012

"The Man" is Still Holding Down Working Class White People...and Helping the Blacks and Other Minorities Too Much

The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has a new survey on the attitudes of "white working class" voters. That label has become an imprecise catch-all that makes for great headlines and conversation among the pundit classes; but it is much more slippery when actually examined empirically. 

For example, a good amount of research has demonstrated that poor people tend to vote for the Democrats. Yet, white men who do not possess college degrees, and have "blue collar" jobs, tend to vote overwhelmingly for Republicans. And in the aggregate, "white working class voters" men without college degrees, and who are not working in salaried jobs, overwhelming support Mitt Romney.

The idea that working class white people are possessed of false consciousness, and are voting against their material interests when they support the Tea Party GOP has become a type of truism. Nevertheless, I believe it is largely an accurate description of their behavior. However, I have also come to realize that perhaps these voters are simply using a different voting calculus, one where white skin and the psychic wages of whiteness matter more than other variables. Their politics are not "abnormal" per se; rather, these voters are simply working towards a different set of goals.

As a complement to this observation, the PRRI has some rich findings that include:


3. White working-class Americans are more likely than white college-educated Americans to believe that blacks and other minorities have received too many advantages and government attention.
  • Six-in-ten (60%) white working-class Americans agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities, compared to only 39% of white college-educated Americans.
  • Nearly half (49%) of white working-class Americans agree that over the past few decades the government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities, compared to 32% of white college-educated Americans.
  • White working-class Americans in the West (40%), Midwest (48%), and Northeast (48%) are less likely than white working-class Americans in the South (58%) to believe that over the past few decades, the government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities.
[A question: if the elite classes and the federal government are dominated and ruled by white people, and whites have a majority of the country's wealth, income, and resources, just who is discriminating against "working class whites?" 

The logic never made sense to me. 

Is the argument that white elites are giving an unfair leg up to people of color in some great chess game where the goal is to hold down other white people? How does such nonsense logic get validated and circulated?]

White people have long lived in a different life world than people of color. Segregation, narrow social networks, and a society where citizenship is racialized, has nurtured many white fictions in the service of white power and the white racial frame. Colorblind racism is an intoxicant. In the Age of Obama and the post Civil Rights era many Americans have drunk deeply from said bottle. 

Moreover, the specious belief that America is either 1) free of discrimination and/or 2) that white people are somehow oppressed can be found among white folks in the aftermath of the Civil War, those living during Jim and Jane Crow, as well as in the present. It is an old script that is not going away any time soon. Education helps some, although still not enough, to have their eyes opened to the realities of systemic white privilege and racism in this society. There is hope that ignorance can be overcome. However, education is no cure all, as 39 percent of white college grads still hold onto similar fictions. 

One of the ugliest phrases in the English language is "qualified" minority or female job candidate. Why? Because it presupposes white male competence and ability. 

As I (and others) have long argued, the mediocrity of white people has been subsidized, encouraged, and nurtured by the State. "Affirmative Action" for white people (and white men in particular)  was the stated policy of the United States government for most of the country's existence. The upward mobility of white people, and the federal government's subsidizing of the white middle class, came at the expense of people of color, and was facilitated by discrimination against black and brown Americans in both the public and private sphere. 

With a contracting economy, demographic shifts, and more competition from non-whites, those protected, coddled, and entitled white folks--semi-skilled white laborers especially--are afraid because the fiction of their omnipotent competence has been exposed. Such a moment of realization must be terrifying, as it upsets one's cognitive map, and a worldview where whiteness and white people are naturally at the center of all things. People of color have long understood that the myth of meritocracy is just that, a lie, a chimera, and a fiction. Many white folks are finally waking up to that fact and are not taking it too well. 

The PRRI survey also has one additional finding that I would like to highlight:
5. Despite being economically disillusioned, white working-class Americans strongly believe in American exceptionalism. Although white working-class Americans are less likely than white college-educated Americans to believe the American Dream still holds true (47% vs. 63%), they are more likely than white college-educated Americans to believe that God has granted America a special place in human history (70% vs. 42%).
Every culture and society has a set of beliefs that it must reproduce in order to remain whole and coherent. But are white working class people who still believe in American Exceptionalism, and that God has granted the United States a "divine" destiny, not setting themselves up for a horrible fall? 

How will they manage their cognitive dissonance when confronted by how other countries are rising in power, have much higher rates of inter-generational mobility, happier and healthier populations, and that the United States is in decline? What will these white working class people do when forced to deal with those facts? 

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

"How will they manage their cognitive dissonance when confronted by how other countries are rising in power, have much higher rates of inter-generational mobility, happier and healthier populations, and that the United States is in decline? What will these white working class people do when forced to deal with those facts?"

That's an easy question to answer. They will do what they have always done through history. They will rape, pillage and burn in the name of God, leaving dead bodies and ruin in their wake.

Ben G

Anonymous said...

Vic78

What will they do when they are left behind by the despised others in this country? It's happening now. Non white groups that work together are going to make everyone else look sorry.

Your driver said...

As always, I pretty much agree with you but I find this upsetting and confusing. I am a white, working class male and I've never understood the tendency of many of my peers to imagine that we are being victimized. I will say that many white working class people talk about "rights" when they are describing privileges. I think they, correctly, see that we do not live in a meritocracy and that race, in most instances, guarantees privilege. They don't really mind all of that except that they feel they are being denied their proper privileges.
I believe you're familiar with Dave Roedigger's work. "The Wages of Whiteness" has helped me get a little understanding.

Ken S said...

"Is the argument that white elites are giving an unfair leg up to people of color in some great chess game where the goal is to hold down other white people?"

I think it would be more charitable to say that many probably understand that the goal of 'affirmative action' policies are to make up for past discrimination. This at least has the potential side effect of holding down other white people, arguably in a fair way, but a white closer to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder may assume the worst or demand a clearer justification for policies designed to help non-whites.

"People of color have long understood that the myth of meritocracy is just that, a lie, a chimera, and a fiction. Many white folks are finally waking up to that fact and are not taking it too well. "

This I would disagree with. Part of the issue is that there *is* a somewhat-functioning meritocracy (I won't deny that there could be serious room for improvement, or that we may disagree over what is meritorious), and being at the bottom of it pretty much sucks. Even so, not having one at all would likely suck even worse, so those worried about ending up at the bottom of it may be more hostile towards 'social engineering' if it has the appearance of being a move away from meritocracy (because then they would still be at the bottom and see none of the indirect gains from a meritocracy).

Black Sage said...

How will they manage their cognitive dissonance when confronted by how other countries are rising in power, have much higher rates of inter-generational mobility, happier and healthier populations, and that the United States is in decline? What will these white working class people do when forced to deal with those facts? – ChaunceyD

Great article CD! The White working class will do what they’ve always done when things don’t go their way or the way it was promised by the State. Quite a few of them either commit suicide due to their greatly disturbed faculty or they begin to point their collective fingers at minorities as being the culprit for their own shortcomings. They inherently and historically refuse to look inwardly as a group for answers for fear of finding out that THEY are the problem, for the most part.

Another issue with the vast majority of working class White Americans is that they have such an affinity in the belief of American exceptionalism, that they will never find fault with this decadent US experiment that we refer to as democracy. Even while the same system that working class Whites believe in so dearly, is in the throes of either suffocating or strangling them, just as it has been doing to minorities since its inception.

The numbers reflect in the research mentioned above that educated Whites have a much better grasp on what this country represents and refused to be utilized as a stoking tool by the status quo, when the time arises to incite their respective political base.

As soon as the majority of working class Whites cease viewing this empire country through the lens of jaundiced eyes, only then will they begin to see this country for what it truly is, or isn’t!

makheru bradley said...

If not for Alan Bakke a lot of these college-educated whites might feel differently. In their milieu they know that a tiny minority of Afrikan Americans pose no threat to their status. When collapse really hits class distinctions amongst most whites will disappear and race will be the common bond.

Razor said...

In the immortal words of Malcom X, white folks "have been had...been hoodwinked".

Just when it made good business sense, the elite in America reneged on the deal they made with them in giving them the knapsack fo white privileges in exchange for their assent and cooperation in enslaving blacks in this country when they transitioned away from the initial practice of indentured servitude, which CD wrote about in a post earlier this year.

The elites saw an economic opportunity in passing the Civil Rights legislation, apart from the international embarrasment of the existence of legalized segregation and the US desire to gain moral influence in the world and growing white support mostly in the North to end the violence visited upon non-violent blacks in protests being covered by the national television media ,that was feuling the growing discontent of blacks in the North.

Just the mere legal recognition of blacks as equals in American society was too much of a psychic blow to the fictional myth of white exceptionalism that had been umeritoriously bestowed on the average, below average and pitifully stupid white males who make up the great majority of white folk. The portending signal of that change in the prior arrangment by the elites was frightening. They feared what would come next. Next could be having to fairly compete with blacks as equals in other areas, which was unacceptable and unimaginable.

Whites in the South, who had been working poor for much of their history, ironically, who supported and fought for slavery (competing against far superior and no-cost labor which marginalized them) had been so taken by the visceral self-image of white superiority, left their psyches so fragile that even symbolic gains by blacks were seen as catostrophic. Witnessing post-Civil War Reconstruction Era blacks in rapid mobility mode (under the protection of the Union Army) gave them a glimpse of who they really were without the knapsack of white privilege, and the horror was forever etched in their minds.

Only their very best could even hope to compete with the free and unified black folk, who were stronger, harder working, more skilled and even more educated than the average white southern working class, despite the prohibition against slaves learning to read. The greed of people like Eli Whitney was to great to let brilliant black folk go to waste, the proof... several instances of architectural and agricultural mastery, and of course...the cotton gin.

The fear of the unleashing of black potential in this country has led to a relentless and unmitigated attack on the psychic frame and body of black people ever since the advent of American slavery. The wounds are of such nature as to have run through generations, swallowing up the many in one institutionally contrived device or another, functioning in a system that is designed to exploit the general population itself where possible.

I have little sympathy for those whites who despite the knapsack of white privilege who opt to still buy into the lies of the White God, white power, white privilege and racism..and who find themselves struggling and pointing the finger at minorities as the source of their misery...who continue to sell their souls to the devil.








nomad said...

"How will they manage their cognitive dissonance when confronted by how other countries are rising in power, have much higher rates of inter-generational mobility, happier and healthier populations, and that the United States is in decline?"

A moot question. Who's going to confront them with this? The gummint? The mainstream media? Ahahahahahahahahah:
"Cognitive dissonance? I don't see no damn cognitive dissonance. What are you some kinda Islamofascist?"

Razor said...

Black Sage. Good points. I agree with all but one point you made with regards to the educated white not being used as a tool by the manipulative elite.

They still make up a large portion of Republican support. Strikingly, though due to their education they feel less threatened by their black peers who remain a statistical underdog, and while enjoying the fruits of several generations of the white privileges in America ( while their black peers "endured" several generations of the complete opposite), 39% of them believe that they are somehow "victims" of "reverse" discrimination. That's four out of ten of educated white folk who do not, or should not, believe that they will be on the competive bottom of the workforce, speaking in relative terms. Such is the condition, or should I say conditioning, of the white mind, and the power of the idea of American Exceptionlism aka White Power aka the false Religion of the White God.

Fortunately, many more whites, the young especially, are beginning to realize that, yes, we are being discriminated against, but not by the people of color, but our own, who are seeking to make us slave debtors, just to obtain an education...only to discover that the white elites have nearly eliminated the goal of their education under the present plutocratic capitalistic system, which increasingly view them as expendable. Many are beginning to understand this and we are seeing new possibilities at least to a challenge to the present order...though are far different question from the issue of white power, which allows for resetting the same racist system.