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From Slate: Poor Whites Trashed
Why conservatives are talking about struggling white people the way they usually talk about black people.By Jamelle Bouie
“If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas,” writes Kevin Williamson for National Review, “and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.” His colleague David French echoed the assessment. “Simply put, Americans are killing themselves and destroying their families at an alarming rate. No one is making them do it. The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand.”
In the past, this is how conservatives have talked about struggling blacks. If inner cities and rural black communities were poor and dysfunctional, it was because of cultural deficiencies, not broad economic problems. With more effort, went the argument, they could overcome economic isolation and social stigma. And the evidence was success among low-income white Americans who’d overcome their station.
But now, more whites than ever are sinking toward the bottom, living in the same conditions that have faced black Americans for decades. And suddenly, conservatives are talking about them in the same way. We’ve seen this dynamic before.
<snip>
It’s hard to know where this leads. But if the past is any guide, this backlash of anger and nativism will get fiercer before it burns out—if it ever does. One thing is clear, however: These voters aren’t entirely wrong. The inversion of status, or at least a dramatic decline in status, is happening. National Review did us the service of making that explicit. The big question—perhaps the single largest question of American history—is whether this will inspire empathy and fellow feeling with minorities or just become tinder for the ongoing racial reaction.
In the past, this is how conservatives have talked about struggling blacks. If inner cities and rural black communities were poor and dysfunctional, it was because of cultural deficiencies, not broad economic problems. With more effort, went the argument, they could overcome economic isolation and social stigma. And the evidence was success among low-income white Americans who’d overcome their station.
But now, more whites than ever are sinking toward the bottom, living in the same conditions that have faced black Americans for decades. And suddenly, conservatives are talking about them in the same way. We’ve seen this dynamic before.
<snip>
It’s hard to know where this leads. But if the past is any guide, this backlash of anger and nativism will get fiercer before it burns out—if it ever does. One thing is clear, however: These voters aren’t entirely wrong. The inversion of status, or at least a dramatic decline in status, is happening. National Review did us the service of making that explicit. The big question—perhaps the single largest question of American history—is whether this will inspire empathy and fellow feeling with minorities or just become tinder for the ongoing racial reaction.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/why_conservatives_are_talking_about_poor_white_people_the_way_they_usually.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru
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