Misplaced Blame
Surveys and studies consistently find Trump’s generally older, White supporters enraged at “
loss of status” and in fear of being “
replaced” by non-White people. That
White people are falling behind across key economic, health, and safety indexes is not due to victimization by immigrants and liberal conspiracies, however, but to victimization by other Whites and self-inflicted alcoholism, drug overdose, and suicide.
Is the solution to undividing America
massive federal programs to improve Republican America’s struggling economies and troubled social conditions, then? Aside from the problem that Republican members of congress (and
two recalcitrant Democrats) have sabotaged beneficial initiatives, former President Barack Obama already tried that. From 2010 to 2016, the Obama administration’s economic recovery measures fostered millions of new jobs and thousands of dollars in real median income growth for Whites in urban and most rural areas alike, reversing the recession under Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.
Yet, despite these gains, White voters vehemently rejected Democrats in successive elections. Today, Trump’s base voters are electing candidates who share their
racial resentment and imagined victimization, not those who actually are advancing their safety and economic well-being.
Despite the superficial resemblance of the crumbling neighborhoods, junk-filled lots, and widespread poverty of Antlers and conditions in a devastated city of color like Camden, New Jersey, the origins of their devastations are very different. Camden is the product of systemic racism and
industrial abandonment inflicted on poor, primarily non-White residents powerless to prevent their exploitation. Antlers is the predictable endgame of White majorities who had better options instead empowering incompetent, corrupt demagogues (segregationist Democrats in the past; nihilist Republicans today) who flatter White claims to racial and religious privilege while awarding largesse to rapacious outsiders.
Poverty in cities and on reservations requires mainly the sustained political will to work with populations who welcome the effort. In stark contrast, fixing rural White poverty against the angry, anti-democratic recalcitrance of most Whites themselves requires an entirely new political thinking we have yet to imagine.
