This brilliant essay by Gregory Rodriguez, one of the nation’s premier thinkers on race and ethnicity, provides a new and uncomfortable perspective on what’s really driving Trumpism, and the despair and outrage of white voters. contra-mundum.com/the-other-epid…
As whites become a smaller share of the population, white identity is becoming an angry, aggrieved, destructive rallying cry that is wielded to punish themselves and the rest of us.
Sociologists have documented for years that a loss of status - real or perceived - can lead to suicidal or homicidal tendencies. Whites are clearly demonstrating these behaviors.
Take the opioid catastrophe: Of the 360,000 of the 450,000 opioid-related deaths in America between 1999 and 2018 were to white people.
Whites are dying earlier in significant numbers from drug abuse, alchohol and suicide.
We’ve heard a lot about class anxiety since Trump won. The so-called ‘forgotten man’ that Trump speaks for. Rodriguez’ essay exposes the hollowness of the class anxiety argument.
Despite Trump’s blatant racist appeals, commentators still characterized his white support as a class rebellion rather than a racial one.
In 2016, Trump did fine with college educated white voters (38%). Better with non-college (64%). The Hillbilly Elegy narrative allowed us to explain away the “Trumpers”. We tried to understand them, even feel for them.
But as Trump’s Presidency descended deeper into a dystopian nightmare it was evident it wasn’t just white poverty, or even white racism, that explains the behavior of Trump supporters.
The cultish adherence to an authoritarian strongman is driven by a perceived profound loss of status. This isn’t your garden variety racism. It’s subtler and deeper.
It’s not just the crass white supremacy of Charlottesville, confederate flags and building a wall. It’s not about having an ‘other’ to blame anymore. It’s about being replaced and being replaceable.
This perceived loss of white status appears to be manifesting in self destructive behavior. We may be at the point where self destructive behavior is morphing into socially destructive behavior: Mass shootings & Armed rebellion protests.
This would include Acquiescence to the undermining of government institutions, confidence in elections, belief in facts and science, adherence to law and order. If America didn’t give me what I’m entitled to, no one else should get it either.
White anxiety is about losing dominant status in society & leads them to self and socially destructive behaviors. Destroying American institutions is a reaction to a society they believe has failed them. END
