Currently I'm finishing up The Great Bridge by David McCullough - highly recommended.
Posted on 08/06/2016 3:34:10 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Sometime during the past few years, the country started talking differently about white Americans of modest means.
Early in the Obama era, the ennobling language of campaign pundits prevailed. There was much discussion of “white working-class voters,” with whom the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, were having such trouble connecting. Never mind that this overbroad category of Americans — the exit pollsters’ definition was anyone without a four-year college degree, or more than a third of the electorate — obliterated major differences in geography, ethnicity, and culture. The label served to conjure a vast swath of salt-of-the-earth citizens living and working in the wide-open spaces between the coasts — Sarah Palin’s “real America” — who were dubious of the effete, hifalutin types increasingly dominating the party that had once purported to represent the common man.
The “white working class” connoted virtue and integrity. A party losing touch with it was a party unmoored.
That flattering glow has faded away. Today, less privileged white Americans are considered to be in crisis, and the language of sociologists and pathologists predominates. Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010” was published in 2012, and Robert D. Putnam’s “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” came out last year. From opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they made the case that social breakdown among low-income whites was starting to mimic trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans: Rates of out-of-wedlock births and male joblessness were rising sharply. Then came the stories about a surge in opiate addiction among white Americans, alongside shocking reports of rising mortality rates (including by suicide) among middle-aged whites. And then, of course, came the 2016 presidential campaign. The question was suddenly no longer why Democrats struggled to appeal to regular Americans. It was why so many regular Americans were drawn to a man like Donald Trump. Equally jarring has been the shift in tone. A barely suppressed contempt has characterized much of the commentary about white woe, on both the left and the right. Writing for National Review in March, the conservative provocateur Kevin Williamson shoveled scorn on the low-income white Republican voters who, as he saw it, were most responsible for the rise of Trump...
Huge cut. MUCH more in th article. Please read the whole thing.
Summary: white but without the privilege.
FTA: Open contempt fotr this class: a huge swath of white people mimicking trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans: out-of-wedlock births and male joblessness rising sharply. A surge in opiate addiction (and meth and marijuana) among white Americans. Shocking reports of rising mortality rates (including by suicide) among middle-aged whites.
And then, of course, came the 2016 presidential campaign....
Blame it on the advance of liberalism.
When the day comes that Whites are the minority in this country God help them. Because no one else will.
Pinging ya’ just because. ;)
Currently I'm finishing up The Great Bridge by David McCullough - highly recommended.
The new set is virtually all irreligious too — the real difference between white trash and classic redneck.
Writing for National Review in March, the conservative provocateur Kevin Williamson shoveled scorn on the low-income white Republican voters who, as he saw it, were most responsible for the rise of Trump...
That’s why my tagline is what it is
I guess low compared to where he is.
I admit, clicked on this thread thinking it was another story about the Clintons.
Only a third of the electorate has a college degree.
Well, the Clinton library does look like the perfect habitat.
I need to get the whole trailer park to read this.
I am white trailer trash and proud of it.
Oh.
Thought this was going to be an article about the Clintons.
Just from the Uniparty.
Yeah, somehow the media and politicians forgot:
These are the people who typically get screwed from “reverse discrimination” “diversity” preferences.
They are the ones who get stuck with the school busing, Sec. 8 in the hood because they can’t afford to keep moving out.
Their kids are bullied and sexually harassed. They have to sit thru one BS “inclusion” pity party class after another.
They are the victims of criminals, dopers, black bigots.
They were “working Americans” as long as they predominantly voted Democrat.
When the polls showed them going to Trump, they were suddenly “White Trash”
Vance OTOH is more into personal responsibility.
But IMO neither Isenberg, Vance, nor the reviewer offer much in the way of solutions. They just describe the problem.
Some excerpts from the article:
"Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin." [in National Review].
Wow! That is nasty.
North Carolina... “the first white trash colony.” [Isenberg book]
Dang! (My state)
she does not buy the idea, enshrined in so many books in recent years, of a separate cohort of “Scots-Irish”... a “flawed historical study that turned poor whites into Celtic ethnics (Scots-Irish).” [Isenberg book]
Crushing my last illusion!
BTW the Wall Street Journal reviewed the Vance book on July 30. That review showed that Vance gave more credit to the Marines for his success, than the current review indicates.
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