I agree with that. Obviously, the upper class whites don’t feel oppressed, But lower class whites are feeling like they are in the same boat as everyone else. They aren’t feeling very privileged these days. Quite the opposite. Upper class whites feel guilty about their privilege, yet poor whites get to be the ones to pay the bulk of the price. IT’s not upper class white kids that get bumped from colleges or promotions. There’s still a glass ceiling at the top.
The statement that all whites will someday begin to think like conservatives is hate speech. I just ate and I feel queasy just reading the words.
Fortunately, objective reality intervenes. Younger white votes are predominantly liberal or progressive in attitude. The gap in voting patterns tends to run about 30 points Democratic. All indications are that the preference for Democratic candidates is actually increasing.
It’s true that other demographics are often lumped broadly and falsely together. No sophisticated analyses do this, but the tendency works in broad voting terms because those demographics do skew in similar ways. Even women, hardly monolithic, skew heavily Democratic, especially in presidential elections.
Which means that if you can say anything about whites in the future, it’s that a group that skews 30 points Democratic will be termed a monolithically liberal voting block as they become a minority in total numbers.
Hoist by your own petard.
…until they grow up and realize that someone has to pay for All The Free Stuff.
When I lived in upstate NY (and a liberal), I was puzzled that $1000 of my annual real estate tax bill was mandated by the County to fund the State’s Medicare. Why are only homeowners on the hook for this? If NY can get away with it, how long before your State does it, and it creeps up to $1200, $1500, $1800… And not just for Medicare???
There will come a point where you are more concerned with having saved enough for retirement. Will you be comfortable with paying $12,000+++/year plus deductibles for health care so that those who don’t give a damn about their future get it for free?
And you know damn well that fighting AGW is going to double your utility costs, despite claims that it theoretically doesn’t have to.
Follow the money, if you really want to see the future…
Just to remind everyone of my position on this:
I’m saying white people, taken as a whole, will become another minority. I’m not so sure people are going to casually lump them all together as “white people”, for the kinds of reasons brought up in this thread. I do think there is a change of consciousness going on though, and I see the language changing in some way that I can’t predict.
America is growing, possibly going through a transformational stage. Like the 60s? I don’t know. But I think things that have been swept under the rug for a long time are being dragged out into the light. There is more going on than just damage to the GOP.
They will not think as conservatives, anymore than blacks will think as liberals. African-American attachment to the Democratic Party has little to do with ideology, and the same goes for the white working class’ attachment to the GOP.
As for young voters, actually 18-29 white voters went for Romney by 7 points:
Conservatives certainly never grow up and realize that; they think that Medicare and Military and Police work just fine in an environment of constant tax cuts and constant hand-wringing about the deficit.
Quite where they think their Socialist Security is coming from is beyond me. They know they’re entitled to it, though. They paid taxes back in the Sixties. It’s theirs. They won’t give it up, but by no means will they pay for it now. That and their Medicare. And their VA benefits. And their police, to keep their neighborhoods… eh… gentrified.
Meet the Press today shed some very interesting light on this:
Call it the Bernie Goetz vote.
I agree with you, for *this *election. But…
Until quite recently, less than a week ago, I would have totally cosigned this. I bought the book* The Emerging Democratic Majority* when it came out in hardback over a decade ago and immediately read it cover to cover. But I pride myself on being willing to reconsider my beliefs when I get new information. And this article, about some new social science research, gave me pause. It’s not just the data but a gut sense that this makes sense, that whites could circle the wagons as they feel their power and influence waning:
Not on that page, they didn’t.
Try this one from Pew. Young Voters Supported Obama Less, But May Have Mattered More | Pew Research Center
Yes, Obama lost young white voters from 2008 to 2012. But he lost voters from every single demographic classification except black women 18-29. (98-1 for Obama!)
That can be interpreted in many ways. You could argue that it fortells a condensing of young white voters into anti-liberal, anti-minority positions. I could argue that the across-the-board nature of the change was a natural disillusionment against an incumbent, and that the overall liberalism of young voters (evidenced elsewhere in the articles) limits the total amount of swing even among whites. I don’t feel this is enough data to make any sweeping statements.
I will say you are wrong on ideology. The Democrats’ ideology is of tolerance. The Republicans’ ideology is of hatred. People are completely committed to voting their ideologies.
SlackerInc: I’ll have to read Craig’s papers when I get a chance.
Well, of course it will. If the country becomes a minority-majority country like every demographic projection says it will, then white people will simply be one more non-majority group, and will want and need the same representation and consideration that other ethnic groups get. White people would just be the largest group at that point.
Asians.
Asian support for Obama increased from 2008 to 2012. Higher percentage of Asians for Obama than Hispanics or women or young people.
Yes, they do – but they do not have genuine grievances as white people the way blacks have genuine grievances as black people. After all, offshoring affects everybody regardless of color, while police brutality does not. As white people, they have only the grievance of losing caste and frustrated white privilege, which is genuine, but not legitimate, not a grievance worthy of anyone’s time.
Good and important distinction, between genuine and legitimate.
You obviously don’t understand white people.
How do you know what all white people go through? You don’t think we face racism from blacks? You really think I can go through a black neighborhood and not experience racism? You’re an idiot if you really believe that because as a utility worker often working in such neighborhoods, I experience it quite a bit.
I’m so white I glow in the dark.
I obviously don’t understand white people outside of my own generation, but
I disagree that “losing caste and frustrated white privilege” is the issue.
I agree with that. The kinds of “genuine” grievances I have in mind are the Appalachian coal miners who are losing jobs faster than they can be replaced. Same story in the Rust Belt where jobs have been outsourced faster than they are replaced, or in the Midwest where meat packing plants (are at least believed to) hire undocumented workers for cheaper than the locals are willing to work for, squeezing them out of jobs.
It is hard times for some parts of the white population, independent of whether or not they are racists, or Republicans, or religious, or you name it. These problems aren’t “as white people”, except maybe that some places have segregated themselves as mostly white ares (or tried to), such that when things go south there, there is nobody but white people to take the hit.
You can certainly experience racial discrimination if you go through a black neighbourhood. Black people experience racism going through LIFE.
I’m not denying white people experience discrimination. I’m denying that what they experience as white people even registers on the scale of what black people experience.
I didn’t get the memo – what is it that we’re supposed to be doing to the non-whites this year?
Sigh. You’re right: racism is a thing of the past, and there is no institutionalized racism around. As long as you, personally, feel no judgements based on skin color, there is no problem. Certainly, as a white person, there is no conceivable situation in which your whiteness prevents others from viewing you with suspicion or treating you differently than they would someone else.