The rise of white people... as a demographic

[BrainGlutton]

@adaher

I’m not sure that drinking and playing with guns is new to working class whites. Are whites actually dying faster than they did before, or have they fallen behind because minorities have advanced in terms of qualify of life?

Death rates actually rising, while other categories’ death rates have been falling. This study speaks specifically of “middle-aged whites,” but from discussions in this thread and additional cites therein, it became apparent that the trend is really most evident among working-class whites. What is notable is that, among white-majority countries, this trend is unique to the United States.

@BrainGlutton

Economist Paul Krugman considers and dismisses several explanations: It is not the fault of the welfare state encouraging dependency and despair, because this is a uniquely American phenomenon and the American welfare state is meager compared with other industrialized democracies’. It is probably not caused by “rising inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class,” because Hispanic Americans are much poorer than whites but have lower mortality.

So what is going on? In a recent interview Mr. Deaton suggested that middle-aged whites have “lost the narrative of their lives.” That is, their economic setbacks have hit hard because they expected better. Or to put it a bit differently, we’re looking at people who were raised to believe in the American Dream, and are coping badly with its failure to come true.

That sounds like a plausible hypothesis to me, but the truth is that we don’t really know why despair appears to be spreading across Middle America. But it clearly is, with troubling consequences for our society as a whole.

In particular, I know I’m not the only observer who sees a link between the despair reflected in those mortality numbers and the volatility of right-wing politics. Some people who feel left behind by the American story turn self-destructive; others turn on the elites they feel have betrayed them. No, deporting immigrants and wearing baseball caps bearing slogans won’t solve their problems, but neither will cutting taxes on capital gains. So you can understand why some voters have rallied around politicians who at least seem to feel their pain.

At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education, and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I’m not sure whether they’re enough to cure existential despair.

[SlackerInc]

We need another “malaise” speech (yes, I know Carter’s didn’t actually contain that word).

[BrainGlutton]

@SlackerInc

We need another “malaise” speech (yes, I know Carter’s didn’t actually contain that word).

I think “requiem” would be a better word at this juncture of history.

[j666]

@BrainGlutton

But a culture does not suddenly develop a new pathology for no reason – and whatever is killing off working-class white Americans is new.

@BrainGlutton

Death rates actually rising, while other categories’ death rates have been falling. This study speaks specifically of “middle-aged whites,” but from discussions in this thread and additional cites therein, it became apparent that the trend is really most evident among working-class whites. What is notable is that, among white-majority countries, this trend is unique to the United States.

What is “working class”? The definition I grew up with - high school education and decent, steady blue collar employment - doesn’t even exist anymore.

If we are talking about people with high school education and no inherited wealth, are they really equivalent to the working class of 50 years ago? Even trades people tend to have some post high school education now, professional certifications or associates in business.

It looks like death for white americans stopped decreasing around 1998 or '99. That makes no sense, sociologically. That was a good time, for every one but the Clintons; the economy was stable and growing, the social order was pretty traditional, the wars were far away … what existential crisis could have started then?

[j666]

@inscrutable

Pointless – there is no way to integrate reality’s simple, ugly truths into SDMB’s theoretical simulation of life.

So your approach will be to make vague, cryptic references and dismiss requests for clarification, dismissing them with equally vague and cryptic, as well as sloppily pseudo-philosophical, phrases?

Child, that does not make you look interesting, or even above it all. You might want to look up “poseur”.

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

Hey, I said the language in the national discourse around race/“white people” is going to change. Maybe part of that change includes unsupported, drive-by one liners in greater frequency.

[SlackerInc]

@j666

It looks like death for white americans stopped decreasing around 1998 or '99. That makes no sense, sociologically. That was a good time, for every one but the Clintons; the economy was stable and growing, the social order was pretty traditional, the wars were far away … what existential crisis could have started then?

Yeah, that’s fascinating. Reading that NYT article, this part jumped out at me:

Increases in mortality rates in middle-aged whites rose in parallel with their increasing reports of pain, poor health and distress, he explained.

And I wondered why there was no mention of nutrition or obesity in the article. They should have talked to Michael Pollan. Smoking is still rampant among that group as well.

But I’m getting a bit afield from electoral politics. I think maybe I’ll take this question to GQ.

[inscrutable]

@j666

So your approach will be to make vague, cryptic references and dismiss requests for clarification, dismissing them with equally vague and cryptic, as well as sloppily pseudo-philosophical, phrases?

Child, that does not make you look interesting, or even above it all. You might want to look up “poseur”.

I rest my case.

By the way, is there a reference to “Mississippi Burning” hidden in there somewhere?

[BrainGlutton]

@inscrutable

I rest my case.

On quicksand.

[BrainGlutton]

@j666

What is “working class”? The definition I grew up with - high school education and decent, steady blue collar employment - doesn’t even exist anymore.

If we are talking about people with high school education and no inherited wealth, are they really equivalent to the working class of 50 years ago? Even trades people tend to have some post high school education now, professional certifications or associates in business.

Well, as I posted in this thread:

@Slash1972

Is your definition of “working class” someone who graduates high school without any plans for college, and no discernable job skills?

@BrainGlutton

I suppose that applies to a lot of them, but it’s not definitional. Many working-class people have high job skills and some go to college (community, at least). There are various definitions of the"working class" – but not so widely various that it is difficult to say who is and isn’t in it.

One can perhaps meaningfully subdivide the working class. From Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (originally published 1983), by Paul Fussell:

My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows:

Top out-of-sight
Upper
Upper middle

Middle
High proletarian
Mid-proletarian
Low proletarian

Destitute
Bottom out-of-sight

One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these classes. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money.

<snip>

<snip>

. . . Proceeding downward [from the middle class], we would normally expect to meet next the lower-middle class. But it doesn’t exist as such any longer, having been pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s and transformed into the high-proletarian class. What’s the difference? A further lack of freedom and self-respect. Our former lower-middle class, the new high proles, now head “the masses,” and even if they are positioned at the top of the proletarian classes, still they are identifiable as people things are done to. They are in bondage – to monetary policy, rip-off advertising, crazes and delusions, mass low culture, fast food, consumer schlock. Back in the 1940s there was still a real lower-middle class in this country, whose solid high-school education and addiction to “saving” and “planning” maintained it in a position – often precarious, to be sure – above the working class. . . . These former low-white-collar people are now simply working machines, and the wife usually works as well as the husband.

The kind of work performed and the sort of anxiety that besets one as a result of work are ways to divide the working class into its three strata. The high proles are the skilled workers, craftsmen, like printers. The mid-proles are operators, like Ralph Kramden, the bus driver. The low proles are unskilled labor, like longshoremen. The special anxiety of high proles is fear about loss or reduction of status: you’re proud to be a master carpenter, and you want the world to understand clearly the difference between you and a laborer. The special anxiety of the mid-proles is fear of losing the job. And of the low proles, the gnawing perception that you’re probably never going to make enough or earn enough freedom to have and do the things you want.

@BrainGlutton

Also – Fussell seems to overlook this – the working class can also be subdivided racially/ethnically. Among other things Marx got wrong, a social class is not merely a set of people of the same economic status or economic function. It is also a sociological entity. People of the same class do not just work at the same kinds of jobs or earn the same level of income, they live in the same kinds of neighborhoods, go to the same schools, socialize with each other, marry each other, and absorb a similar outlook growing up. The white and black working classes are really two different social classes, and will remain so until socialization and neighborhood and intermarriage between them is a great deal more common than it is now. It’s not that either is above the other (except that the whites probably provide most of the high-proles as Fussell defines them); they’re like two halves of the same layer of the cake. Or thirds, or whatever, because the Latino working class is separate from both, etc.

Fussell’s analysis, as noted, dates from 1983, but I don’t think the picture has changed significantly since then, the way it did change significantly between the 1940s and then.

@j666

It looks like death for white americans stopped decreasing around 1998 or '99. That makes no sense, sociologically. That was a good time, for every one but the Clintons; the economy was stable and growing, the social order was pretty traditional, the wars were far away … what existential crisis could have started then?

Good question. No easy answers. My guess is, that was when it really, really became clear to white workers that the America they were going to die in was a very different country, not only economically but culturally and socially and demographically, from the America they had grown up in. Which might have accounted for W, also. I recall reading a book in the past year, can’t recall title or author, which covers the 1970s white backlash represented by Louise Day Hicks, etc. One chapter covers a fight over school textbooks in West Virginia, and one local said to some city-slicking do-gooder that the problem was “You are trying to put commas in place of our periods.” That, on a national scale.

[SlackerInc]

I love that Paul Fussell book! Such a fun read. (Although you left out the “X class” he reveals at the end of the book, of which I consider myself a part.)

I’m not getting the comma/period thing. Can you explain?

[j666]

@BrainGlutton

Fussell’s analysis, as noted, dates from 1983, but I don’t think the picture has changed significantly since then, the way it did change significantly between the 1940s and then.

Good question. No easy answers. My guess is, that was when it really, really became clear to white workers that the America they were going to die in was a very different country, not only economically but culturally and socially and demographically, from the America they had grown up in.

I’m not convinced. That is a reason to grouse and be mean to the neighbor’s kids; it is not a reason to commit suicide.

I’m missing something here …

[stillownedbysetters]

I was talking with a Southern friend the other day and he made what I felt was a legitimate point.

We, as a society, are slowly but surely taking away the institutions working class white people use to define their identity. Proud to be a Southerner? well, no, you can’t do that anymore. Put away your Confederate flag, it’s discriminatory. Proud to be a union guy? Nuh-uh, unions ruined this country and its your own fault you don’t have a job. Proud to be white? Not a chance. Just be glad you are and shut up about it. You can only be proud to be your ethnicity if you are a minority. Proud to be a Christian? Not anymore. Take down those decorations and refer to December 25th as the Winter Holiday.

And what are we giving them to identify with instead? Trump. God help us all.

[Peremensoe]

Except, this,

@stillownedbysetters

Proud to be a Christian? Not anymore. Take down those decorations and refer to December 25th as the Winter Holiday.

is a myth. There is no “war on Christmas.” There is no persecution of Christians.

[stillownedbysetters]

@Peremensoe

Except, this,

is a myth. There is no “war on Christmas.” There is no persecution of Christians.

Persecution? Of course not! But as a nation founded “under God” we are increasingly taking God out of the national equation. And to people for whom their faith is both a personal and patriotic bedrock, this is disturbing and alienating.

[j666]

@stillownedbysetters

But as a nation founded “under God” …

I challenge that assertion. I can find one mention of “God” in the Declaration of Independence, and it is subordinate to the science, “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them”.

I can’t find any in the constitution. Maybe I’m missing it.

[BrainGlutton]

@stillownedbysetters

Persecution? Of course not! But as a nation founded “under God” . . .

WFRT to official texts and such, that is a phrase found only in the Pledge of Allegiance as revised in 1954.

[Johnny_Ace]

@stillownedbysetters

Persecution? Of course not! But as a nation founded “under God” we are increasingly taking God out of the national equation. And to people for whom their faith is both a personal and patriotic bedrock, this is disturbing and alienating.

I refer you to this minor little doctrine called ‘separation of church and state.’

[DSeid]

@stillownedbysetters

Persecution? Of course not! But as a nation founded “under God” we are increasingly taking God out of the national equation. And to people for whom their faith is both a personal and patriotic bedrock, this is disturbing and alienating.

I respect their faith as a personal bedrock. Be as proud of it as you want to be. And if they personally want to include their god concept as a part of their patriotism, fine, so long as it not imposed o others. Keep your Christmas lights on year round if you want. Feel free to say Merry Christmas all you want, no matter how odd it may seem to someone who does not share your faith. Say it on July 4th for all I care. On Halloween. Fine by me.

But the bedrock of this country’s patriotism is the separation of church and state. Being personally offended because others do not share your faith, taking others making a choice to not share or if shared not publicly express that same faith as an attack upon yours and upon some mythical Christian God bedrock of this country. Silly.

[BrainGlutton]

@SlackerInc

I love that Paul Fussell book! Such a fun read. (Although you left out the “X class” he reveals at the end of the book, of which I consider myself a part.)

I’m not getting the comma/period thing. Can you explain?

It means chipping away at an epistemically closed traditional culture that provides the comfort of certainty – "X is true, period" – by bringing in new revisionist ideas about race, faith, gender roles, and even the epistemology of how we know things and whether we can be sure of them. That kind of fight over school-textbooks is still going on today. We see it in the astonishing and preposterous fight against Common Core, and not long ago the Texas GOP added a plank to its platform condemning any effort to teach “critical thinking.”