They don’t. You’re asking for precision studies or something among people who aren’t interested in such things and wouldn’t be convinced by them anyway. But they know what they perceive happening, and the data does support parts of their complaint. Powerful whites kept minorities down, and so lower class whites have to pay that debt. Elite whites, of course, are exempt.
Sort of. Definitely 50 years ago, stupid lazy white people had a much better deal than even hardworking people of other races. Today, not so much. Now they are actually at a disadvantage in many ways. And it’s not just about policy, it’s about lack of respect. They are literally the only group it’s socially acceptable to make fun of and not give a damn about.
They want good, private sector jobs, and they want to send their kids to college. They don’t want welfare and government jobs. Well, that’s not totally accurate. They’ll take government jobs and welfare, but they aren’t going to thank Democrats for that when Democratic policies made their jobs go away.
Sure, white privilege is a thing. It’s more a thing for privileged whites. Poor whites don’t feel privileged at all.
Whether they are or not, it’s hard to miss that “jobs Americans won’t do” keeps on expanding. When I was a young worker, native born Americans did pretty much all jobs within the city and suburbs. The only jobs Americans wouldn’t do were the tough agricultural jobs. Now, if you listen to corporations, they can’t find Americans to cook, wash dishes, be janitors, clean hotel rooms, drive taxis, or work in warehouses. Problem is, I, and I know THEY, remember Americans doing just that. And now they don’t so much.
This is a skeptic position. You can’t convince her that Trump is not telling her the truth, because you are just reinforcing her belief that people aren’t telling her the truth.
Your mom stopped believing the democrats. She thinks they were lying to her. Once you believe your friends are lying to you, you have no basis to disbelieve anyone and are overtaken by fear.
Adaher: So these people are going to vote based on their “perceptions” and aren’t going to be convinced by data that their beliefs are wrong. (BTW, they probably don’t realize, but I assume you do, that explicitly race-based standards for admission to public universities have been illegal for quite a while now). Well, I agree that there’s a lot of truth there, and that’s definitely a problem. What’s your solution? How can we reassure these people that their concerns are valid and being addressed, without actually doing anything that not only won’t disadvantage minorities, but won’t be perceived by minorities as doing so?
I disagree that poor white people are “the only group it’s socially acceptable to make fun of”. Of course, what’s acceptable depends on what part of society you’re in. This is such a broad brush stroke it’s hard to even have a coherent discussion about whether it’s true or not. But apparently making fun of disabled people, for instance, doesn’t disqualify you from becoming President, so…
Unlike our hypothetical subjects, I* am* capable of being convinced by data, so I would be interested in seeing any cites that there is a widespread stigma attached to working for the government as opposed to the private sector among lower-class whites.
It’s simply objectively untrue that Democratic policies led to the losses of factory jobs; these jobs were lost mostly due to mechanization and largely due to free trade policies. Neither political party ever seriously entertained the notion that people whose jobs were lost to mechanization deserved extra government support of any kind, much less that employers should be forbidden from improving their production technology. And Republicans have (at least until quite recently) consistently been louder and more united in their support for free trade. I agree that the Clintonist decision to embrace NAFTA et al was a political disaster for the Democrats, but there was never a time when they were WORSE than the Republicans on these issues.
I disagree that all poor whites are unable to perceive their privilege. I know lots of white people who are economically struggling, but aren’t incapable of noticing that, for example, their black friends are much more likely to be hassled by police for no reason than they are.
Again, I think this is largely an irrational racist perception. Certainly in my daily life in Chicago it is rare to see white people without strong accents doing these kinds of jobs, but I don’t assume that only white people without accents belong in the category of “Americans”. There are lots of citizens and legal residents who fall into that category.
And really, you conservatives are supposed to be in favor of individual initiative and the free market, right? If Jose is willing to work for lower wages with less security and benefits than Joe is, shouldn’t we be applauding his strong work ethic and congratulating the savvy employer who finds ways to keep his labor cost low, while lecturing Joe about bootstraps blah blah?
I find it odd that only when offered the opportunity to hurt minorities do conservatives get enthusiastic about big, expensive government programs ostensibly aimed at improving the standard of living of white workers. If the concern was really about illegal immigrants driving wages down, a much easier solution would be to just legalize everyone, so that they wouldn’t be afraid to report employers who violate minimum wage laws, and then aggressively enforce said laws. Also, make it easier for workers to form strong unions to defend their own interests. Yet none of these approaches seem popular within the GOP…
“, a much easier solution would be to just legalize everyone,”
Almost 1.3bn people in the world live on between $1 - $2 a day, just how many of them are you willing to take in? See, that’s the whole problem with legalize everyone, the US, as the EU has found out, can’t take unlimited immigration. If the illegal aliens FOLLOWED the law they wouldn’t be in a place where an employer could take advantage of them.
This tread is about what “radicalized white voters”, and that’s part of it, as a “white voter”, I can tell you why some white voters were “radicalized”, their tired. They are tired of being blamed for everything and yet expected to pay. They are tired of the elites from both parties who think they know how best to spend their money. Tired when X group gets a pass, while they are expected to follow the law and tired of being told they are the bad guys when they tell people to follow the law. Basically they are tired of being the villain.
BTW I’m enough Native American to be enrolled but refuse to enroll as a NA, but in light enough to appear white, and I’m tired.
Thank you for supplying that perfect example of delusional, whiny, racist bullshit. Black and brown people are murdered by police on a near daily basis in this country, and you think that WHITE people are the ones not “getting a pass”? Spare me.
You are apparently unaware of the fact that there are many, many people who are fully qualified to work in the US who are still working under the table or in other ways that an employer may take illegal advantage of them.
And as far as taking advantage of them, that’s the whole point in having employees. The law is there to prevent you from taking too much advantage of them without adequate compensation.
Immigrants, even the undocumented kind, add far more to the economy than they take away. So, given that adding immigrants to the country increases your standard of living, you tell me how many we can afford to take in?
So, they are tired of all the stuff that’s not really happening, but that right wing media keeps repeating over and over and over again anyway.
Seems a better solution would be to disconnect from that toxic content source, and maybe just enjoy a nice day for once. May feel a bit less tired.
Actually, to have plausible deniability , and to make sure the IRS doesnt penalize them, employers almost always now pay their undocumented workers (with fake docs) the same as everyone else.
I’m tired, too. I’m tired of being called names because of my politics. Traitor. Baby-murderer. Faggot. I’m tired of white people who care more about watching a fucking ball game then the systematic slaughter of black people by the state. I’m tired of Republicans passing law after law designed specifically to limit my rights as a citizen in my own country, because leading a lynch mob against the queers is easier than fixing the economy. I’m tired of half the electorate turning into Inspector Javert, more obsessed with applying the law in as punitive a fashion as possible instead of showing an iota of human compassion for people in the direst circumstances.
But, more than anything else, I’m tired of Republicans whining about how unfairly they’ve been treated after they get the slightest taste of what they’ve been dishing out for the last fifty years.
You’re tired? Go take a fucking nap.
Ooh, this is almost better than the* fucking hall monitor* post.
Yet you say nothing when whites are shot and killed almost 2:1 over blacks. About half the people shot and killed by police last year were white.
Whites are about 80% of the population. Thanks for proving my point. Got any statistics on how many white people who weren’t actually posing any threat to anyone were killed by police?
The documentary The Brainwashing Of My Dad* addresses this very question. The answer has broadly been discussed in numerous comments in this thread, but the documentary lays out the case very nicely.
[*] Now free to watch for anyone with access to Amazon Prime Video.
So you solve discrimination by discrimination? So as a perceived white guy, not only do I did I have to score much higher then a perceived minority to get into college, think about that for a second. Is that fair? Is that right? Had a minority scored much higher than me in SAT and then get turned down what would you say then? No matter how you cut it affirmative action has been around since 1961 45+ years, during which time the government set aside contracts that a white man could not bid on, required government contractors to have x % pf their employees to be minorities or women. There was a saying around Boeing during that time, if you’re black you’re almost guaranteed a job, if your a women you’re guaranteed a job, if you’re a black women, when do you start. Qualification meant nothing. They need x number of minorities to fill the quota, do you really think that fair? If you do then that’s the problem. Personally I don’t care what color you are, who you happen to be banging, unless of course I’m buying the tape, you don’t end discrimination by discrimination. As far as the systematic slaughter of black people by the state, about 1,200 black were killed by the police in 2015. FBI’s uniform crime-reporting data for 2016, 90.1 percent of black victims of homicide were killed by other blacks, while 83.5 percent of whites were killed by other whites personally if I were black I’d be far more worried about another black then I would about a cop shooting me. Of course we all know it not the fault of any minority group, they only commit crime because they are poor oppressed of course white people who are poor oppressed don’t get the same breaks because they are white. Ran into that one my self because I refuse to be enroll and I’m considered to be white, I didn’t qualify, if on the other hand if I enrolled, my college would be paid for.
If you want police to stop shooting minorities the first thing is stop breaking the law. If you want minority business to get ahead shop at minority business, if you want to get into college got to school and get good grades. It not that hard, millions of minorities have done, the people holding you back isn’t the white man it you. Like I’ve pointed out I refuse to enroll as a NA, despite the advantages it would give me. Because if I’m not good enough as a “white guy” I’m not good enough as a minority.
Given the socio-economic situation of African-Americans, they almost certainly had to work harder for that SAT score, almost certainly went to worse schools, almost certainly did not have the resources the average white person had, et cetera. That’s the whole reason for AA - we recognize that, on average, if a white person and a black person have achieved the same SAT score, the black person had to work harder for it and had to deal with a lot more racism.
So… yeah. That’s fair. That’s right. It’s a blunt instrument that doesn’t always apply, but statements like this one…
…Indicate to me that you fundamentally do not get the purpose of AA.
My memory is a bit shoddy - remind me which law Philando Castile broke?
Of course, even entertaining this is absurd. Cops are not judge, jury, and executioner. The correct punishment for owning a switchblade is not death. The correct punishment for selling single cigarettes is not death. The correct punishment for removing the cap from a toy gun is not death. The problem is that there are an awful lot of cases where the police simply open fire on unarmed black people who pose no threat, and then escape justice for doing so. That’s a little fucked up.
Again, there has in fact been no “radicalization.” Those white voters that postpic200 thinks (s)he speaks for have been there all along. Some may though be enjoying the show more.
Cutting through some of the ugly crap is one bit that should be paid attention to.
There are lots of sorts of privileges of which “white” is only one. Of all my privileges which gave me the biggest leg up? My parents had, by the time I was born, become solidly middle class (class privilege), I was raised going to an excellent school system with no crime and was encouraged and enabled to go as far with education as I wanted to go and could (educational and cultural privilege), and yeah I am a straight cis white male of a group that currently has little discrimination against us in this country (check off other privileges).
Class privilege likely leads the list even more than race. Which does not mean that race as an independent factor is not very very real, and important, it is, but messaging that comes off as denying that whites can be along some very important dimensions at a privilege disadvantage too ends up pushing some potential allies away.
Sanders early popularity and wins were to no small degree because he appealed to those whites who were feeling that class privilege disadvantage. His losses came partly because he did not get the independent importance of racial privilege disadvantage. His mindset was that racial privilege disadvantage just follows from class privilege issues.
The two dimensions are not mutually exclusive. Both can be acknowledged and addressed at the same time.
The day someone can explain to me what law Charles Kinsey broke, I will admit that I was wrong. I will admit that black lives don’t matter, black people are not victims, and police are all honest and fair-minded individuals who want to serve and protect us.
You just let me know when that happens.
8 years of economic depression caused a resurgence of populist nationalism everywhere in the western world. Including, of course, the US.
Or, to quote one of my favorite movies ever, The Big Short:
*“At least we’re going to see some of them go to jail. Right? They’re gonna have to break up the banks. The party’s over.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know… I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people.”*