settlers the myth of the white proletariat

However, while this approach positions itself as the ally of the neglected and race-shamed white working class, it ironically perceives poor whites as too stupid to know what’s good for them. For this reason, class reductionists believe that Democrats lose the working class white vote because they do not know how to talk to them they are patronizing, removed, and smug. One eradicates racism therefore not so much by denouncing racism but by explaining to working class whites why voting Republican or supporting the economic status quo would be bad for their pocketbook. Typically, those sympathetic to this view would respond to my critique by describing the purportedly high rates of racism among “working class whites” as a scheme concocted by upper class capitalists to prevent poor whites from realizing that their economic interest lies in solidarity with non-white people. The class reductionist approach undermines itself in another way.

Indeed, if we believe that economic systems oppress people by sorting them into social classes, then how can an entity such as the white working class even exist? By distinguishing the white working class from their non-white counterparts, one admits that racial identity and power trumps class position, even though one intends the exact opposite.

Here we encounter something quite strange: figures such as Sanders, who tend both to prioritize the fight against economic injustice above that against racial injustice and to believe the latter to be largely a consequence of the former than a separate species of its own, end up defending that view by speaking in a way that contradicts it. What makes the “white” working class different from the black, or Native American, or Latino/a, or Asian-American working class?

See, for example, this tweet from Senator Bernie Sanders:īut even if we forget that Sanders lost to Clinton primarily because he got blown out among black voters, especially those in the country’s poorest region, the Deep South even if we forget that, in last week’s general, Clinton won the under 50k vote even if we forget that black people, Native Americans, and Latino/as suffer substantially higher rates of poverty than whites and would therefore seemingly be more antagonistic to working class-abandoning elites, such as Clinton, than white people (when the reverse is true) and even if we forget that whiteness served as far and away the best predictor of whether one voted red or blue, a question remains: In the aftermath of last week’s presidential election, many have attributed the Democrats’ defeat to their inability and/or refusal to respect, speak to, care about, or prioritize the so-called “ white working class.” According to this view, the “white working class,” like innocent children, have been “abandoned” by party elites.

Settlers the myth of the white proletariat