Chamblee54

@YAppelbaum “10. Bottom line? White, working class Trump voters felt culturally displaced and resentful, not financially stressed” PG saw this tweet while drifting away from a problem poem. Before long, he clicked on a couple of links, and read a few tweets. An idea for a post emerged. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a retweet from 2017.
Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump is the study from PRRI. The study focuses on white voters who did not attend college (WWC.) This group overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. Because WWC voters were concentrated in key states, their votes became more important in swinging the electoral vote to DJT. The standard issues were discussed in the report, with one exception.
The report used the word racist one time. Racism was not said. “We’re supposed to make the effort to include everybody else. They don’t have to make the effort to include us. I was hysterical laughing over the thing at Eastern Kentucky University. The black student body had a welcome black event. Well, somebody on campus thought they should have a white welcome event. Well, the black one was okay, but the white one, the whole campus went bananas, and it was racist. Now what is the difference?” This was a boldface quote from “Woman.” It was not part of the study.
It Was Cultural Anxiety That Drove White, Working-Class Voters to Trump is the article in The Atlantic. The article is far shorter than the PRRI report. The article identified several items that appeared to be reasons why WWC voters went for DJT. The words “racist” and “racism” did not appear in this article.
One item was noteworthy. ” … 54 percent of white working-class Americans said investing in college education is a risky gamble, including 61 percent of white working-class men.” It would be interesting to see a study ask the same question to graduates dealing with student debt.
The twitter thread listed some of the key points. 4 Almost everything correlates; only four variables proved independently significant. One was Republican Party registration. Not shocking. 5 The 2nd was deportation. 87% of white working-class voters who want to deport undocumented immigrants voted Trump 6 Third? Higher education. WWC voters who think of college as a risky gamble, not an investment, went 2x for Trump: 7 WWC voters who wanted to protect American way of life, or feel like strangers in their own country? 79% for Trump 9 We found economically distressed white, working class voters were 75% more likely to vote for Clinton—not Trump.
Racist/Racism did not appear in the 11 part twitter thread quoted here. Some people say that calls for deportation are racist. However, most people in America think that racism is about the black/white thing. Discussions of this campaign routinely use racism to condemn anything they don’t like, with a special focus on Islam and Mexico. While trash talk about Islam and Mexico is improper, is it really racism? The more often the word is used, the less impact it has.
@zeynep Such a common historical patterns, that it’s not even surprising. Doesn’t make them non-racist, just makes this kind of analysis misleading
@gershonmarx Just say “racist”, Yoni, it’s way fewer characters.
@YAppelbaum I don’t have the data–racial resentment alone wasn’t independently predictive
@gershonmarx What distinguishes “culturally displaced and resentful” from “racist”?
@CSheehanMiles Aside from racism, they’re freaked out about gay marriage, hollywood, people who are transgender, Christmas and Starbucks. Plus racism
@Rachelia72 And losing their guns!
@CSheehanMiles Thanks! How could I leave that out?

A facebook friend posted a meme this morning. There is a picture of a piece of bread, covered in peanut butter. There is forty point, sans serif, text pasted on the condiment. “If someone ever tells you that you’re putting too much peanut-butter on your bread, stop talking to them. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” This is a helpful hint repost.
PG dabbles in graphics. When he saw the meme, the first thing he saw were the words “your life” at the bottom. Six longer lines of text were stacked on top of “your life.” This creates a top heavy look. PG made a comment: “A meme is different from a peanut butter sandwich. There are too many words in this meme. If they had stopped after “negativity”, there would not be two words at the bottom by themselves. The result is a top heavy graphic. The words “in your life” do not add anything to the overall message. This is not negativity, this is editing.”
There are more issues with the peanut butter meme. This is a sacred saturday, after a long week at work. If PG wants to write snarky commentaries about a facebook picture, that should be his right. No one is making you read this. If you want to skip the text, and look at the pictures (from The Library of Congress,) go ahead. The images are from the FSA depression era collection.
We live in a selfish society. It is all about “your life.” The concept of scarce goods is not considered. What if there is only enough peanut butter (without the dash) for two regular sandwiches, or one super duper helping? Is it negativity to ask someone to share?
“If someone ever tells you … stop talking to them.” Are two people talking at the same time? Or, is one person talking, and the other listening? Maybe the meme should say stop listening to them. But, we are a self oriented culture. Listening is seen as weakness. Talking is seen as confident action. If someone says something you don’t like, don’t talk to them.
You probably weren’t listening anyway. It is all about you, and your desire to pile on the peanut butter. Maybe that is why it was important to add the words “in your life” to the text. The fact that there was not enough room does not matter. It is all about your life. If this throws the overall picture out of balance, that is too bad.