Posted on Nov 13, 2016
What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
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Excerpt: "Economic resentment has fueled racial anxiety that, in some Trump supporters (and Trump himself), bleeds into open racism. But to write off WWC anger as nothing more than racism is intellectual comfort food, and it is dangerous.
National debates about policing are fueling class tensions today in precisely the same way they did in the 1970s, when college kids derided policemen as “pigs.” This is a recipe for class conflict. Being in the police is one of the few good jobs open to Americans without a college education. Police get solid wages, great benefits, and a respected place in their communities. For elites to write them off as racists is a telling example of how, although race- and sex-based insults are no longer acceptable in polite society, class-based insults still are."
National debates about policing are fueling class tensions today in precisely the same way they did in the 1970s, when college kids derided policemen as “pigs.” This is a recipe for class conflict. Being in the police is one of the few good jobs open to Americans without a college education. Police get solid wages, great benefits, and a respected place in their communities. For elites to write them off as racists is a telling example of how, although race- and sex-based insults are no longer acceptable in polite society, class-based insults still are."
What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
Posted from hbr.org
Culture
Government
Donald Trump
Democrats
Economics
Posted 8 y ago
Responses: 6
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If race-based insults are no longer acceptable, how is it that people like me are constantly being called racists for our support of President-elect Trump? Seems pretty race-based to me, just obliquely instead of directly so.
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I thought the article was a good read. I scratches the surface on what the Democratic party has done wrong of the last couple of decades. Honestly the Republican party has been making many mistakes in the same sense on some of the issues on the other side of the aisle. Both major parties have alienated the middle where most Americans sit. I hope a new major party emerges.
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