The Great White Hope: Social Control and the Psychological Wages of Whiteness

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Robert S. Chang
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
White Racial Identity ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
White Population ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Run Up

In the run-up to and aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election, much has been made of the so-called “white working class.” Some credit or blame this group for the election’s outcome. Others warn against treating this group as monolithic. Yet despite any difficulties in defining this group and what might be ascribed to them, there appears to be an intensification of white racial identity among a growing segment of America’s white population. This article seeks to explore the dynamics of racial identity and racial contest and what they might presage for the possibility of achieving racial justice.

scholarly journals A Review of the Popular and Scholarly Accounts of Donald Trump’s White Working-Class Support in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Geographic Mobility ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Multinomial Regression ◽  
Dominant Group ◽  
Group Position ◽  
Benchmark Datasets ◽  
White Working Class

Popular and scholarly accounts of Trump’s ascendency to the presidency of the United States on the part of the American white working-class use different variables to define the sociodemographic group because there is no “working-class White” variable available in benchmark datasets for researchers to code. To address this need, the Author ran a multinomial regression to assess whether income, education and racial identity predict working-class membership among white Americans, finding that income and education are statistically significant predictors of working-class whiteness, while racial identity is not. Arriving at a robust definition of “white working-class” in light of these findings, the paper next turns to a review of the extant literature. By retrieving studies from searches of computerised databases, hand searches and authoritative texts, the review critically surmises the explanatory accounts of Trump’s victory. Discussion of the findings from the review is presented in three principal sections. The first section explains how working-class White communities, crippled by a dearth of social and geographic mobility, have been “left behind” by the political elites. The second section examines how white Americans, whose dominant group position is threatened by demographic change, voted for Trump because of resonance between his populist rhetoric and their latent “racist” attitudes. The third and final section explores the implications of a changing America for native-born whites, and how America’s increasing ethnoracial diversity is eroding relations between its dominant and nondominant groups. The Author surmises by arguing that these explanatory accounts must be understood in the context of this new empirical approximation of “working-class White”.

The Night of and the Mourning After: Truth and Transference in the Election of Donald Trump

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur P. Bochner
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White Working Class

The writer presents an autoethnographic account of the night of the 2016 presidential election and the days and months that followed. Tormented by the prospect of Donald Trump’s election, he expresses the feelings of gloom and doom that permeate the academic convention he is attending as he and colleagues from around the country respond to the menacing prospect of a Donald Trump presidency. Invited to speak at a postelection riff, he contemplates the ways in which Trump served as an ideal transference object for many White working-class people, providing a kind of heroic self-validation they lack. In the concluding sections of the article, he focuses on the question of Trump’s heralded “authenticity” during the campaign and the tyrannical threat posed by Trump’s failure to care about truth.

scholarly journals Trump Voters and the White Working Class

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Morgan ◽  
Jiwon Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Election ◽  
Community Surveys ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Election Studies

To evaluate the claim that white working-class voters were a crucial block of support for Trump in the 2016 presidential election, this article offers two sets of results. First, self-reports of presidential votes in 2012 and 2016 from the American National Election Studies show that Obama-to-Trump voters and 2012 eligible nonvoters composed a substantial share of Trump’s 2016 voters and were disproportionately likely to be members of the white working class. Second, when county vote tallies in 2012 and 2016 are merged with the public-use microdata samples of the 2012-to-2016 American Community Surveys, areal variations across 1,142 geographic units that sensibly partition the United States show that Trump’s gains in 2016 above Romney’s performance in 2012 are strongly related to the proportion of the voting population in each area that was white and working class. Taken together, these results support the claim that Trump’s appeal to the white working class was crucial for his victory.

Cyber risks overshadow China-US summit

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Technical Standards ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Cyber Affairs

Subject Cybersecurity tensions in the China-US relationship. Significance In the run-up to President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington later this month, US officials have discussed plans to impose economic sanctions on Chinese organisations and individuals found to have engaged in cyberattacks against US targets. The national security and economic implications of cyber tensions are becoming increasingly manifest while space for an agreement seems to be shrinking. Impacts Cyber affairs will be one of the most important bellwethers for the broader China-US relationship. There is potential for escalation and spillover, particularly given the growing prominence of hawkish voices on both sides. There is a long-term risk of diverging technical standards. The approach of the US presidential election makes compromises more difficult.

Swing states will decide US presidential election

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Election Result ◽  
Us Presidential Election

Significance President Donald Trump's re-election prospects have been blighted by COVID-19 and its economic fallout. To win, he must hold onto the states he won narrowly in 2016, in the Midwest and Florida, while fighting off Democratic challenges in some traditionally Republican states. Impacts There are legal mechanisms in place to manage a contested election result. Biden will need suburban and female voters and will likely see strong minority and urban support. Trump will likely see support from male, older and working-class voters, especially in the Midwest and South.

Donald Trump and the Legacy of Bacon’s Rebellion

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 651-674
Author(s):  
Dale Craig Tatum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American History ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Bacon's Rebellion

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election was the biggest upset in American history. Trump propelled himself to victory by running a racist campaign that targeted the White working-class voters by assuring them that he would be their agent and would redeem the country on behalf their shared Whiteness by deporting Mexican immigrants, banning Muslims, and stopping and frisking African Americans. The racial wedge that Trump used was the result of the enduring legacy of Bacon’s Rebellion in the United States.

In the wake of hate: A mixed-method analysis of anonymous threatening communications sent during the 2016 US presidential election

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-203
Author(s):  
I. M. Nick
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The United States ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Physical Threat ◽  
Threatening Communications ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Act Assessment

On January 20, 2017, Republican candidate Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. The run-up to this inauguration was marked by unusually hostile political rhetoric. For many, this linguistic divisiveness was fodder for the post-election surge in physical and verbal aggression. Using a mixed-method approach that combines actuarial and speech act assessment, this study examines 30 Anonymous Threatening Communications sent during the US presidential election for the presence and prevalence of (para)linguistic features associated with verbal and physical threat. The article argues for more forensic linguistic research into mainstream producers and consumers of hate-filled political rhetoric.

Signifying Aggrieved White Selves: Trump Supporters’ Racial Identity Work

2021 ◽  
pp. 233264922110207
Author(s):  
Douglas Schrock ◽  
Shantel Gabrieal Buggs ◽  
Bertan Buyukozturk ◽  
Kristen Erichsen ◽  
Andre Ivey
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Emotional Communication ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Racial Discourse ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Interactionist Approach

Based on 29 in-depth interviews during the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we examine how Trump supporters engaged in a form of identity work that we call signifying aggrieved white selves. Taking an interactionist approach, we demonstrate how they used racial discourse and emotional communication to engage in three distinct forms of racial identity work: (1) othering racialized freeloaders, (2) criminalizing racialized others, and (3) discrediting racialized dissenters. Our study contributes to research on racial discourse and emotions and research on race and the 2016 presidential election, which emphasize linguistic or cultural frames and/or subjectivity rather than the dramatization of racial selfhood. We propose that signifying aggrieved white selfhood is a generic process and that racial identity work is a useful lens for analyzing how a foundational concept of critical race theory—namely, that race is a social construct—is reproduced in everyday life.

scholarly journals WORKING OUT THEIR ECONOMIC PROBLEMS TOGETHER: WORLD WAR I, WORKING WOMEN, AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE YWCA

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-265
Author(s):  
Dorothea Browder
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
World War I ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Working Women ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
World War ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article examines how a group of Black and White YWCA staff members seized the opportunities of World War I to advance a racial justice agenda through Young Women's Christian Association programs for working women. First, they created YWCA program work for thousands of Black working women that paralleled the YWCA's Industrial Program, which followed YWCA segregation policies. Second, they made claims for social justice based on Black women's labor contributions, in contrast to both earlier reformers' focus on elite Black women and other wartime activists' focus on soldiers' service. Finally, in a period best known for White people's violent resistance to Black advances, they fostered a program culture and structures that encouraged White working-class women to view African American coworkers as colleagues and to understand racial justice as part of a broader social justice agenda. Arguing that interracial cooperation among working people was crucial to social progress, they made African American laboring women and White working-class allies both symbolically and literally crucial to wartime and postwar civil rights efforts. Their efforts contribute to our understanding of the changing discourse of “respectability” and the impact of World War I on the Black Freedom Struggle.

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