Election Reflection - Part 3
President Obama recently noted the challenge of demagogues such as Donald Trump. In his view, to combat the phenomenon will require unpacking a false narrative crafted by Republican leaders.
Obama said:
You've seen created, in Republican politics, this sense that white males are victims ... Which obviously doesn't gibe with both history and data and economics ... How you unwind that is gonna be not something that is done right away.
In one sense, President Obama is correct: White people are the second most successful major demographic in America, outpaced only by Asian Americans. In terms of education, income, home ownership, access to medical care, and likelihood to encounter the criminal justice system, whites as a group are at the apex of our society.
(Note: this does require white women to be grouped with white men. White men as a distinct group are now underperforming other demographics in some key categories such as education and life expectancy.)
But President Obama’s analysis requires ascribing success to white males as a group. The experience of individual white males is not universal, despite the shared characteristic of race. Inequality (in opportunity, income, education) produces very distinct outcomes not only between racial groups, but within them as well.
This is the principle danger of identity politics – assuming that everyone in a given group can be considered the same and treated accordingly.
Of course, all politics require some grouping. Geography, education, income, dialect, occupation, even cultural pursuits down to hobbies and cuisine can create interest groups, each with common elements to which politicians strive to appeal.
But groupings based upon identity are perilous for many reasons, both moral and practical. The moral dimensions I’ll address in another post, but in practical terms, identity is the most crude of lenses. Identity crafts categories so broad that they will inevitably lead to false conclusions:
All women support abortion. All blacks want to defund the police. All Hispanics endorse illegal immigration. All whites are supremacists.
None of these is remotely true. But identity politics not only assumes they are true, but that they should be true. When we encounter someone who does not fit this model, then we have to explain it away:
If a woman does not support abortion, then she is a female impersonator. If a black man does not want to defund the police, then he is an Uncle Tom. If a Hispanic does not support illegal immigration, then (per President Obama), his religious zealotry overrides his expected allegiance to his ethnic group. If a white person denies her supremacy, then she is ipso facto racist.
When the identity lens is employed to the exclusion of all else, then what is expected of an identity group vs. what that group actually does leads to a cognitive dissonance that is nigh on impossible to reconcile.
Not that some people don’t try. Consider Cristina Beltran’s remarkable essay in the The Washington Post, establishing a new category of “multiracial whiteness”. In an effort to explain minority support for Trump, Ms. Beltran argues that the whiteness practice of “exclusion, violence and demonization” are what enticed one-third of America’s Latinos to vote Republican last November.
Ms. Beltran writes:
“…multiracial whiteness is an ideology invested in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, power and privilege — a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others.”
This analysis founders for the same reason as President Obama’s: it does not explain how Trump’s substantial Latino support gained between 2016 and 2020.
Contrary to the assumptions of identity politics, the Latino community is sharply divided on illegal immigration, with polls showing up to 60% perceiving illegal immigration negatively impacting Hispanics, and less than one-third endorsing an amnesty-without-penalty for illegal immigrants already here.
This shouldn’t be a surprise – legendary activist Cesar Chavez despised illegal immigation for the same reason many Latino voters have qualms today: such immigration reduces the economic bargaining power of legal immigrants, driving down wages and opportunities.
Extend this reasoning to lower-income voters from all races, and a more plausible explanation for Trump support emerges: policies of secure borders, deregulation, tariff protection and tax cuts are associated with an economy that delivered, big time, for the working class.
The merits of these policies can be debated separately, but if working class heads-of-household can secure higher paying jobs to take care of their families, they’re going to take a serious look at the politicians they believe made it possible.
Upper-middle class knowledge workers, safely credentialed and protected, remain gainfully employed even in the midst of a pandemic. And so it’s easy for us to frame working-class concerns as just a function of identity; with blue-collar types succumbing to the false consciousness of whiteness.
But that same working class just captured their best employment numbers ever; their first real-wages growth in twenty-five years. When lower-income moms and dads of all races improve their ability to feed their children and pay their bills; well, perhaps other factors besides the whiteness traits of “exclusion, violence and demonization” can better explain how they vote.