New Minorities on Defense: The White Working Class and the Elites

The New York Times’ Nate Cohn tweeted at about 10:30 pm on election night,

How to think about this election: white working class voters just decided to vote like a minority group. They’re >40% of the electorate.

Bradford Wilcox replied, “This may be the key to unlocking today’s surprise.” It’s brief, but Wilcox’s opinion as a sociologist carries a lot of weight.

Working class whites in my experience are more likely to express pride in being American than in being white.

It’s hardly surprising if the white working class begins to act like a minority group. If they’re paying attention they’ve seen themselves vilified by everyone from “Black Lives Matter” to elites in media, academia and politics. They see their core values being dismissed and disallowed, in culture and in the courts. They’re disturbed over seemingly unrestrained immigration. They’re being blamed for enjoying “white privilege” which feels more like piling on than privilege.

Minority group status is a matter of both defense and pride. Working class whites in my experience are more likely to express pride in being American than in being white. That’s expected from the viewpoint that they represent the group that up until now has been the dominant culture; they’re more likely than Blacks, Hispanics, or other minorities to make the careless mistake of thinking, “We are America and America is us.”

So if the white working class has begun seeing itself as a minority group, the pride factor plays out in a different manner than with traditionally-identified minorities.

The same is probably true of the defensive posture. White working class persons don’t face the ignominy of being pulled over for “driving while black.” They don’t feel pushed around in their local communities that way; but they have noticed how they’ve been pushed around by far-away but powerful forces that refuse to grant them even basic respect. They certainly haven’t failed to notice the terrorist threat against the U.S., or to connect it with immigration policy. And they’re finally ready to stand up and defend themselves at the polls.

Now we have to wonder how elites will rise to defend their interests.

If that’s true it could bode ill for re-unifying our country. (I almost added, “following this divisive election season,” but that would have been to ignore all the divisiveness that preceded it. “White privilege” was never a campaign slogan.) Defensive postures are closed-off positions. It’s hard to open yourself to understanding or appreciating others different from yourself when your first move is toward protecting yourself.

Speaking of defensive postures, though, this stunning election has the potential of rocking the elite back on its heels for the first time. White working class defensiveness expresses itself in uneasiness and local harrumphing, until it erupts in a world-shaking movement that elects a Donald Trump. Now we have to wonder how elites will rise to defend their interests. Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist tweeted on election night,

The disconnect between our national media’s coverage and how people are voting is a huge huge huge story.

She could have described it as a battle, not just a disconnect. But that was before and during the election. Starting on Wednesday we’ll be in a post-Trump election world. We have some idea now how working class whites can rise up to protect their interests. I am unwilling to try to predict how the elite will rise up to protect theirs now. But I’ll own up to more than a little Schadenfreude at the thought that they might be about to discover they’re not just an elite minority group, they might begin to find out they’re an embattled elite.